Tene Gray's List: New Media Literacy

• The League of Scientists is free and can be explored at www.theleagueofscientists.com. It allows students to compete against each other in a series of multi-player games, constructed around a standards-based science curriculum.  The curriculum was developed by ISTE and covers grade-appropriate life science, earth and space science, or physical science concepts.

• A fundamental question for everyone involved in education — administrators, teachers, parents, and students — in this time of rapid change is, "What do students really need to be learning today in order to be ready for an unpredictable future?" If Mr. Murphy's experience is a model for our children's future, then the best thing we can teach them is how to teach themselves. This requires that students become not only literate, but also able to use that literacy within their personal information environment in order to succeed now and in the future.

  • This should be included in my introduction! This question could set the tone of my argument as to why we students need to be new media literate.
• The challenge to us as educators lies in keeping up with an information environment that has changed dramatically in the past 10 years, a decade during which the very nature of information has changed in appearance, location, accessibility, application, and communication. Thus, it is crucial that when teaching literacy to our students, we emphasize skills that reflect the information environment of the present, not the past.

  • Introduction-supports argument of why students need to be new media literate
• Reading → Exposing Knowledge
• Most of the readers of this article were taught to read what was handed to them. Textbooks were given to us by our teachers, reference books by librarians, and magazines and newspapers by publishers. If we could read and understand the text handed to us by such recognized authorities, it meant we were literate.

  • paraphrase this in terms of what is needed to read in general-supports argument of new media literacy

• Today, our students typically begin their information experiences in front of a global electronic library of billions of pages of information (the Internet), where materials can be published by just about anyone, on just about anything, and for just about any reason. If our students have been taught only to read and understand this information, they could be in serious trouble, possibly even in danger. Accessing information in an increasingly digital and networked world requires a range of skills of which decoding text is only a small part. Basic skills for today's students include the following:

    
   
  1. Finding information: Locating relevant information not only from a local library or newsstand, but also from the Internet. Literacy includes the ability to identify needed information, use Web searching tools to find it, and employ research strategies that expose the best information.
    
  2. Decoding information: Beyond decoding text, literacy requires reading deeply for meaning in multimedia content.
    
  3. Evaluating information: It is critical that students learn to evaluate the information they encounter, and also identify its value in terms of their goals.
    
  4. Organizing information into personal digital libraries: A key strategy for handling the overwhelming amount of information available to us is the construction and cultivation of personal digital libraries. When we create and organize information that is relevant to our ongoing interests and goals, then we can handily find answers to our questions.

• Writing → Expressing Ideas Compellingly

    

  In a world bursting with information, we can use only the information that successfully competes for our attention. In the information age, content competes for our attention in much the same way as products on a store shelf were designed to in the industrial age. The information we select will be what looks the most appealing, seems to communicate itself most effectively and efficiently, and appears reliable and authoritative.

    

  Writing will continue to be a core skill for all students, because some information is simply communicated most effectively in text. However, other information might best be expressed using pictures, sound, animation, or video. Students must master a range of practical and technical skills involved in expressing ideas effectively and compellingly.

    
   
  1. Writing effectively: Students must learn not only the mechanics of writing, but how to use text to communicate knowledge and ideas more efficiently than ever.
    
  2. Communicating with multimedia: Students must also learn to match their message with the medium that best communicates it, and then use the appropriate tools to create and or modify it in order to attract the attention of an audience.

  • support argument of new media literacy-verbal/oral mode

• Ethics: Right and Wrong on the Information Highway

    

  As information becomes increasingly important to our economy and culture, it also becomes more powerful — able to accomplish enormous good and great harm. This is why it is essential that at the same time we teach our students these prevailing information skills, we also teach them the ethical use of that information.

     
   
  1. Information reliability: Students must learn to assess the accuracy of the information that they access and use, and it is equally important for them (and for all of us) to provide evidence of the accuracy and reliability of the information products they assemble. (See Tools for Exposing Knowledge)
    
  2. Information property: In the information age, we are all information property owners. Most of us will make our living by producing information products. It is important that students gain an appreciation of information as property that needs to be respected in the same way that we respect each other's material property.
    
  3. Information infrastructure: Today, we depend on the computers and networks through which our information flows to no less degree than we depend on our roads, rails, waterways, and airports. Planting a virus on a network is just as destructive as planting a bomb under a bridge. Students must realize the importance of our information infrastructure and how critical it is to our success in the future.

