Media Literacy in the Classroom

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89-LuFkQ3t8

Dear Readers, 

If you are a 90's kid, the above video will strongly resonates with you. I remember seeing this commercial and immediately asking my Mom if I could "Please, Please, Please have a miniature hippo." This commercial illustrates the importance of incorporating media literacy into the classroom. We live in an era surrounded by various media outlets that bombard us with messages through text, images, and sound (Considine, Horton & Moorman, 2009). Scharerr (2005) argues that students should learn to be skeptical of media messages and teachers should incorporate media literacy into their curriculum's in order to teach students to think more critically about media practices. 

It is important to recognize how the media effects young girls especially. As Bullen (2009) illustrates, the media affects young girls on a powerful level: “images of women as powerless, passive victims noted primarily for their bodies and sex rather than their minds and capabilities” (p., 149). The media perpetuates these gender stereotypes; as prospective teachers, we should work towards teaching our students to challenge these assumptions.

As a prospective teacher, one could show their future class an advertisement or a commercial for a specific large corporation. After showing the media message, the class could discus as a group, what ideologies the message is perpetuating. Teachers should encourage their students to deconstruct and challenge these assumptions. By making connections between social issues and how media perpetuates them, students will become more media literate and this will help change how young people are influenced by the media.

However, media can be used in the classroom in a positive way, as Rusul Alrubail's blog post on Edutopia illustrates. As a prospective English teacher, I plan to incorporate social media in the classroom to allow other platforms for students to express their abilities to write. As Rusul points out, blogging is becoming present in a lot of high school English curriculum's and its a great way to access creative writing skills. Moreover, Twitter is an excellent test of clarity and brevity. Lastly, Instagram combines visual components with written components. 

Rusul provides a list of how these outlets can strengthen student's ability to write: 

"Consistency: Teachers need to work out a plan with students to make writing on social media platforms a consistent practice in the classroom. Working with the students’ needs, skills and abilities would help the teacher and the student figure out a goal of how much writing needs to be done per week to improve on a specific set of writing skills.

Feedback: The power of peer feedback undeniably helps students to improve their writing. However, it also helps to foster a culture of writing accountability among peers. Peers now feel the need to write, comment and improve in order for them to share their work with their peers.

Confidence: Publishing work publicly is often a very nerve wracking and a scary experience for many students. Though with practice, encouragement, and positive feedback, students are able to gain confidence in themselves to be able to write and share more of their work in the digital world. This confidence doesn’t necessarily translate to stronger writing; however, the more confidence students have when it comes to writing, the more it’s an enjoyable task that they’re engaged with and actually look forward to doing.

Collaboration: When students are exposed to writing from their peers by way of feedback and collaboration, especially when it’s live collaboration (Google doc/Twitter), students are able to develop stronger ideas, find convincing evidence and be creative in composition generally.

In the same study above, 50% of teachers say today’s digital technologies make it EASIER for them to shape or improve student writing. There are so many reasons to incorporate the use of social media in the classroom, but one of the most important reasons is to help strengthen student writing." 

Hope this was educational! 

With every good wish, 

Miss Roberts 

Work Cited 

Bullen, B. R.  (2009). The Power and impact of gender-specific media literacy. Youth Media               Reporter. (6), 149-152.

Considnine, D., Horton, J., & G. Moorman. (2009). Teaching and reading the Millennial generation through media literacy. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy. 52(6), 471-481.

Scharrer, E. (2005). Sixth graders take on television: Media literacy and critical attitudes of television violence. The research was supported by a service learning grant from the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of University of Massachusetts Amherst. Communication Research Reports. 22(4), 325-333.