If you could teach a course on media literacy... what would it include?

I am in the process of planning a media literacy course. In this post, I am sharing what I have developed so far. What follows is a broad brushstrokes outline a one-marking period in duration (approximately 8 weeks) course. I envision this course becoming a required experience for all incoming 9th graders. Or, at least, a prerequisite for enrolling to work at a student help desk. Please leave comments about how this course can be improved or expanded. Thanks!

UNITS of STUDY:

UNIT 1: SHOULD I SHARE THIS?

Our innate need to receive and share information seems to go hand-in-hand historically with censorship. From Martin Luther’s revolution made possible by the printing press to digital media distributed via the small computers we euphemistically call phones, the power of creating, curating, and distributing information is immense. Napoleon once said, “Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.” As librarians, each year we promote banned books and websites in order to increase our students' understanding that their access to information is a privilege -- while it should be a right -- that they need to safeguard. Furthermore, when choosing to exercise that right, we tacitly accept responsibility for participating in a manner that advances civil discourse. The challenge of teaching cyber citizen students to be good digital citizens is helping them create space, a moment of reflection, between stimulus and response. Teaching them to be mindful. You might remember the days of walking down the hallway at school and shoving a note through the vents in a friend's locker. Some people shoved unkind notes through locker vents. But, more often than not, the time it took to walk the halls of the school and find the target locker created that space between the stimulus that prompted the writing of an unkind message and the response of slipping it through the vents of the recipient's locker. That hallway walk created the space necessary for better angels to prevail in many cases. What makes today different is the immediacy with which a response to a stimulus can be created and disseminated. A challenge of digital citizenship education is to prompt students to be mindful, to breathe before posting, to reflect on their response before sending their response, to consider whether that response is something they want to be permanently etched into their digital profile.We need to help our students to approach every digital interaction with the same caution that they might employ when they hear the buzz of a tattoo needle. Building empathy is the key to helping students hit the pause button rather than acting (or posting) on impulse.To that end, Unit 1 addresses these questions:

• What is my online persona and how can I be sure it represents me accurately?
• What is news and how do I know when something is true?
• What is my role curating information? (consumer, producer, disseminator)

UNIT 2: HOW CAN SOMETHING BE BOTH BIASED AND MEANINGFUL?

What is true evolves as a news story unfolds. Journalistic truth provides information consumers with the best available account of an event based on the available, verifiable facts at any given time. Even when publishing objective news stories, journalists exercise editorial judgment balancing what their audience wants to know with what they need to know. The target audience for any publication of information is a critical element in determining the manner in which the content is portrayed and disseminated. Professional journalists are trained to remain neutral when reporting; their bylines assure information consumers of their accountability for impartiality or bias. News consumers must remember that opinions included in reporting don’t always indicate bias and that commentary is a part of reporting. One important gauge of the quality of an information source or news outlet is whether or not that publication or agency separates objective reporting from editorial content. News consumers need to know that the content of the editorial pages does not influence the objective reporting of the news.

• The many faces of me: when can I have an opinion and when must I refrain from bias? Which platform is for which purpose (or which face of me)?
• When I encounter new information, how do I know when the author’s bias interferes with the meaning and substance?
• How can I hold my own biases loosely so they do not interfere with what I can learn and understand?

Resources:

NYTimes newsroom policy for social media

Society for Professional Journalists Ethics Code

American Press Institute: Understanding bias and tools to manage bias

Interesting dialogue about the future of news reporting and the relationship between reporters and their stories

Switched front pages - how we are framed to see and understand media

UNIT 3: WHY CAN'T IS SEPARATE THE MEDIUM FROM THE MESSAGE?

We all have our preferred modes of communication. Frequently those preferences may vary generationally. Creators of content understand those variations. Ads play on television on certain networks at certain times of day to reach the demographic audience most likely to be watching at that time. The same principles are true of other modes of information transmission. The products and ideas sold to a 19-year-old within the video game he is playing (yes, advertisers can and do infiltrate your games) aren’t the same or aren’t portrayed in the same way as the products sold to his 50-year-old mother in her Facebook feed. The same principles apply to fake news or intentional misinformation and hoaxes. The creators of this type of information rely on digital manipulation of images and video and digital transmission to reach wide audiences through viral re-sharing. Message, audience, and medium are inextricably linked.

