Jason Manning, ASU's director of student media, touched on several interesting topics in today's session about the direction of storytelling. One of which was media literacy.
"Teaching students media literacy is more important than ever," said Manning. Give them experience with varying types of digital media. Television, video and the Web are a part of the new generation of students more than ever.
I feel our students need more guidance in discerning the good from the bad, the real from the not real that can be so much of digital media. A great way to do that is to teach video production techniques. We should teach them about the angle of the camera and how it effects the viewer. We need to teach them the effect of a close up, mid shot and long shot and how it contributes to the story, not just how do publish the video to a Web site.
Manning said he felt all schools should require students to have a digital media class.
(photo - Jason Manning, ASU Student Media Director)
Denice Westover
Snowflake High School
Snowflake, Arizona
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Manning especially did a great job of emphasizing how media literacy is ever-evolving. Our ninth grade curriculum used to have a two week "digital media" unit - which I agree, is important, however teaching it separately from everything else we were doing throughout the year was unrealistic. Instead, we have focused on the better practice of incorporating media literacy into every activity - being critical of websites when using them for research, telling a story on multiple platforms to partner with essay-writing, considering bias when taking in news. This is also what Manning was saying - that journalism isn't just about reporting, writing and editing anymore - it's about knowing how use a variety of media-platforms to meet the evolving needs of readers.
ReplyDeleteAndrea Krueger
Centennial High School
Circle Pines, Minnesota
I struggle with making my students media literate. When our technology is archaic at school, and very few of them have computers at home, I tend to come up empty handed when I try to think of ways to teach it to them. I didn't realize that I was teaching techno-tards until I assigned the first essay of the year last fall.
ReplyDeleteI had kids who didn't even know what to do, once they turned on the computer. They sat there, blank stares, looking at me like, "well, what the heck do you want me to do?" I couldn't believe I had to walk them through the process of, "Ok, go to the start menu, click on programs..." It blew my mind. I couldn't believe it.
So when it comes to making them media literate... Where do I even start? Most of these kids don't even know how to get to google. So what do you do? Internet for dummies?
Jessica Young
Orange Glen High School
Escondido, Calif.
You don't need technology to teach media literacy. What you can do is teach "critical thinking" (and viewing) using the media young people are so enamored of (music, TV, film, etc.) Frank Baker, Media Literacy Clearinghouse, www.frankwbaker.com
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