Integrating Media Education into the Classroom
Introduction
Overview: The series of workshops that have been put together in this package are meant to motivate and assist teachers to more fully integrate media education into their classrooms. We want teachers to see the need for media education to be integrated on a continual basis in their classrooms and not seen as a lesson that is done here and there. In addition to the workshop recognizing that need, we want the workshop to assist them in integrating media education into their classrooms.
Organization: This workshop is broken down into four components. The first workshop component is meant to be done for teachers of all subjects. The next three are all meant for teachers of individual subjects which include English Language Arts, Social Studies and Information Technology. The workshops are designed to be a combination of the presenter discussing key points and discussion with the teachers.
Discussion questions are outlined by bullet points such as this
Notes on how to guide the discussion and dialogue resulting from these questions is written in Italics
Media
- Student created Mash Up: The Nerd over Time.
- Video: Advertising and the End of the World. Written and produced by Sut Jhally (1998). Summary: Advertising & the End of the World features an illustrated presentation by Sut Jhally of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the producer and writer of the award-winning Dreamworlds II. Focusing directly on the world of commercial images, he asks some basic questions about the cultural messages emanating from this market-based view of the world: Do our present arrangements deliver what they claim-- happiness and satisfaction? Can we think about our collective as well as our private interests? And, can we think long-term as well as short-term?
Workshop #1: The Need for Media Education in our Classrooms:
All Teachers
Overview and Objectives: The first workshop of the day in our series of workshops will include teachers from multiple disciplines, specifically English Language Arts, Social Studies and Information Technology courses. This first session is meant to introduce our workshop to the teachers and the inherent motivation behind the series of workshops today. This will involve defining media education to teachers, explaining why our youth today need better media education skills and the place media education should play in schools as defined by the prescribed leaning outcomes and cross curricular interests within the Integrated Resources Packages that help define the curriculum they teach. This will then serve as a good bridge to our next sessions which focus on designing media education activities for classrooms and integrating them across subject areas.
Activity #1: Dialogue on What is Media Education?
This is meant to be an introductory discussion on what is media education. Media education is a term that can bring about many different definitions, meanings and reactions so it is best to clearly define it. After all how can we expect teachers to teach something that they don’t have a firm definition of? The following are a series of discussion questions that can be used to guide the teachers into a dialogue of the core concepts of media education. It is important that all aspects of media education receive attention in the discussion to avoid the danger of having media education painted into a corner in terms of defining it as one thing.
First of all before we even begin to define media education how does everyone define what constitutes media?
This should act as question to get teachers to expand the concepts of media that effects youth beyond simply television. It is important the popular music and the many forms of media on the Internet are brought up. This is things such as discussion forums, Youtube, file sharing and blogging. Make sure that these concepts of media are included in the discussion.
Once again splitting the term media education into two parts, what do we mean by education in media education? Do we simply mean reading a book on it, memorizing procedures or does it mean gaining a type of greater understanding?
This area of discussion is meant to create a dialogue on the many methods available to teach media education. Specifically this discussion should gravitate towards a discussion of media education eventually being a greater understanding of the media we consume. It will be important for our later workshops that teachers don’t view media education as singular activities to be completed, graded and discarded.
Considering the discussion of the last two questions what do you feel is the scope and role of media education within our current education system right from K-12?
At this point the discussion should be having a focus on media education being more than just something done in a singular lesson and instead being something that is an ongoing continual process that penetrates all areas of education. This question is meant to generate more dialogue in this area and further reinforce the all encompassing nature of media education to teachers.
Activity #2 Assessing the Need for Media Education
Now that we have a bit clearer idea of what media education in the context of the teachers in our audience is the next goal is to exponentially increase their motivation to teach media education. To do this we need to create a pressing need in their eyes to teach media education and we will do this by demonstrating to them the effects thatover commercialized media bombardment has on our society and our youth.
