What is Media Literacy?
When I was in the eighth grade, my Social Studies teacher assigned all of her classes a project where we students were supposed to find so many articles from physical newspapers, cut them out, write a summary of those articles, and post them in a physical scrapbook. The Internet was just coming to our area and not many people had service at home. My, how times have changed!!
Media literacy in 2009 is much different than it was in 1997, when I had to do that scrapbook, because we have more media surrounding us. Twelve years ago the only media that we were exposed to was television and newspapers. Now, we can add digital to that list. Even the way we view television has changed since the FCC has completely done away with analog broadcasts. That means that the only rabbit ears that my daughter will know will be the ones on real rabbits!
The classic definition of media is not new. Humanity has been creating media since the dawn of time with cave paintings. However, media today and how we create it is new. The students in our classrooms today will need to know how to read, analyze, and create the following in order to survive in our media-rich society:
- Newspaper articles - The physical newspaper (especially small town newspapers) will never truly die off. There are too many people who like to hold a newspaper in their hands while they read them.
- TV ads - We need to understand why certain advertisements and TV shows are geared towards certain demographics.
- Digital media - Some newspapers are posting their articles online with the ability for readers to make comments, and out students should know how to properly comment without making themselves sound uneducated. If students want to create something and post it to the Internet, this "something" should be useful to others; it should be created with a purpose in mind.
The best way to let our students learn about new media is through trial and error because if the student makes a mistake, he will learn from that mistake. It may take time for him to learn his lesson, but eventually he will get it. In a world where we value instant gratification, this "time" concept may not be good enough for some people, but in some cases it's the best teacher.
When I was in my sophomore year of high school (a full four years after the newspaper scrapbook!), my parents finally broke down and bought a computer with Internet access. DSL would not be available in our area until I was in college, so I was stuck with dial-up access for the remainder of high school, but it was better than nothing. My own personal media literacy began that day when my parents old Hewlitt-Packard arrived at their house.
The idea of research changed dramatically. I grew up learning how to do research with books (something today's students are almost clueless about). With that HP, I was able to write my research paper on Woodstock '69. I think I may have used one or two books sources. The majority of my sources were online (Wikipedia was in its infancy then so it was no help). I learned, through trial and error, which sites on my Works Cited page were valid.
I didn't own my own computer until I was in my junior year of college. With the help of a huge Christmas bonus from my grandfather, I bought my first car and my first laptop, a top-of-the-line Compac Presario. I wrote countless essays on that computer, did all of my research from it, and completed my Teacher Work Sample (from student teaching) from it. That Compac made college life easier for me. I cried the day the hard drive died.
The truth is that the advent of the Internet and personal computers has made life easier for everyone. That being said, I think that many teachers (especially those who began teaching 20 or 30 years ago) are in this mindset that the Internet has made students lazy. Well, guess what? We're going to have lazy students, no matter what, because we are human and not every student is going to go home and study like he's supposed to or stay completely focused in a 90-minute class like he's supposed to. If you want to engage your students, let them play with the toys that they think are fun. Work that iPod Touch into your curriculum somehow. I bet your students will thank you.
I've learned from my own observations over the years that what they say is true: "You only want what you can't have." If we tell our students that cell phones are banned in our schools, they will find a way to use them. Even the teachers will use them. I can't tell you how many times I've pulled out my phone in class to check the time (even though there was a clock in the room) or used the stopwatch feature when my students were giving speeches and presentations or used the calculator feature when we needed to find a quick sum. I even went as far as designating one of my students with an iPhone as the class Dictionary. It was easier for him to look up a definition on his iPhone than it was for me to pull out a dictionary or look it up online. I didn't care that he had his phone out as long as he was using it for some educational value, but I always warned him to be careful lest an administrator or Nazi-teacher found out he even had it.
Do we want our students to be successful in life beyond high school? Yes, absolutely. Then we need to foster their creativity and curiosity. Every time a new piece of technology comes out, we scramble to learn how it works, even if it isn't ours to play with. So in the words of Juliette LaMontagne, let's create "a culture of life-long learners who make no distinction between formal and informal learning environments, who learn whenever and wherever they are curious."
References
LaMontagne, J. (2009, August 12). Please turn on your cell phone. Retrieved from The Design Observer site: http://changeobserver.designobserver.com/entry.html?entry=10277
Media Literacy, Education & Choice - Extra Feature. (2008, August 4). Video posted to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzeVjAM-drg
No comments:
Post a Comment