Week 2 - Blog Posting #3 - Media Literacy

When it comes to 21scentury skills, media literacy is an area that needs to come to the forefront. According to Wikipedia Media Literacy is defined as: “the process of analyzing, evaluating and creating messages in a wide variety of media modes, genres and forms. It uses an inquiry-based instructional model that encourages people to ask questions about what they watch, see, and read.” Unfortunately, in my state of Michigan, as of this date we have not made it important at all.

In doing research into my state content standards I found nothing in the Language Arts section that comes close to what would be needed for media literacy. I even checked the technology standards and found nothing, considering they were from 2006. I did find plenty of literacy skills based on text, but no skills dealing with visual.

In the book: Media literacy in the information age: current perspectives, edited by Robert William Kubey, was written in 1997. He talks about how this subject is being handled across the globe. Canada has mandated the teaching of media literacy in every province. Quebec has made it a part of the curriculum from grade 1 through high school.

In my observations of my own children who are teenagers, they are bombarded with visual media on a daily basis. This is the world they live and operate in. I listen to them discuss a video and its quality. I’m not talking about how it looked as a picture, but how good the content was in the picture. When my son looks at an interactive electronic game (X-Box), he analyzes its quality and evaluates if it’s a game he likes. This is an automatic response to him when he talks with his friends.
He has set certain standards that he is looking for.

Even though this is part of their world they aren’t prepared to analyze and evaluate things like the informational media. On the Internet there is so much information our students need to learn how to wade through it all to find the truth. Much of it is presented in visual or video form.

In a YouTube video presentation by Dr. Wesch, a cultural anthropologist, he talks about the fact he has been teaching for only four years, and that every assumption about education and learning he understood was shattered within the first three years because of all the new media. He asked his students how many didn’t like school and over half their hands went up. He then asked how many do not like learning and know one raised their hands. He goes on to talk about media literacy and what it’s become in the last few years. You can find this on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4yApagnr0s.

For my classroom I always teach the students something I learned from my work with the historians at Mackinac State Historic Parks. You need to always find at least three sources to feel comfortable that it’s true. I’ve been using the book Web Literacy written by Alan November to help my students in growing in their media literacy.