Thursday, July 21, 2011
Media Literacy -- Chapter 8 -- Curriculum 21
Media literacy is so important. I think it goes hand in hand with evaluating web sites. Evaluation, evaluation, evaluation. How do we teach students that they must question everything on the free web? I remember being taught about propaganda on TV and in newspapers way back when I was in high school. It's the same thing, only enlarged to encompass almost everything in students' life nowadays. Is it because we tell them that the teachers know more than they do and that they should accept what we say? We do know more, just not about everything. How do we teach them to question, to evaluate, to think critically? When do we find the time?
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That's a good question Pam. It seemed that when I taught at the alternative school, my students seemed to always be questioning and giving their own ideas and opinions. I guess we always gave our students choices and had them explore their ideas and share what they learned during their exploration. I also recall telling my students when I didn't have the answer and then challenge them to find it for themselves and share their process with the rest of us.
ReplyDeleteWhen I did my student teaching, my middle schoolers got a hands-on experience as to why we need to evaluate websites. While teaching them to search for biography information, a student went on Wikipedia. He changed Michael Jordan's team to "Miami Feet". I showed this to the rest of the class. I asked them if that is the correct team! They were surprised because over half of them were going to use Wikipedia for their research instead of .edu or .gov sites. Make it personal and they will want to learn!
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