Media Literacy

I'm wondering if there's anyone out there that has ideas for teaching Media Literacy in the middle school grades.

In my role as Instructional Technology Specialist at a K-8 school, I teach a "computer class" to seventh grade. There really is no set curriculum for this "class" and I've been trying to mold the curriculum to meet the needs of the 21st century learner by incorporating creativity, collaboration and critical thinking skills. We've done projects using various tools such as PowerPoint, Excel, iMovie, Garageband. We also covered cyberbullying.

Some of my colleagues in my district who also teach a "computer class" cover Media Literacy. I am interested in tackling this as a unit with my seventh graders, but am finding soooooo much out there and having trouble narrowing down what I should cover and what the students will be interested in. I have drafted somewhat of a unit outline here and am looking for input/feedback/comments/ideas.

Thanks in advance!

Tags: medialiteracy

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Permalink Reply by Jay Noggle on February 19, 2010 at 12:20pm

Hi Jenny!

I took a quick look at your outline and everything looks fine.

One thing you might do is break things down into two catagories:

Content Creation (Video, Audio, Graphics, Text) and Distribution channels (TV, DVD, Internet) as the two are two different skillsets. You could help students identify which end they want to be in and then create two teams of one for each.
The creation team could create the content of choice and then the distribution team could make it public.

Once this is done, you could talk about real world companies that do what they did.

Hope that helps.

Jay

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Permalink Reply by Dr. Rita Oates on February 20, 2010 at 6:00am

Look at the NETS standards for students (NETS-S) for some ideas for the overall class too. You are probably meeting a number of these already, so why not work to include all of them? http://www.iste.org/content/navigationmenu/nets/for_students/nets_s...

It might be interesting to have someone from your local newspaper speak to the class. Newspapers have diversified from just newsprint. My local newspaper, the Miami Herald, has radio airtime on the public radio station from the school district, has TV partners in one local TV station, and also has video content and blogs and a lot of online presence. One is a database of restaurant reviews that can be searched by location, cuisine, etc. When they do a story, they think about what is in print, what is online (only), what is audio (radio) and what is video. It's a lot more involved than just writing a story.
I would ask them how they are using Twitter and other social media in newsgathering and dissemination too.

Newspapers also have ways that readers can contribute content, through uploading photos of events, blogs, responses of various kinds. They will say, "We are doing a story about unusual ways to spend Valentine's Day. Send in your ideas." and then write a story and profile some of the ideas submitted. You could have an assignment for students to come up with something to submit online to the local newspaper and see how many are published! This could be info about activities at the school, in their scout troops, church youth group, after-school art program, etc. Photos and text are both welcome! Then they become media producers and not just media consumers.

To the general public, they think "newspapers are dying," but what they do not see is the way that newspapers are moving their function to more than just newsprint format. Newspapers aren't making 22% profit as they did during the 1970s and 1980s, to be sure. But they are doing some interesting things and are evolving, while trying to maintain their function as "watchdog" or "fourth estate." In an era where CNN and AOL and other online outlets have the "headline" news, even streamed to your cell phone, the newspaper function of deeper explanation, background, etc. becomes more valuable. It's not "xyz happened" but "what is the impact of xyz happening."
I would also think it would be interesting to get some of the new devices such as the Kindle in the hands of your students to see what they offer. Have students contribute their ideas to what they think could be next or develop by the time they are 21 years old. After all, the guy who founded Amazon was once a middle school student too. (In fact, he encountered his first computer in a middle school in Miami, in a vocational ed class.)