3-15-2012 Literacy Project Progress

A commercial comes on and it is for McDonalds.  You have probably seen it a million times.  Did you understand it?  Sure, if you are a speaker of English, you probably understood all the lyrics and all the speech in the commercial.  But what about the social or political statements made?  Did you read those?  Chances are you didn’t, but you still watched them and learned them.  Media Literacy helps us to be able to watch a McDonald’s commercial and have the skills to understand the who, when, and why behind it. 

We teach students how to read critically, but we don’t teach students how to watch critically.  Media literacy involves critically analyzing media messages, evaluating sources of information for bias and credibility, raising awareness about how media messages influence people’s beliefs, attitudes and behaviors and producing messages using different forms of media.

In looking at at the topic so far, one really interesting thing I have come across is a documentary called “Mickey Mouse Monopoly.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgxVvbai_nI (There are 5 parts.)

Something that many of us have fond memories that we associate with our childhood, is filled with some really disturbing messages.  But if we think about the “who” part, we understand that many of the films were created in the 50s when race relations were tenuous, and many of the people who created those movies were white males.  So of course it stands to reason that some of the content is geared negatively towards women or racial minority groups.   BUT that is the whole point behind becoming media literate – that we are able to watch, read, look at something and have the skill set to understand the creation of that image or text. 

In reading some articles on the topic, what I was surprised to find was just how little importance the US puts on medial literacy compared to other countries – especially considering we are one of the world’s largest consumers of visual imagery.  Robert Kubey says “Australia and Canada now require media education nationwide. Media education is increasingly well developed in England, Scotland and New Zealand. It is on the rise in Russia, China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, through nearly all of Western Europe and in an increasing number of countries in South America and Africa” and that in the US formal media literacy instruction “lags behind every other major English-speaking country in the world.” 

So far things are going really well with the topic part of it.  The technology part is a bit underdeveloped.  I know I am using www.schoology.com  but I haven’t signed up yet or explored it much past its home page.   I understand the basic interface, but will be working more with special features in the upcoming weekend. 

For the project, I plan to first discuss the main concepts of media literacy, then break down how to attack a piece of imagery to be able to understand it better.  Kubey talks about analyzing and evaluating meaning finding out who made it, why they made it, who is in the image, who isn’t in the image.  Coming up with a succinct or guided algorithm for how to “read” a piece of media, seems like it will be necessary.   After, students will be able to post an image or video they find on the web, onto www.schoology.comand post their response to it.  Then they can go to someone else’s post and reflect on their reflection challenging their classmate’s ideas. I think www.schoology.comcould be used in multiple different ways for a classroom, and this will just showcase how it can be used for one assignment. 

I am excited to continue with this and believe this will be very beneficial for my future students learning and my own.