  • Supports Jenks argument of the Ethics challenge and what students need to be able to do with media

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• Prior to the 21st century, literate defined a person’s ability to read and write, separating the educated from the uneducated. With the advent of a new millennium and the rapidity with which technology has changed society, the concept of literacy has assumed new meanings. Experts in the field suggest that the current generation of teenagers—sometimes referred to as the E-Generation—possesses digital competencies to effectively navigate the multidimensional and fast-paced digital environment. For generations of adults who grew up in a world of books, traveling through cyberspace seems as treacherous and intimidating as speaking a new language. In fact, Prensky¹ recognized such non-IT-literate individuals as burdened with an accent—non-native speakers of a language, struggling to survive in a strange new world.
• Our research suggests that the lack of education related to literacy is problematic, and the situation is exacerbated in the field of education. A common scenario today is a classroom filled with digitally literate students being led by linear-thinking, technologically stymied instructors.
• We have found a common void in professional development for faculty—training needed to gain the requisite computer skills to integrate technology into the curriculum effectively. Too often success occurs in pockets within the institution, where individually motivated faculty embrace advances in technology, mastering—on their own time—the skills needed to merge the digital world with academia.
• Competency begins with understanding. Each medium represents a unique environment, presenting the view of our world from varying perspectives. Communications theorist Marshall McLuhan coined the idiom “the medium is the message,”⁸ which seems prophetic in the high-tech reality within which we live. The idea that the world we shape in turn shapes us is a constant. Newspapers, television, and computers—all human inventions—help formulate our beliefs, perspectives, and even competencies. And from each medium we create new realities. Cultural theorist JeanBaudrillard used the term “hyperreality” to describe the simulation of something that never really existed.⁹ An example is a magazine photo of a model, the picture having been touched up or computer-enhanced—the creation of a new reality. Hollywood’s ultimate depiction of hyperreality was The Matrix, a movie about a world that does not really exist or exists only in our minds.

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• The answers to these questions are intertwined: Media literacy is no longer separable from education. If we train students in basic skills such as reading and arithmetic, if we teach them about their native languages, and the history of their countries, if we do all these things so that they may be useful adults and productive citizens, then we must teach them about the media as well.
• If schools intend to prepare people to function with efficiency and pleasure in the 21st Century, they need to catch up to this larger spectrum. As well as addressing the value issues in a play or novel, schools need to address the value issues in newscasts and feature articles. As well as addressing the aesthetics in a poem or painting, schools need to address aesthetics in a sitcom or magazine ad.
• Newspapers are not the primary source of information for most people and have not been for over a decade. We get most of our information from radio and television, but if we are never taught how to take information from these media, how can we be expected to absorb it effectively, if at all?
• Media education has become a priority today because we have discovered the extent of the media's importance in people's lives.
• We need media literacy education because we know more about it. We know that there is a definitive connection between students' attitudes and their ability to learn-that a positive attitude facilitates learning, a negative one obstructs it. We know that students have different learning styles-some learning better from reading, some from hearing, some from seeing. We know that students are much more attentive to ideas they recognize as directly relevant to their lives, that their attention spans can increase 400 percent if they perceive a topic to be of personal relevance.
• But before we can teach media literacy to others, we need to understand its importance ourselves. Teachers don't develop proficiency in teaching reading, mathematics or oral expression in a year or two. They learn to convey each subject by studying it for years, teaching it, reflecting upon in and discussing it. Media literacy will be no different, except in one way: lack of instructional models.
• As a person, I need to understand the media because they help me learn. They contain the content of my culture. How many adults regularly consume poetry, drama, novels and fine art after leaving school? Unfortunately, relatively few. How many adults regularly consume movies, radio, television, newspapers and magazines after leaving school? Almost all.
• • Teach techniques to counter marketing programs that use young people's insecurities or low self-esteem to promote the use of tobacco, alcohol and other negative behaviors.
  • Explode stereotypes and misconceptions so they don't poison attitudes and interpersonal relations.
  • Facilitate positive attitudes toward learning and help provide an effective means of conveying ideas and information.
  • Help young people learn how to absorb and question media-conveyed news and information.
  • Show students how to use the media as a tool for life-long learning.

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• A new literacy is emerging — digital literacy. The digitally literate are media producers — they participate in today’s global conversation.”
• As Pinkard is quick to point out, digital literacy doesn’t replace the traditional values: “For example, just think of what it takes to create a video — skill in writing, story construction, and critical analysis.  The digitally literate know how a narrative flows, how it has a beginning, a middle, and an end.”
• “Traditional educators can’t teach digital literacy — they’re simply not prepared, and they can’t keep up with the technology,” says Pinkard. “So, our goal all along was to enable teachers to integrate new media into assignments without requiring them to be ‘digitally literate’ themselves
• After a student takes the media arts class from a practitioner, the teacher can fold these skills into a traditional curriculum. The students can represent their understanding of books in multiple ways. And they have the repertoire of skills to decide which media is the right choice for a given situation.”
• Pinkard collaborated with the Chicago Library to create YOUmedia, a learning space in which high school students make and produce digital artifacts, such as music, games, video, and virtual worlds — all grounded in the content of books

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• Properly used, technology will help students acquire the skills they need to survive in a complex, highly technological knowledge-based economy.

