Task 3 - Consumer Culture

Early Learning Centre

We decided to look at the early learning centre. The opening page was diplayed with children dressed up as Indians on a lovely sunny day playing happily. Not very realistic with the current weather in England! The website displayed large adverts of new toys and adverts for a mixture of 'girls,' 'boys' and 'baby' toys. They also advertised a book amnesty which looked really good as you could receive 20% of at the Early learning Centre by donating your old books.

When exploring the website it was clear that there were 'girls' toys which were the barbie's and dolls and everything pink and purple, the 'boys' toys were often darker in colour and were of a more violent nature. We felt this because the girls were pictured with the pink toys and the boys were pictured with their toys. There weren't many pictures of girls and boys playing happily together.

The site was aimed at parents and it was encourging them to buy the latest toy by advertising that they had over 300 new toys. It also offered lots of help in finding the perfect toys. There was also a small sqaure advertising an on-line game for children so this would encoruage children to go onto the site.

The products were arranged into categories by either age, or areas of learning such as books, music, role play or sports. I found it interesting when browsing through the dolls house and role play area and it was mainly aimed at girls but also advertised an 'ethnic' dolls family, this obviously widens their audience.

The range of literacies went from reading pictures such as happy children playing with new toys and really enjoying themselves to writing. The written text was spread out over the page in different boxes to explain different information.

Coca-Cola

The second website we visited was the coca cola website. It began with a colourful animated video of a coca cola bottle spraying the colours to make the opening page for the website.The website was more difficult to navigate than I had expected. The website was aimed at children 10 years and above as the actvities ranged from entering a competition to downloading music.

The competition is the main feature of the website and it is entitled 'poetry in motion' which didn't seemed to be as academic and as thought provoking as it sounded. You could watch entries which seemed to be all by Americans of short movie clips such as the wind blowing a carrier bag around.

The main coke related features of the website consisted of being able to watch the TV commercials which We thought could be quite useful. You can also download the latest music from the adverts. The website was very visually impressive as everytime I clicked on something the whole page moved around. We could access lots of movie clips and music. We was surprised at the audience that this website was aimed at as there was very little to engage children if anything at all. They had articles on nutrition but that was lenghthy written text which wouldn't appeal to children.

In terms of gender it was possibly more associated with males as there were football links although these would appeal to any female who had an interest in football.

In conclusion, although the first website we viewed did not have any musical literacies or video clips it was more appropriate for children to look at than the coca cola website which had a lot more literacies.

Lazytown

We decided to look at the LazyTown website as this is a site which is very popular with children due to the television programmes, books, music and the DVD. On entering the site the page was aimed at both genders with the key characters being the most prominent aspect. As the site loaded there were sound clips, characters moving and was also extremely eye catching with bold colours. The links menu at the top of the page was easibly readable for 5yrs and up. However once a child has been shown what to click on then a child as young as 3 would be able to fully navigate the site. It is completely aimed at children but there are some adult sections explaining the purpose of LazyTown, which is to get children active and moving. There is one area advertising new products to buy (aimed at parents), but this isn't as eyecatching as the games or general information about Sportacus and other characters.

The most important element to the website is probably the videos which show the characters dancing and singing, this encourages the children to get up and join in, this links the site to the very popular television programmes which also makes children get involved. The reading that had to be done on the website was of a very simple nature as it was minimal in terms of the amount of text used, this varies depending on what section you are on. However children using this site would have to look at the pictures and images and decide for themselves what had to be done, for example how the games had to be played due to there being no instructions to read. There are some sections aimed at older children and parents as some of the reading requires a more in depth look at the site for example when looking at the character's biographies or the aims of LazyTown. We found personally the site was very interesting and very easy to learn about the programme quickly.

Jo, Marie and Lucy