• How do advertisers use different media to sell the same product or message?
• How has the evolution of media changed the way in which information is created, distributed, accessed and used?
• When deciding how to share what I have learned, how will I consider my audience? Message? Purpose? And create a product that meets all of these needs?

Resources:

Educator’s Guide: Types of Online Fakes (Verification Handbook)

7 vital browser plugins for newsgathering and verification (First Draft News)

Fake News. It's Complicated. (First Draft News)

13 online tools that help to verify the authenticity of a photo (StopFake.org)

Breaking News Consumer's Handbook (WNYC)

Snopes

TruthOrFiction

Urban Legends (About.com)

Hoax-Slayer

We Tracked Down A Fake-News Creator In The Suburbs. Here's What We Learned (NPR)

What is fake news? How to spot it and what you can do to stop it (The Guardian)

For the ‘new yellow journalists,’ opportunity comes in clicks and bucks (The Washington Post)

7 ways to spot and debunk fake news (Newsday)

How fake news sites frequently trick big-time journalists (Columbia Journalism Review)

Fake Or Real? How To Self-Check The News And Get The Facts (NPR)

Grasswire examines social media images in real time to expose hoaxes

https://www.grasswire.com/

https://twitter.com/grasswire

UNIT 4: PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING: HOW CAN I USE DIGITAL MEDIA FOR GOOD?

Digital media has transformed our relationship with information and therefore with the global community. We are instantly aware of events happening around the world, we can hear the sounds of war and terror as well as those of harmony and jubilation. We are moved to act by the video footage we see of natural and human-caused disasters. And we join movements for change because we see them playing out on our devices in our hands. Professional conferences even have hashtags for the people not in attendance to follow! (#notataasl7) As we equip our students with the tools and skills requisite to recognize and not be duped by hoaxes and misinformation we must go further and empower them to be digital leaders. The most effective way to combat purposeful, ill intentioned misinformation is by elevating and magnifying the voices engaged in informed civil discourse. Students must learn to use social media not just for interacting with friends far and wide. They must also learn to engage and organize through digital media, researchers, advocates, fund-raisers, politicians, non-profit organizations, and other problem solvers in order address the needs of their communities.

• What issue, problem, or cause do I care about? Why?
• How can I take informed action?
• How can I contribute to a solution or remedy?
• Design cycle
• Presentation of plan
• Whom am I trying to reach (who is my audience)?
• How do those people most frequently access information? Why?
• What is the best media for conveying my evidence and conclusions? Consider:
• Do I need photographs or other artist renderings?
• Do I need data visualization?
• Are voices, music, or other auditory files important to understanding my message?
• Is there a need for video footage?
• How much text do I have? Does it require hyperlinks or interactivity?
• How will my product reach my audience?
• Will it live on a website?
• Post to a video sharing forum like YouTube?
• Be delivered via email?
• Exist in printed form?
• Be performed or delivered to a live audience?
• Something else?
• How will the talents of my team combine to create a successful product or presentation?

Resources:

By Any Media Necessary: The New Youth Activism by Henry Jenkins and Sangita Shresthova

Social LEADia: Moving Students from Digital Citizenship to Digital Leadership by Jennifer Casa Todd

Your CyberSelf: Teaching Digital Citizenship

Lately I have been asked a lot about teaching digital citizenship: how to do it and how to know the students are exhibiting it. My answer is usually that teaching digital citizenship -- a focus of my role as a library media specialist -- is very much like teaching citizenship -- the focus of my previous role as a social studies, in particular American Government, teacher. In my prior role I could teach students the ins and outs of the democratic process, the importance of having a voice in the decision making process, and the history of people fighting for suffrage... but I couldn't make them vote. And now, I can teach my students the importance of being a good citizen in the digital world, but how can I make them be one?

