Media Literacy Curriculum and Parents

Writing a rationale for media literacy curriculum in my school system presents an exciting challenge. For the administration to view media literacy curriculum as a responsibility of the entire K-12 faculty is a the primary goal. I am anxious to enhance the media literacy skills units we already have in the K-12 Language ARts / English / Communication curriculum. But, I worry about the responsibility of this "curriculum" falling on just one department. [I believe we have already shot ourselves in the foot - in some ways - by allowing the students to conclude that only English teachers care about certain skills. (And why wouldn't students think this?)

While I believe it's true that some parents are overwhelmed by the vast amount of media that floods into the lives of their children 24/7, I also believe that many parents - particularly in a small school system such as the one I teach in - would welcome some help from the schools when it comes to understanding how to monitor what their children receive, teach their children how to evaluate what they receive, discuss the biases, navigate the internet safely, and so on. How does a school system - even a small one - begin to tackle such a vast task?

I can hear the skeptics shouting, "Are you kidding?" Schools cannot begin to tackle - nor should they tackle - a task like this. But, as I was trying to compose my rationale statement, (mentioned in line one of this entry,) I begin to think that trying to get all academic departments to buy into their responsibility to teach media literacy curriculum might be more difficult than finding parents who want to be helped (and to help educators) teach media literacy skills.

Every time a student goes in search of information for any kind of an assignment, he/she could easily (likely) find... a) information that is not accurate, b) information that is not current, c) information that is slanted, d) information that is tied to advertising, e) information that contains omissions, f) information that contains links that lead ...anywhere.

I wonder if workshopping with parents on the subject of media literacy skills has more green ligth potential than red?

Minnesota Videos

I'm here. I'm on. My first reaction to the Minnesota Videos was to appreciate the editing of the State Fair "foods" video clip. I want to use that technique with my 12(H) students when they do their 20th Century British Lit. author interviews. I liked the technique of taping multiple q/a
segments, and then chopping them into sequential parts - one person at a time. Ex. Ask each author about history, then circle back to the clips where each author is asked about themes.
I'm excited to try this. AM

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.