READING REFLECTIONS |
Week 8- Reading Reflections
Kellner, D., & Share, J. (2007). Critical media literacy, democracy, and the reconstruction of education. In D. Macedo & S.R. Steinberg (Eds.), Media literacy: A reader (pp. 3-23). New York: Peter Lang Publishing Keller and Share’s article titled “Critical media literacy, democracy, and the reconstruction of education” focuses on the emergence of new media literacy and how much of it is still centered and growing from previous standards. One of the key arguments of the article is how “alternative media production can help engage students to challenge media texts and narratives that appear natural and transparent” (4). This is important in the classroom context as the need to understand increasingly complex texts, of all varieties, are a challenged faced by many students. Often times, the lack of this comprehension skill impose difficulty upon the student once they are in Grade 10 and facing the Literacy Test. In having alternative media production, a greater chance of student comprehension presents itself and offers way to greater success rates. Another aspect touched upon is how students believe writing and learning the tools of better writing has become obsolete; however, in the article, the argument is presented that “for instance, Internet discussion groups, chat rooms, e-mail, text-messaging, blogs, wikis, and various Internet forums require writing skills in which a new emphasis on the importance of clarity and precision is emerging” (5). This helps to assert that writing skills are useful and needed to be taught – spellcheck alone does not help to deliver accuracy of meaning and intention. An email being sent to a professor requires a degree of formality- one which certainly does not exist in text messages. In having schools teach these subtleties of writing, while welcoming the help of new media literacy tools, students become reinforced with the necessary skills for all forms of writing. Another point of interest for me in the article was the argument made on the subject of critical media literacy. “Critical media literacy not only teaches students to learn from media, to resist media manipulation, and to use media materials in constructive ways, but it is also concerned with developing skills that will help create good citizens and that will make individuals more motivated and competent participants in social life”(16). I think that this really touches upon the belief that teachers need to teach with media and not just about it. In doing so, I think it is important to find ways of integrating media literacy into curriculum, and here I identify a possible three different ways of achieving this. It is important to exploit upon teachable moments – this means participating in students’ discussion as it usually focuses on popular media culture and their own interests such as television shows. This can be used as starter discussion points right away or for a later activity as minds on builder. As mentioned before, I think that it is not enough for students to analyze media, but rather they must create it or immerse in in to fully understand the complexity of it. While of course this is not the only way, it does help students to see how editing or storyboards play a role in the world. The third idea is that media literacy should not only be taken with a negative approach – students are plugged into the popular media culture and they enjoy it. In teaching kids the difference between critiquing and criticizing, students can address problems without foregoing their interest in it. Luke, A. et al. (2017) Digital ethics, political economy and the curriculum: This changes everything. In Handbook of Writing, Literacies and Education in Digital Culture. Routledge, New York. (In Press) In this article, Luke et al. explore the crossover between digital, ethics, and politics. This new overlap in curriculum certainly brings forth new issues that were probably never raised in the classroom. I can confidently say that learning about how “some regimes burn[t] books …” (8) was not ever introduced in elementary or high school. As well, learning about how other political regimes “ wr[o]te, print[ed] and mandate [texts]; [while] some governments censor the internet, [or how they] all use it and monitor it” (8) are vague concepts that are quite prevalent but hardly brought to light. Students hardly have discussions on how there are “disputes over hate speech, libel and what can and cannot be said in the media-based civic sphere… [but these] are now daily news” (8). Media literacy should expand past the intentions of advertisement giants and the appropriation of advertisements, and extend into the ethicality and political nature of it. One of the other points that was touched upon is how the “Brexit referendum and the U.S. presidential election are test cases for digital citizenship and communicative ethics: with interweaving questions about what might count as truth, how to ascertain the truth, what is real and what is imagined, about control, privacy and transparency of the information archive, an archive packed with trivia, state and corporate secrets, personal actions and images, official and unofficial communications, metadata on human behaviors, wants, needs and actions, communications of all orders – and this is proliferating at a breathtaking rate, even as it is being hacked and mined” (8). This also brings into question the notion of fake news, such as those of Hillary Clinton using a body double or that Pope Francis endorsed Donald Trump. The ever growing prevalence in the media is focused on fake news and it is constantly growing and being immersed in the popular media culture through various outlets. The “fake news,” in which fiction masquerades as non-fiction, continues to grow and seemingly tries to blur lines between news and commercialized lies. This thin line between fake news and reality must be addressed in classrooms to help students identify the differences as although “the deliberate making up of news stories to fool or entertain is nothing new… the arrival of social media has meant real and fictional stories are now presented in such a similar way that it can sometimes be difficult to tell the two apart” (BBC article) http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-37846860.
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