Topic 2: Media Literacy Topic 1 introduced you to a broad perspective of media education and how it is understood in curriculum documents. Topic 2 introduces you the notion of literacy/literacies as a way to conceptualise media education in the 21st century. We conceptualise literacy as ‘the social practice of making and communicating meaning’. Decoding and using the English language is only one kind of literacy. Today’s digitised and information-rich world involves other kinds of literacy, such as the capacity to decode the meaning and messages of visual texts that draw upon the codes of colour, shape and composition. This expanded notion of literacy ‘frames’ media teaching and its future. It refers to the capacity of individuals to decode, understand, analyse and produce a diversity of meaning-making symbolic systems (eg. visual, linguistic and aural codes, genres, discourses) that exist across a range of media and media technologies. This literacy extends to understanding how corporate interests shape the media - that is why the documentary, The Merchants of Cool, is included this week. On successful completion of this topic you should be able to: describe some of the developments impacting on the teaching of media in schools, define the term 'literacies' and explain its relationship to the study of media, and explain why the study of online texts and ICT should be included in the domain of media studies. Resources The Merchants of Cool website What is literacy? website Literacy Leaders Network on Facebook.
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Activities Focus Questions 1. Read the readings and view the audio-visual material to the left. 2. What has been your understanding of literacy? How is literacy increasingly understood? 3. What knowledge and capacities do you think makes a person literate in the 21st century? How does this compare to what you perceive would have been a literate person of the 19th century? 4. What do you think students need to learn about media? 5. Why might media analysis benefit the teaching of internet information/ICT today? 6. What key changes does Buckingham identify as having occurred to childhood over the past century? List some economic, textual and audience changes that are reinforcing these changes to childhood (and vice versa). 7. How has technology changed how people engage with the media? How might this be changing our notion of ‘audience’ and self? 8. Do you think education systems have kept pace with these changes? What could you (as a teacher) do to lessen the widening gap between children’s world outside of school and the emphases of education system? Activities for External Students 1. Complete the above reading focus questions.2. View The Merchants of Cool and complete the viewing sheet available to the left. This viewing sheet is an example of the kind of activities you could use with students to help them comprehend and analyse the text. 3. What implications for the teaching of media can be drawn from this documentary? 4. Consider how each of the Before Viewing, During Viewing and After Viewing activities is used to develop students’ media literacy. 5. Continue thinking about possible topics for a media program of work for a high school media class (for Assessment 2). Contribute to brainstorm below. Workshop Activities 1. Individual workshop presentation and discussion. 2. Overview of topic. 3. View The Merchants of Cool. 4. Complete viewing sheet. 5. Discussion: 6. Discuss any further ideas people had about possible topics for a media program of work for a high school media class (for Assessment 2). Contribute to brainstorm below. Bring a topic to next week’s workshop. 7. Bring laptops or Mac books next week. Media Program Topics: contribute to a brainstorm Readings Feedback Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world's leading questionnaire tool. |
