19th April 2006

Critical media literacy

posted in blogs, digitalstorytelling, literacy |

Sam Keen has an excellent article in the April/May issue of Edutopia entitled “Escaping from Virtual Reality.” The article intro has clear references (although not by name) to Neil Postman’s book “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business,” which I think is an excellent book for anyone interested in media literacy. I love this paragraph from his article, which is the next to last one:

The mark of a free mind and a free society is the ability to be critical of institutions and resist the seductions of propaganda and advertisement. We need to teach our students that every citizen has a moral and civic obligation to deliberate, weigh evidence, and make informed judgments. So it is an essential task of educators to promote the skills of visual literacy that help us understand how we can be manipulated by images and seduced by media-generated virtual worlds. Newspapers and television could do a better job of presenting us with information and a variety of opinions, but they can never do our thinking for us.

Amen! I read this article as a call to critical literacy, not just visual literacy. Students as well as teachers should regularly consult multiple sources on a given topic, and not just settle for three hits on the first page of Google search returns. Sam does not mention blogging, but I think it is playing a big role that will only increase in helping with media literacy issues. When students are writing as well as reading the word and world, chances are high they are developing authentic literacy skills.

This also fits right in with the case for digital storytelling, including podcasting. When students are content creators, they can become more saavy content consumers. None of this literacy development is automatic, however. The role of the teacher as a facilitator of learning is of key importance. Teachers and students need to be learning alongside each other more than ever today, and the focus of their work must go beyond the knowledge/comprehension level of Bloom’s Taxonomy.

On this day..

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 19th, 2006 at 10:16 pm and is filed under blogs, digitalstorytelling, literacy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

There are currently 3 responses to “Critical media literacy”

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  1. 1 On April 20th, 2006, Clarence Fisher said:

    I am a huge believer in the value of content creation along with content consumption with kids. I believe the more that we teach kids to be critical producers of content, the more they will be critical consumers of content. This take some of the “wow” factor away, and helps kids see through the special effects of movies and the pretty colours on websites, hleping them to evaluate the actual content more carefully.

  2. 2 On April 20th, 2006, Frank Baker said:

    I think he is really talking about MEDIA LITERACY more than visual literacy. Check out my website for clarification.

  3. 3 On May 10th, 2006, Infomancy » Media/Visual Literacy said:

    [...] Since this discussion started, there have been some other blog posts dealing with media literacy, including Wesley Fryer’s “Critical Media Literacy” post at Moving at the Speed of Creativity. In that post, Wesley references an article from Edutopia, “Escaping from Virtual Reality” that itself references Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. How I love Postman’s writings… [...]