dje 9 additional questions

According to the author, what is the main reason school have ignored engaging student with critical media literacy.  

“Teacher Talk” uses words like 21^st century skills, global students, and authentic learning as regards to life skills but in reality it is just talk in many insistences.  The education system  still uses  a school model bases on a system that can be traced to the industrialization era.  In this system schools are run like factories where the students(workers) are transported from classroom to classroom (workstation) and the teachers(management) gives them the information needed to perform the job or complete the assignment.  The author contends that this system does not meet the needs of lower socioeconomic, urban minority student in preparing them for the life outside of school.  Schools have been reluctant to go from factory-like models to a learning center.  He also states that school administrators often purchase technology but do not give the teachers the skills to use it effectivelty and schools have been reluctant to join community based programs to supplement the school’s programs.

2. Define critical media literacy.

The ability to analyze, evaluate and produce print, aural and visual forms of communication. 

3. How can film making or digital story telling support the goals of critical media literacy?

The student not only learns to evaluate and analyze the media they view or hear but gives the a role in the process of producing media.  It gives the student a voice and let them learn how to get their message across through their film or digital story.  The learn how the lighting, tone, movement,  words, music all affect the message they want the viewer to get from their project.  This gives them real experience in the process so they can understand.

4. Why does teaching media literacy become more complicated as student become consumers of news?

Students are exposed to media in both in and out of school.   When they are exposed to more and more messages they form their own ways to deal with the messages and then when media literacy is introduced in the classroom old habits have to be broken and new ideas introduced.

5. What is the difference between learning through the media and learning about the media?

Learning through media is accepting the facts being presented or the view point the producer of the media wants you to get but learning about media lets the student know how to evaluate and analyze the message being presented and can make a personal choice to accept or reject the message. 

Resource

Goodman, S. (2003). Teaching youth media: A critical guide to literacy, video production & social change. NY: Teachers College Press.