A former colleague and now the head of school at one of my previous schools devoted her doctoral work to studying mindfulness and how increased mindfulness by a learning community improves the school climate and enhances student learning and achievement. @JbhsPin often quotes Viktor E. Frankl's statement: "Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response." Digital citizenship hinges on creating or expanding that space.

If you are my age you remember the days of walking down the hallway at school and shoving a note through the vents in a friend's locker. Some people shoved unkind notes through locker vents. But, more often than not, I believe, the time it took to walk the halls of the school and find the target locker created that space between the stimulus that prompted the writing of an unkind message and the response of slipping it through the vents of the recipient's locker. I think, if Frankl is to be believed, that hallway walk created the space necessary for better angels to prevail in many cases. What makes today different is the immediacy with which a response to a stimulus can be created and disseminated. A challenge of digital citizenship education is to prompt students to be mindful, to breathe before posting, to reflect on their response before sending their response, to consider whether that response is something they want to be permanently etched into their digital profile.

It was with mindfulness as our guide that we created the first in our three-lesson digital citizenship series. We began with "Permanence." And we will teach it through the metaphor of a tattoo. Students are going to be asked to design a tattoo for themselves, something that, if they could, they would go out this afternoon and get inked. They might start by looking at the work of a famous tattoo artist like Bang Bang. They don't have to share their design; this tattoo could be anywhere on their body so it doesn't have to be something the world will see. Next, they will be asked to design a new tattoo, one that will be visible every day. And they will be asked to compare the two designs and reflect on their similarities and differences. We will culminate with a discussion of tattoo removal... what happens if ten years from now you don't want that tattoo anymore? What can you do? Of course, it is possible to remove a tattoo, but that process is painful and leaves scars. Thus, the metaphor for the students' digital presence comes full circle: always post assuming the world will see what you say; know that you may take down a post that is hurtful, but the damage can not be undone; think before you post of the ramifications of what you say; and when you post, do so with the intention of productively contributing to a dialogue.

Now, if time allowed, I would love to make a video of my new colleagues who have tattoos talking about what they have, when they got inked, why they chose their design, and whether they ever have regretted it. Personally I have four tattoos. My daughter calls them watermarks. I got each at a significant time in my life and each marks a milestone in my life and growth. I think I can say the same about my digital tattoos. Maybe it is because I remember the days of dropping notes instead of sending snapchats. I consciously remove my hands from a device when I begin to feel heated about something. The challenge of teaching cyber citizen students to be good digital citizens is creating that space, that moment of reflection. We need to teach them to approach every digital interaction with the same caution that they might employ when they hear the buzz of the tattoo needle.

More on our other lessons, Privacy and Productivity, in future posts.

Tomorrow starts a new year!

I have moved to a new district and tomorrow is the start of the new school year. I have worked quite a bit this summer in preparation for our ready access learning initiative. The elementary and middle schools are rolling out a 1:1 Chromebook program and the high school is going BYOD. Much of our work this summer has focused on creating digital citizenship bootcamps for all of the students, designing a new web presence for the school district, curating and piloting a digital tool set applicable at each of the grade levels, as well as planning professional development for the faculty.

And throughout this process, I have been thinking in infographics. Here are a couple I have made for my new role in my new school.

This is to introduce our learning commons to the community:

Embedded in this infographic are two more I have made. One is about our research model; the other will hang in our innovation space. It is about the design cycle.

I have ordered a poster version of the first infographic. If it comes out well, we are thinking of ordering one for each classroom... a little reminder to teachers and students of all the ways the learning commons can enhance their inquiry!

Happy new year, everyone!

Big Takeaways on Personalizing Instruction through Use of Technology

As the year comes to an end, I am reflecting on how I worked to personalize instruction through the use of

Photo taken while visiting colleges
with my daughter

technology as an instructional tool.

Technology for Demonstration of Mastery:

In working with an English teacher on her op-ed unit for her sophomore classes we discussed and planned ways for students to select topics that are meaningful and interesting to them. This unit is key for enabling each student to focus on a personal topic of interest or concern. Furthermore, we planned for digital writing, informed by Troy Hicks' book, Crafting Digital Writing, so that students would be creating for an audience beyond the teacher and include multimedia extensions of the their writing to expand the discussion of the issue they selected.