  • cite this source because it could support why new media literacy is important.
• Effective tech integration must happen across the curriculum in ways that research shows deepen and enhance the learning process. In particular, it must support four key components of learning: active engagement, participation in groups, frequent interaction and feedback, and connection to real-world experts. Effective technology integration is achieved when the use of technology is routine and transparent and when technology supports curricular goals.

  • I like this quote because it simplifies what it means to effectively integrate technology into the classroom-makes for good teacher language
• Many people believe that technology-enabled project learning is the ne plus ultra of classroom instruction. Learning through projects while equipped with technology tools allows students to be intellectually challenged while providing them with a realistic snapshot of what the modern office looks like. Through projects, students acquire and refine their analysis and problem-solving skills as they work individually and in teams to find, process, and synthesize information they've found online.

  • another reason why new media literacy needs to be incorporated/taught in schools
• New tech tools for visualizing and modeling, especially in the sciences, offer students ways to experiment and observe phenomenon and to view results in graphic ways that aid in understanding. And, as an added benefit, with technology tools and a project-learning approach, students are more likely to stay engaged and on task, reducing behavioral problems in the classroom.

  • 3rd reason for why we need to teach NML

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• A recent survey by CDW Corporation shows that teachers are more likely to use technology to ease the administrative requirements of K-12 education than to utilize it in instructional applications. More than 85 percent of respondents in CDW's Teachers Talk Tech survey say that while they are adequately trained on Internet, word processing, and email software, 27 percent have little or no training with integrating computers into lessons. Nonetheless, the survey indicates that more than 70 percent of teachers at all grade levels believe computers are an important driver of student learning.

  • This could be cited to support the importance of professional development and learning communities around tech integration with respect to instruction.
• "The typical kid's reaction is, 'I'm bored to tears,'" says Moersch. "'There's a total disconnect between my life and what's going on in the classroom.'"

  • quote from students regarding how their daily life is so disconnected from their classroom life.

• Institutionalized schooling traditionally performed the function of  disciplining and skilling people for regimented industrial workplaces, assisting  in the making of the melting pot of homogenous national citizenries, and  smoothing over inherited differences between lifeworlds. This is what Dewey  (1916/1966) called the assimilatory function of schooling, the function of  making homogeneity out of differences. Now, the function of classrooms and  learning is in some senses the reverse. Every classroom will inevitably  reconfigure the relationships of local and global difference that are now so  critical. To be relevant, learning processes need to recruit, rather than  attempt to ignore and erase, the different subjectivities - interests,  intentions, commitments, and purposes - students bring to learning. Curriculum  now needs to mesh with different subjectivities, and with their attendant  languages, discourses, and registers, and use these as a resource for  learning.  

  This is the necessary basis for a pedagogy that opens possibilities for  greater access. The danger of glib and tokenistic pluralism is that it sees  differences to be immutable and leaves them fragmentary.
• Transforming schools and schooled literacy is both a very broad and a  narrowly specific issue, a critical part of a larger social project. Yet there  is a limit to what schools alone can achieve. The broad question is, what will  count for success in the world of the imminent future, a world that can be  imagined and achieved? The narrower question is, how do we transform  incrementally the achievable and apt outcomes of schooling? How do we supplement  what schools already do? We cannot remake the world through schooling, but we  can instantiate a vision through pedagogy that creates in microcosm a  transformed set of relationships and possibilities for social futures, a vision  that is lived in schools. This might involve activities such as simulating work  relations of collaboration, commitment, and creative involvement; using the  school as a site for mass media access and learning; reclaiming the public space  of school citizenship for diverse communities and discourses; and creating  communities of learners that are diverse and respectful of the autonomy of  lifeworlds.

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  Posted with permission of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Related Articles: Challenge of Media Education (The Grunwald Document) Safeguarding our Youth: Media Literacy and Violence Prevention NCTE Commission Recommends Media Education Literacy for the 21st Century: An Overview & Orientation Guide to Media Literacy Education Five Key Questions That Can Change the World

  Carnegie Corporation Endorses Media Literacy Education for Young Adolescents
  
  

  In Great Transitions: Preparing Adolescents for a New Century, the 1996 concluding report of the Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development, the authors noted:

• "At the threshold of the twenty-first century, media are an ever more pervasive presence in the lives of young adolescents. As heavy users of television, radio, film and computers, adolescents are aggressively targeted as a profitable consumer market by advertiisers. Their lives are saturated with entertainment and advertising, their capacity to make sense of messages from this array of powerful sources of influence is essential to their development.

    

  ...Media literacy education provides the opportunity for young adolescents to be active, critical consumers of media's messages.

  • 4th reason to teach NML