Before we go fully into our presentation on this point can everyone tell me if they think the need for media education has gone up or down and why? As well can you tell me the types of media that the need for media education has increased?
This is once again meant to get the teachers thinking about the need for media education further reinforcing our goal of increasing their motivation. It will allow them to contrast their own views on the need for media education with the case we are going to present.
Video Screening
Next we will screen the first 15 minutes of the documentary Advertising and the End of the World. This documentary sums up well many of the problems created by the increasing bombardment of media on our society. The video provides some shock value well presenting well reasoned arguments at the same time.
Video Discussion
Can anyone tell me what year they think this video was made? The year was 1998, almost a decade ago. I can assure you that there has not been a reversal of fortunes since then.
This question is meant to generate brief discussion on the fast moving pace that media is enveloping our lives
How does everyone relate and react to the messages of this video, how does it make you feel? Do you feel these forces of media in your lives or do you disagree with this video?
This question is making the subject of overwhelming media bombardment relevant to the teachers themselves. This discussion should be guided towards creating a dialogue of how media effects these teachers own lives so that they can eventually better relate to their students relationship to media and the problems that they face.
Now taking what we just talked about regarding how media affect yourself how do you think it affects your students? Do you think they are better or worse prepared to deal with the effects of the media than yourselves?
This brings the dialogue full circle in that the teachers should now be better able to relate to their students relationship to they media consume, the problems they face and how they have to deal with it. This of course can never give the teachers an exact idea of how the students feel but it at least gives them a better idea and should help motivate the teachers to emphasize media education to help their students.
Now take a moment to think of where you see media in your world on a day to day basis, where do you see advertisements? Who would like to discuss their experiences? How do you think your exposure compares to your students?
This question is meant to get the group thinking of how overwhelming advertising is even in their lives. Simply most people don’t really realize how prevalent advertising and media are and this question is to help the teachers realize this. As well to have them start thinking of their students exposure.
Media Consumption Facts
To further reinforce the dialogue regarding the video next we will list several media consumption facts. This also serves to give some more recently updated facts after the video since it was from 1998.
- On average American children see 40,000 TV commercials a year
- By age 2 children can develop brand loyalty by recognizing corporate logos.
- The average American youth spends 900 hours a year in school and 1,023 hours in front of a TV.
- By age 18 an average American youth will have seen between 200,000 and 250,000 acts of violence on TV.
What does everyone think of these statistics, is this surprising or not? Based on these statistics how important is it that youth and children be given the tools to deal with this bombardment of media. Does this strengthen or support your current views or the opposite?
This question is meant to create dialogue on the reported statistics to further motivate teachers to promote media literacy education. The rationale is that we must convince the teachers that these skills are absolutely necessary for their students to have.
Who here believes that by delivering quality media education in our classrooms that we can help our students combat the influence of media? Who does not?
This question is to make sure that everyone in the workshop is on board and ready to move ahead with activities that focus around media education in the classroom. This is also a chance for anyone who has criticism or doubts to get this off their chest. After this discussion everyone should be on the relative same page and ready to move forward and tackle the challenge of creating effective media education in the classroom.
The Role of Media Education in the B.C. Curriculum
Media education is recognized as having a defined and significant role in our curriculum by our provincial learning outcomes. It is specified as a cross curricular learning outcome that is meant to be integrated across all subjects. Media education is not meant to be summed up and tackled neatly in a single class. This is also why we have educators from many different subjects here today. It is also not meant to be restricted to certain grade levels and is a relevant issue from grades K-12. Although we are focusing around the early high school curriculum for sake of example in the preceding workshops we implore you to think of media education as a subject that is meant for all grades and subject areas.
Why do you think that media education is mean to be integrated into all subjects and across all grades? What are the advantages and disadvantages of this?
This is meant to create discussion and dialogue surrounding the concept of integrating media education across grades and subjects. Some teachers may be resistant to this idea so this allows us to get those resistances out into the open and discuss them. At the same time it allows the supporters of this in the group to express their enthusiastic opinion.