Technology and Media Information Influences:

With another member of the English department, we planned a unit that focused on student exposure to media and advertising through various outlets -- print and digital. We guided the students to choose an aspect of their lives and American society and examine the influence that media has on it. This unit enabled students to practice their research skills and apply them to an aspect of their own lives particularly influenced by technology and digital media. Together we watched and discussed advertisements for the products of companies like Apple and analyzed how those ads changed over decades in response to current events, societal concerns, and target audiences.

Technology Tools for Feedback and Formative Assessment:

For all classes, whether they were working on the junior research paper or other research-based projects, we streamlined the feedback loop for the steps of the research process. When students were brainstorming topic ideas, they submitted these ideas and the reason why those topics were interesting to a Google Form. This allowed me to review their ideas, use the Google Sheet that held the Form responses to provide feedback, and pose questions to help the students refine their topic selection when I visited class. The classroom teachers also began adding their feedback to the Google Sheet when they realized the utility of the sheet for tracking feedback and the students' revised thinking. The next step was for the students to add a draft of their research questions to the Sheet so I could provide feedback on their question development. Entries into the sheet were followed by a class session where I co-taught with the classroom teacher. Working one-on-one with students in class helped to ensure that students were choosing fruitful and manageable topics. As the research projects evolved, I joined the classes for multiple days dedicated to source location and provided instruction on citations and works cited. We developed a research journal as a Google Doc to help students organize their sources, notes, questions, citations, and thinking about their topic. These journals were excellent formative assessment opportunities for the classroom teacher and I to give students feedback on the depth of their questions and sources, gaps in their thinking or understanding, and next steps in the process.

Tech Tools for Conveying Information:

Second semester we built a rich MLA 8 citation website. After our first semester frustrations with Noodle Tools and EasyBib, we agreed that students would be better served by learning to build their citations from scratch. Doing so pushes them to thoroughly examine the scope and quality of their sources of information and become savvier consumers of information. Teachers in the Social Studies and English departments value accurate citation protocols and several of them supported our initiative by granting us class time to work one-on-one with students and recognized the value of the students' increased access to educator (librarian and content teacher) support and feedback in class. 

The Google Site includes a slideshow that steps students through the citation building process, an infographic illustrating the nine elements of an MLA 8 citation, a video showing how to create a hanging indent, copious models of works cited pages and citations, and a form for receiving librarian feedback on works cited and warnings about most common student errors. This site continues to be a work in progress as we refine the resources and streamline individualized student feedback.

Our Google Form for submitting final works cited for feedback before submitting the product of their research to their classroom teacher gave us insight into the most common errors that students were making so we could supplement the resources in the MLA 8 Citation Google Site that we created during second semester. The data we collected showed a dramatic difference in the quality of works cited being submitted by students who had received library instruction as opposed to those who worked only with their classroom teacher. The average score out of 5 for students receiving library instruction was a 3.34; those who did not receive this instruction scored an average of 2.33.

The Value of the (Virtual) Library:
My use of forms to collect individualized information from students on their stages in the research process and provide feedback combined with one-on-one in-class instruction and the library texting service were key elements differentiating library instruction. Teachers benefited by having me provide feedback to their students throughout the research process which essentially means I shared their grading load. Students benefited by having increased access to educator support and copious feedback to help them refine their work. At a time when districts are eliminating library media specialists and our profession is being maligned, my first year in this role is evidence of how vital information literacy skills are and necessary a library media specialist is to this skill development.

Supplement: Anonymous Feedback from Our Colleagues:

Thank you for all of your help with the research process. Having never taught this before, I would have been lost without your help! I greatly appreciate every lesson and helping hand you gave to me and my students during this process. Additionally, you both have such a knowledge of a range of books, and it helped open the variety of books I could offer for book groups!

 Additionally, you both have such a knowledge of a range of books, and it helped open the variety of books I could offer for book groups!

