Advertising in the 1950's

A WebQuest for 11th Grade American History

Introduction

This lesson was developed for EDTEC 570, Advanced Teaching with Technology at San Diego State University. A WebQuest is a Constructivist learning activity that requires students to utilize the Internet as a meaningful source of information that must be analyzed, interpreted and synthesized.

The purpose of this WebQuest is to compel students to ask meaningful questions about the past, including:

What values, beliefs, symbols, and stereotypes were important to people of the past?
How do artifacts illustrate the values, beliefs, symbols and stereotypes of the past?
What types of questions should you ask to discover the implicit meanings in a historical document?

In this lesson students will examine advertisements from the 1950s to discover both explicit and implicit values, beliefs, symbols, and stereotypes. After students analyze and document the evidence, they will apply their research to create an advertisement of their own.

Learners

This WebQuest is intended for 11th grade American History students. You might also consider using it in conjunction with 11th grade American Literature. Before beginning this lesson, the students must cover World War 2 and the first few years after the war. Important, but not necessary prerequisite concepts include:

Communism
The Baby Boom
Consumerism
Suburbia
GI Bill

The critical skills that your students should possess before beginning this lesson are:

Proficiency with the Internet
Ability to summarize essential information succinctly

Curriculum Standards

Upon completion of this lesson, the student will be able to:

Identify the values, beliefs, symbols and stereotypes of 1950s American culture.
Synthesize information from multiple, visual sources.
Distinguish similarities and differences between multiple, visual sources.
Create an original work that exhibits the values, beliefs, symbols, and stereotypes of 1950s American culture.

Social Studies Standards Addressed:

11.8	Students analyze the economic boom and social transformation of post-World War II America.

11.8.7	Describe the effects on society and the economy of technological developments since 1945, including the computer revolution, changes in communication, advances in medicine, and improvements in agricultural technology.

11.8.8	Discuss forms of popular culture, with emphasis on their origins and geographic diffusion (e.g., jazz and other forms of popular music, professional sports, architectural and artistic styles).

English Standards Addressed:

Listening and Speaking

1.1	Recognize strategies used by the media to inform, persuade, entertain, and transmit culture (e.g., advertisements; perpetuation of stereotypes; use of visual representations, special effects, language).

1.5	Distinguish between and use various forms of classical and contemporary logical arguments, including: a. Inductive and deductive reasoning b. Syllogisms and analogies

1.6	Use logical, ethical, and emotional appeals that enhance a specific tone and purpose.

1.13	Analyze the four basic types of persuasive speech (i.e., propositions of fact, value, problem, or policy) and understand the similarities and differences in their patterns of organization and the use of persuasive language, reasoning, and proof.

1.14	Analyze the techniques used in media messages for a particular audience and evaluate their effectiveness (e.g., Orson Welles' radio broadcast "War of the Worlds").

For more information about the state standards for 11th grade Social Studies, visit the State Standards page.

In addition to the State Standards, this lesson also builds the following skills:

Critical Thinking
Students analyze ads to discover explicit and implicit messages.

Observation and Categorization
Once the students analyze the ads, they arrange the messages that they find according to category (i.e. logical fallacy, stereotype, symbol, etc.).

Comparison
Students meet in groups to analyze an ad, then meet in different groups to compare their analyses with the analyses of other students.

Teamwork
Students work in a research team and then in a production team.

Compromise
Students share their research to inform the production of their own ad. Group members must compromise to decide which messages to include.

Creative Production
Students are primarily evaluated by the insightfulness of the ad they create.

Process

You can divide the lesson up to cover multiple days. The following outline is presented as a suggested time frame for this lesson. Feel free to spend more or less time on each step as needed.

DAY 1

Before you divide the students into groups, ask them to individually review the following sites to learn about advertising strategies and logical fallacies. Suggest that they print out the information contained in these site for future reference. Discuss their findings as a class.

Site	Description

The Advertising Depot	A crash course on advertising techniques and strategies

Media Awareness Network	Strategies commonly used in commercials, but applicable to print

Marketing Survival Kit	The Psychology of Selling

Logical fallacies	A list of the most common fallacies used to persuade

DAY 2

Divide you class into groups of 3-4. Introduce the group work with a scenario; ask the students to image that they are part of an exclusive marketing research team. Before they can develop an effective advertisement, they must perform research to learn about their target audience. Instruct the groups to consult the following resources to familiarize themselves with the look, feel, and content of 1950s advertisements. Ultimately, you want them to select one ad to analyze as a group. You may limit their search to the following sites, or allow them to use a search agent, such as Google to find additional resources.

Site	Description

Ad*Access	Database of advertisements, arranged by category

AdFlip.com	Large archive of classic print ads

Bamboo Trading Company	Collection of ads available for purchase

Fabulous Fifties	A great collection of visual and historical information

Tell the students to print or you can distribute one copy of the Analyzing Ads Worksheet for each member of their group. Encourage each group to discuss the ad they selected. Require the group members to fill out the Analyzing Ads Worksheet based on their discussions.
Once everyone completely fills out their worksheets, reconvene the class and promote a discussion of their findings. You are acting as a project manager who is checking up on the status of their marketing research.

