What is Media Literacy

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What is Media Literacy?

• Professor Kennedy

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What is Media?

• Today's information and entertainment
  technologies communicate to us through a powerful
  combination of words, images and sounds.
• Todays student obtain their information from
  T.V., Internet, Videos, Movies, CD-ROMs,
  Magazines, Newspapers, etc.

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What is Media Literacy?

• Media literacy -- the ability to apply critical
  thinking and viewing skills to what we see, hear
  and read -- is key to being fully literate in the
  Information Age.
• Media literacy also includes the ability to
  ACCESS, ANALYZE, EVALUATE and COMMUNICATE
  information in a variety of forms including print
  and non-print messages.

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Why is Media Literacy important to students?

• Media literacy represents a necessary, inevitable
  and realistic response to the complex,
  ever-changing electronic environment and
  communication cornucopia that surrounds us.
• The media age requires critical thinking skills
  which empower students as they make decisions,
  whether in the classroom, the living room, the
  workplace, the board room or the voting booth.

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Example 1

• Magazines, T.V., the Internet show images and
  stories of popular women such as pop singer
  Brittany Spears.
• Girls learn from media that to be admired and
  successful, women must be beautiful, thin, and
  well-dressed.

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Example 2

• Students searching the Internet for information
  on Martin Luther King Jr. come across multiple
  websites with information about this famous
  leader.
• One website is sponsored by the Biography
  Channel, another website is sponsored by the Klu
  Klux Klan.

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How can we teach our students to become Media
Literate?

• Understand the impact of Media on your students.
• Incorporate some Media Literacy lessons into your
  curriculum.

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Your Task Today..

• Select and Evaluate an appropriate Media Literacy
  lesson that you could incorporate into your
  future classroom.
• Summarize the lesson and share it with your
  fellow teachers.