Media Literacy Project

Media Literacy Project: Cover Page

Media Literacy Project: Truman Show

Top Ten Videos (cont.)

Frontline



Myth



Commercializing Kids



21st Century Learners

Top Ten Videos

Project Ideas - Creating



Project Ideas - Creating


Mach

Works Cited for Top Ten

Works Cited

ACME: Action Coalition for Media Education.

http://www.acmecoalition.org.

Alexie, Sherman. Interview. Rita Williams-Garcia. National Book

Foundation. 27 July 2011.

http://www.nationalbook.org/nba2007_ypl_alexie_interv.html.

Anzaldua, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, 3rd ed.

San Francisco, Aunt Lute Books, 1987.

Carr, Nicholas. The Shallows. New York: W.W. Norton and

Company, 2011.

Lundsford, Andrea. "Embracing Borderlands: Gloria Anzaldua

and Writing Studies."

Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Holt, Rinehart and

Winston, 1970.

Morrison, Toni. "The Site of Memory." Inventing the Truth.

Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987.

Morrison, Toni. "Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The

Afro-American Presence in American Literature. Course

Packet. Middlebury: Midd Publishing, 2005.

Top Ten: Media Literacy

1. MEDIA "literacy is a form of self-defense" (Alexie). If literacy itself is a way to survive, as Sherman Alexie says of his character, Arnold, then Media Literacy is an even more nuanced tool for students today. Students need to be aware of the way in which they approach media and the way in which media approach them in order to persevere and defend themselves on an individual level. Communities and cultures must also be aware of the effect of media on survival and destruction at a cultural level.

2. There is a complex relationship between construction of reality and media. In the "Editor's Note" in Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, Joan Pinkvoss writes, "one takes one's life into one's own hands and gives it the possibility of existence" (Anzaldua, Editor's Note). Andrea Lunsford says, "I learned most directly that all people have a chance to create and recreate themselves" (Lunsford). What Anzaldua, Pinkvoss, and Lunsford are optimistic about is that we each have the ability to create ourselves. Students need to be aware of media as a tool in that creation and discovery of self, but they also need to be aware of the media's efforts to construct reality for us, to construct our reality. ACME defines "medium" as "a form of communication...that constructs a 'reality' about the world" (ACME). Students must be media literate, they must be critical thinkers, and they must be equipped to question and analyze it in order to use media to construct their own self and reality rather than be constructed by it. This relates to the first of the "Seven Basic Principles of Media Education" as defined by ACME, that of "'Reality' Construction/Trade-offs" (ACME).

3. Technology and media are changing ideas of ownership and authorship. As Professor Williams discussed in Media Literacy: Remote Control or Self Control, changing technology and media are mandating that we redefine ownership and authorship.

4. In order to be aware and critical of the effects of media, we need the language to do so.

As the saying goes, "To name it is to know it." Language of persuasive techniques will allow students to develop awareness and think critically about media.

5. "Outsource memory, and culture withers" (Carr, 197). Students need to be aware of the effects of technology on themselves and the culture as a whole.

6. There are responsible and irresponsible uses of language, and everyone who uses that language becomes a custodian or care giver for it. Toni Morrison lists many uses of types of language that are irresponsible including, among other: language that censors or is censored, language that policies, language that creates or maintains hierarchy or control, language that does not encourage thought or even discourages tough, and language that hides reality (Course Packet, 268). Carr writes that McLuhan declared that "'electric media'...were breaking the tyranny of text" (Carr, 1). The language that those creating electric media use can break the 'tyranny of text" - tyranny created by irresponsible uses of language - or it can create an even great tyranny.

7. New technologies and media both allow for and require that we be active consumers and readers. Morrison an author who makes a point to include voices and stories that do not often get told, writes about the "consequence and function of official stories: to impose the will of a dominant culture" (Course Packet, xxviii). The "official story" is the "tyranny of text" and new technologies can be used to seek stories about divergent experiences, so that we do not rely on one official story. This creates tension; the reader or consumer must grapple with what to do with multiple versions of the same story. As readers and citizens, we must examine the stories told to us and seek alternatives to the easy, official story.

8. New technologies and media allow for more and more people to publish their stories and find an audience. Many more people have the opportunity to share their experiences and help create a rich collective about what it means to be the subject of their "own narrative, witnesses to and participants in their own experience.

9. More than skills or knowledge, we must intentionally teach and give time for practice of habits of thought. Carr says, "When we hand down our habits of thought to our children, through examples we set, the schooling we provide and the media we use, we hand down as well modifications in the structure of our brains" (Carr, 49).

10. Technology can be both liberating and enslaving. In the preface to Animal Farm, it says, "They [authors like Orwell] rested on the assumption that individuals were not match for the efficient new technology at the disposal of totalitarian politicians. They were ludicrously wrong. Why did they get it wrong? What was unpredictable was the liberating effect of technology. The Soviet Union could surround itself with walls but could not block out revolutionary radio and electronic waves, which stirred up the supposedly whipped human herd with an irresistible appetite for rock n roll, blue jeans, and other such subverters of totalitarian rule" (qtd. in Orwell, x-xii).

Project Ideas 7/18/11

Revise Truman Show unit to include more regarding product placement as part of a "immersive marketing" study.

Faculty identified "21st Century Skills" as a need for professional development. Develop a workshop (readings/discussion) for faculty facilitates the "unpacking" of the meaning of terms like media literacy, 21st Century Skills, critical thinking, etc.

Develop a series of journal writes (with an option to publish on a class blog?) that will encourage students to understand the role of media on their lives.