Media Literacy in the Curriculum
Media Literacy in the Curriculum by Courtney Wise -9/2006-
Most teachers acknowledge the influence television, the internet, pop culture and music has on students and their world view. Celebutants, reality TV, bigger-than-life sports stars and meg–rich pop stars are competing with classroom curriculum for students’ attention. Rather than fighting it, teachers can use that medium of information to help students learn.
Using real-life examples from current events, teachers can engage students in lively debates over topics they find relevant to their own lives.
Media Literacy includes a variety of multi-media learning tools such as digital cameras, iPods, video games, WebQuests, and graphic novels. As new technology develops it is added to the umbrella of media literacy curriculum. The underlying objective is to help students develop an ability to critically analyze the vast quantities of information they are getting from all sources.
For some teachers media literacy can be intimidating and unfamiliar territory. Much of the technology students are now using is foreign to them, and the idea of introducing non-traditional curriculum to the classroom can be daunting.
But there are some ‘old school’ means of approaching media literacy for teachers who are not multi-media, technology whizzes. Teachers can introduce science (environmental, technology and health issues); government (political issues); world studies (wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; ChinaÕs rising economy and major events at hot spots around the globe); and an unlimited array of academically relevant topics headlining news on TV, in magazines and online. Embracing media literacy helps motivate students to read more and take a greater interest in world events and ultimately helps develop lifelong learners.
There’s no limit on how to incorporate media into curriculum for the technologically savvy. From basic class websites and WebQuests to recording lectures on iPods and producing DVDs of class projects, with technology and know-how, media literacy has no bounds.
For less technical teachers, there are still many educational tools to teach media literacy and engage students to become more critical thinkers. Hands-on activities exist that can better prepare students to disseminate the information overload they face today.
Current Events Debates
There is no shortage of topics in the daily news for debates in the classroom. To start a debate program for those who have never formally debated, students can read or watch contrasting views on major news topics and learn to identify if or when the media sources or political spokespersons tend to lean to one political side of issues or the other. From there, teachers can introduce a topic of the week for students to research and practice debating.
For weekly debate topics that provide a brief overview of both sides of the issue, try the weekly NEWSmasters publication, FORUMmaster, which is now available free online at www.keypublications.com Recent topics have ranged from the heavily debated political issues of “Should Congress Pass a Guest Worker Law for Immigrants?” to topics that students feel a direct connection with like “Are Schools and Police Overreacting to MySpace Posts?”
Class Newspaper or News Broadcast
A fun hands-on way to get students interested in current events is to create a class newspaper or news broadcast. These can be as basic as a desktop published newspaper, by utilizing a template contained in most word processing software, and a video-taped or even a tape-recorded (think radio broadcast) news program.
The class newspaper can take the form of an online blog site at schools who have the technology available. A class news broadcast can be created as a podcast or a streaming web video.
Don’t be afraid to let your students teach you what they know if youÕre not up-to-speed on the latest broadcast or internet technology. Many students can create digital sound or video recordings on their computers and know how to set up a blog (web journal) and upload pictures.
By encouraging students to create a class newspaper or news broadcast, they’ll learn more about current events and tangible ways to connect the skills they have developed from communicating with friends online to an educational experience. As you guide them to report on news topics using increasingly advanced technology, ask them to think of other ways they could use the technology in school. For example, a history report could be much more fun if it were reported as a news report using archive pictures or films as the multi-media background. Likewise a paper for English class could become a multi-media presentation when students research the music, art or fashion of the era of a literary work and integrate it into their assignment to ‘set the scene’ for the class as they read.
Current Events Quiz Game
Teachers can help motivate students to read and watch the news, by making it into a competitive game. Teachers who use the FOCUS on the NEWS weekly current events quiz game (www.focusonthenews.com) find the competitive angle gets students interested in the news. Teacher Denise Duval, of Florence High School, has been using FOTN for years. Her classes are required to study current events every week. On Fridays they play FOTN in teams. She says, “The students LOVE IT! A correct answer scores a point. I’ve added a basketball hoop and a 2 & 3 point line so teams can add additional points; and man the competition is fierce.”
Robin Malmberg, an ABE/GED Instructor in Iowa, offers newspapers and the Weekly Reader Current Events publication with printouts from Internet news sites for students to use as resources. She then plays the quiz game either in a format modeled after Jeopardy or as a Tic-Tac-Toe game. Players select questions from the board to answer for points. The quiz format is especially helpful to students who need to practice their reading skills such as in ESL or other remedial reading settings. The current events subject matter is as relevant to adults as it is to teens.
These are just a few examples of the many ways to integrate Media Literacy into your school’s curriculum. For more information, visit Alliance for a Media Literate America at www.amlainfo.org.
Courtney Wise is the editor of FOCUS on the NEWS and NEWSmasters and has worked with curriculum development for over 10 years. She can be reached at cwise@keypublications.com