Library services are crucial to the mission of the social studies department. I would love it if there were quizzes for the most frequently used videos so that we can ensure students understand and access the information.

The opportunity to work together with library staff is invaluable to my teaching

I believe the Media specialists are all knowledgeable and collaborate with both each other and the teachers. It has been a pleasure working with them this year.

It was a great unit -- I appreciated the support and the help on this inquiry based learning!

The planning stage went very smoothly as my library/media collaborator was attuned to my specific goals and even to my work style. The lesson she planned was focused directly on the needs of my particular students at that particular stage of our unit.

With the failing implementation of MLA8 by easybib, working with the librarians on building a citation from scratch was important.

The question generator was awesome Help with MLA 8 citations was absolutely excellent! Teacher and students ALL benefited immensely from the face-to-face interactions with incredibly knowledgeable librarians.

There are so many skills students need to learn to be effective researchers that it is easy for them to be overwhelmed. By presenting kids with tools they can use to ensure the validity of their sources, the collaboration allowed me to focus my instruction on the reading skills necessary to master the research essay task.

having librarians in the class room during the start of the jr research project, assisting with research question tweaking and thesis development was incredibly helpful

I found it effective to have multiple perspectives on research questions, thesis statements and citations.

I like the op-ed format to create a dialogue in writing.

Yes, we chose new texts for the speech unit, which were excellent!!! And your help on MLA 8 with both the freshman speeches and the junior research paper were invaluable!

Keep listening to individual teachers and customizing your presentation so it dovetails with the individual teacher's experience and eccentricities.

Stanford Report as an infographic: Student Vulnerability to Fake News

The Stanford Graduate School of Education Study recently released its report, Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone of Civic Online Reasoning. Their findings in this two-year study about students' ability to critically interpret information they encounter online are frightening.

There has been abundant media coverage of this issue and the SHEG study by PBS News Hour, NPR, and The Washington Post, among others. Here is my unpacking of that report in an infographic:

Creating a Vision to Guide 21st Century Teaching and Learning

Without a definitive vision statement and mission schools lack a guide for decision making. How do we know if what we are doing is working if we don't first have a statement of purpose against which to measure the outcome of our efforts? The library is a vital component to the development of a school’s vision because the library faculty are:

• Co-teachers with the whole faculty
• Curriculum development partners
• Professional development facilitators
• Resource curators
• Information literacy instructors

As more and more schools invest in and adopt 1:1 or BYOD initiatives, a rationale for those programs -- something more than “so we can teach with technology” -- is essential to progressive pedagogy and transformative teaching and learning. Of her own epiphany regarding the meaningful, purposeful integration of technology into learning opportunities, Jennie Magiera said, “I would have to be willing to depart from what I had always done or always taught. I needed to create a blueprint for a fresh classroom design with the power of my new tools in mind. By setting aside my preconceived notions of how my classroom ‘should’ look, sound, and feel, I was able to transform my practice from the ground up.” There are educators like Magiera reinventing themselves as part of maintaining the relevance of their pedagogy in a dynamic technological world. But this world requires whole schools, whole systems, to undertake this renaissance not as random individuals but as systems. Most teachers can explain their rationale for why they do what they do. Systems need a purpose (which is much more than a rationale), and educators need support and continual learning opportunities to evolve in pursuit of that purpose.

When the leaders of a technology implementation initiative are asked to evaluate the effectiveness of a new device roll-out, what should be the instrument of measure? Well, I think, the vision statement. The investment of time, finances, and human power in the tech initiative should have been made as a step toward fulfilling the mission, achieving the vision. So the vision is the measure of how well the initiative is going.

The unexamined life may not be worth living, but don't save the examination for the deathbed. We want students to be reflective learners and we, too, must be reflective practitioners. And schools and districts must be reflective planners. Act with purpose: common, examined purpose in order to transform classrooms into the constantly evolving learning spaces 21st Century students (and teachers) need.

Magiera, Jennie. Courageous Edventures: Navigating Obstacles to Discover Classroom Innovation. Thousand Oaks, CA, Corwin, 2016.