DAY 3

Next, divide your students into new, different groups of 3-4, so that everyone in the group analyzed a different ad. Alter the scenario slightly, explaining to the students that they are now in groups that make up a marketing production team. As part of a marketing production team, they will review each team-member's research and, together, document similarities on the Production Worksheet.
After the groups discuss their research and fill out the Production Worksheet, instruct them to pick a modern, technological product, such a cell phone, digital camera, DVD player, etc. to design an ad around.

DAY 4

Using the Production Worksheet as a resource, encourage the students to collaborate with the other members of their group to develop a creative, informative, and convincing ad for the product they selected. The ad must:
- address the values, beliefs, and interests implicit in 1950s advertisements
- educate the audience about the function and usefulness of a modern technology

DAY 5

Provide class time to allow the groups to finish working together to complete their advertisement.

Notes
The group work utilizes the Jigsaw Method. Students research together on a common topic and then take their research back to share with "home" groups. Each member of the home group comes from a different research group and, thus, has different information.

It is suggested that the teacher actively play the role of a project manager, who is overseeing the marketing research and production teams.

This lesson can be combined with 11th grade English. The content is applicable to teaching the students about postwar American culture and could be used to supplement a unit on postwar literature. Or the lesson could be used to teach students about logical fallacies, deduction, analogies, and symbols.

Variations
You could require each group to present their ad to the entire class. Continue using the scenario, explaining that each group must try to sell their idea to the client (you and the rest of the class). You could create an additional rubric beyond the one included in the Evaluation section of this lesson to distribute to students, so that they could evaluate their peers.

Resources Needed

The following resources are needed to complete this lesson:

Internet access
Student computers: Ideally, each student should have their own computer in order to conduct individual research on advertisement strategies and logical fallacies. However, if fewer computers are available, you can also have students work in groups to perform the initial background research (Day 1, Step 1). There must be a least enough computers for each group of 3-4 to have one computer.
Internet Explorer 5.x
Printer (if you choose to have students print out worksheets)
Art supplies, including scissors, glue, pencils, pens, markers, etc. for each group to create their ad
Teacher computer with projector (optional); students could use PowerPoint, Photoshop, etc. depending on their proficiency; not required

One teacher is sufficient to conduct this lesson. The teacher should be willing to play the role of a project manager, encouraging the students to consider themselves as part of a marketing team.

Evaluation

Evaluate the work of each group, using this rubric:

	Beginning 1	Developing 2	Accomplished 3	Exemplary 4
Quality of Analysis on Production Worksheet	Identified at least one explicit stereotype or symbol.	Correctly identified most explicit stereotypes and symbols.	Correctly identified explicit stereotypes and symbols; identified logical fallacies.	Correctly identified implicit and explicit values, stereotypes, symbols, and logical fallacies.
Use of Persuasive Techniques	At least one explicit appeal is made to an audience.	Several explicit appeals made to an audience.	Explicit stereotype, symbol, and logical fallacies evident and directed to target audience.	Explicit and implicit stereotypes, symbols, and logical fallacies evident and directed to target audience.
Presentation in 1950s Style	Design copies example of 1950s ad.	Design modifies existing elements of 1950s ad example.	Design creatively interprets 1950s ad style.	Design uniquely and creatively re-imagines 1950s ad style.
Educates about Function and Usefulness of Product	Product identified in ad.	Product identified and briefly described.	Product identified, described, and explained.	Product, identified, described, explained, and made relevant to audience.
Ad based on Production Worksheet (PW) Analysis	Ad exhibits at least one explicit stereotype or symbol identified in PW.	Ad includes multiple stereotypes and symbols identified in PW.	Ad includes stereotypes, symbols, and logical fallacies appropriate to the 1950s as identified on PW.	Ad includes implicit and explicit values, stereotypes, symbols, and logical fallacies appropriate to the 1950s as identified on PW.
Total Points:

This rubric evaluates the objectives addressed by this lesson. However, as stated in the Process section, you may choose to assess additional indicators. For example, you may choose to have students present their ads to the class in mock presentation to a client. Assess the quality of their ad using the rubric above, and create an additional rubric to assess their presentation.

Credits & References

Many thanks to Bernie Dodge and the students of EDTEC 570 in the fall of 2002, who provided support, encouragement and feedback during the creation of this WebQuest.

To learn how to create your own WebQuest, visit the The WebQuest Page. You will find training materials, links to other WebQuests, and Design Patterns for many subjects.

Other sources that helped shape this WebQuest include:

TappedIn
TappedIn provides a online forum for educators from all over the world to meet together and share ideas and resources. Visit the Calendar to see a list of regularly scheduled discussion groups, such as the JigsawHelper Discussion Group.

JigsawHelper
Visit this site to learn more about the Jigsaw method of assigning group work.

Visit the EDTEC 570 Fall 2002 WebQuest Page to see WebQuests created by fall 2002 Advanced Teaching with Technology students.

One final thought...

We all benefit by being generous with our work. Permission is hereby granted for other educators to copy this WebQuest, update or otherwise modify it, and post it elsewhere provided that the original author's name is retained along with a link back to the original URL of this WebQuest. On the line after the original author's name, you may add Modified by (your name) on (date). If you do modify it, please let me know and provide the new URL.

Last updated on 12/05/02. Based on a template from The WebQuest Page.