Week Fourteen: Finished Digital Story

Double Entry Journal 13

Question 1: Should media education have an explicit political and ideological agenda?

           I believe that media education should have an explicit political and ideological agenda, because media education should incorporate the inner workings of the things that students see through a variety of multi-media sources. This way, students will be able to gather information and be able to aptly apply it to whatever decisions they may make on the subject. We want our students to be critical thinkers, and not people who follow the crowd. Popular culture would be an excellent tool to help attract students to the curriculum. It’s something they know, and it makes the subject material relevant to their daily lives.

Question 2: Based on your reading to date in this course, would you teach critical media literacy in the classroom?  Why or why not? 

            I don’t think I would teach all of the subject matter necessary to inform and create critical thinkers in the classroom; it would take a whole semester to cover everything. However, I would incorporate certain aspects in my class, such as what Hobbs’s stated in his article as “key concepts that are essential instructional points to be explored whenever media texts are used in the classroom (Hobbs, 1998):

1.      Media messages are constructed

2.      Media messages are produced within economic, social, political, historical, and aesthetic contexts

3.      The interpretative meaning-making processes involved in message reception consist of an interaction between the reader, the text, and the culture

4.      Media have unique “languages,” characteristics which typify various forms, genres, and symbol systems of communication

5.      Media representations play a role in people’s understanding of social reality”

These concepts are the essential to media literacy instruction within the classroom. We, as teachers, must be able to help students analyze multi-media sources they use and see every day. In order to “prepare students for the emerging information age, we must help them comprehend and communicate through both traditional and emerging technologies” (Semali, 2001).

There is media out there that tells students how to dress, behave, feel, and how much they should weigh. These negative influences that diminish students’ self-esteem need to be sifted out in a safe environment, such as a classroom. Teachers can educate students on media literacy by introducing them to the following questions that they should ask themselves when facing a media outlet (nb5619, 2010):

1.      Who created the message?

2.      What is the message?

3.      How was the message delivered?

4.      What is the impact of the message on me?

5.      What is the impact of the message on society?

“Critical literacy gives individuals power over their culture and thus enables people to create their own meanings and identities and to shape and transform the material and social conditions of their culture and society” (Kellner & Share, 2005).

Reference:

Hobbs, R. (1998). The seven great debates in the media literacy movement. Journal of Communication. 48 (1) p.16

Kellner, D., & Share, J. (2005). Toward critical media literacy: Core concepts, debates, organizations, and policy. Discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education, 26(3), 369-386. Retrieved from nb5619. (2010, October 25). Learn critical thinking through media literacy education [Web log message]. Retrieved from http://medialiteracycolloquium.wordpress.com/2010/10/25/learn-critical-thinking-through-media-literacy-education/

nb5619. (2010, October 25). Learn critical thinking through media literacy education [Web log message]. Retrieved from http://medialiteracycolloquium.wordpress.com/2010/10/25/learn-critical-thinking-through-media-literacy-education/

Semali, L. (2001, November). Defining new literacies in curricular practice. Reading Online, 5(4). Available: http://www.readingonline.org/newliteracies/lit_index.asp?HREF=semali1/index.html

Week Twelve: Digital Story