What does everyone think is the most effective way to integrate media education fully and completely across subject areas in the same grade?
This question will begin a dialogue on the overall goal of the workshop which is to have teachers not only creating and modifying their own media education activities but to have them linked with media education activities in other subject areas. This allows everyone to get their respective thoughts out on this issue.
Is media education an activity that is meant to be taught to youth and children in school and left alone or is it something that we can continually be learning throughout life?
This is a question meant to have teachers relate media education back to themselves. The more they realize that it is something that effects them the more inclined and enthusiastic they will be to teach it in their classroom.
That concludes our first workshop today and we hope that everyone now has a better overview of the importance of integrating media education into our classrooms. We hope you take what we have talked about in this workshop and use it in your individual subject workshops that are coming up next.
Workshop #2: Implementing Media Education: English Language Arts
Objectives
- The primary purpose of this workshop is to empower English Language Arts teachers to implement more frequent and effective media education in their classrooms.
- This workshop aims to do this through demonstrating to teachers how they can take what they normally teach and turn it into a media education lesson while keeping the core learning outcome of the original lesson.
- The very end goal of a workshop like this is to have teacher subconsciously and automatically including media education into their day to day activities. It is only when media education is a constant force in the classroom that it will become truly effective. When it is a constant force it work to help shape the thought process of youth and how they see the world and the media that they are inundated with.
- The goal that we want the teachers to have in mind after coming out of these series of workshop is not just to work towards making their students media recognizers. This means things like stereotype spotting. We want to help instil in them a critical viewing of the media, we want to them to question what they see and ask why. Additionally, we just don’t want them to become sceptics and cynics but we want them to become investigators and researchers into the question that their critical viewing raises. It is only through the integration of media education into the classroom can this way of thinking and living be developed in youth earlier and more effectively.
- One critical concept that we need to make teachers realize is that media education is not restrained to a few select activities in the classroom that are done to meet curriculum requirements and create homework and grades. It is something that needs to be integrated into day to day class activities in an effort to instil this critical way of thinking in youth. This workshop believes it can be a part of this process by showing teachers how integrating media education into their current activities is not as complicated or daunting as it seems.
Overview: In this workshop we are first going to talk about what everyone is currently doing for media education and everyone’s opinions on what they are doing now, what they would like to do differently and what resources they would like to see. We are then going to talk about how everyone here can do some simple things to integrate more media education into your classrooms on a regular basis. We then want to see what everyone’s opinion is of this and any suggestions, comments and criticisms.
Media Education in our Curriculum
First off we would like to talk a bit about media education as it is in our curriculum currently. As I am sure everyone is aware media education is a prescribed part of the curriculum in the area of cross curricular learning outcomes. To start off we are just going to list a few of the primary concepts to refresh everyone’s minds.
- Media education is meant to deal with central media concepts as it relates to subject areas
- Media Education is meant to be integrated into multiple subject areas
- Media sources are prevalent in children’s lives and is therefore an easily accessible and relatable subject to youth
- Media Education revolves around the audience interpretation and influence. Meaning from media texts is created not just by the text itself but by the interaction between the text and the audience.
- Media Education develops student’s ability to think critically about issues that affect them.
These points are the most critical aspects of media education in our curriculum today. As teachers, it is our job to try our best to meet these objectives and make sure media education is being used and taught in the prescribed manner.
While these learning objectives may only take up half a page they are not simply and easily integrated into our classrooms no matter what the subject matter of our classroom is. At first glance it can seem downright intimidating integrating media education into your classrooms on top of what you are already trying to teach for a subject like English. What we are going to try and do here today is change the perception of including media education in your classrooms. We don’t want you to continue to think of media education as something that you have to add on or something that is extra and is an extra burden. Instead we want you to think of it as something that melded into the subject matter you already teach. So instead of you adding media education onto what you already teach you are combining it and fusing it with what you already teach. This way it does not seem like you have to teach double!