A Picture of My Media World

A Final project submitted by,

Susan Thompson

EDCT 559

12/9/10

What’s your picture of your world?

Here’s a picture of my world

What’s the picture of your media world?

Here’s a picture of my news media world!

An intro to media literacy:“A picture of my world”

Why have this assignment:

A way to introduce the topic of media literacy

A way to engage the student (and the teacher) with this topic

A heuristic to help students start thinking through another mode about media in general and media specifically in their life.

Why media literacy?

Because…

• From cradle on …”we are immersed” with media (Kellner).

we need to be critical consumers…

…and critical producers

As Jenkins says…

• Media literacy is concerned with developing an informed and critical understanding of the nature of mass media, the techniques used by them, and the impact of those techniques. It is education that aims to increase students' understanding and enjoyment of how the media work, how they produce meaning, how they are organized, and how they construct reality. Media literacy also aims to provide students with the ability to create media products (2006).

My picture of world in content class

• In college composition/communication class, media literacy is woven throughout the curriculum by using and evaluating multiple forms of media.

We look at many types of texts

• We perceive the world through media (Buckingham)

• Everything’s an argument (Lunsford)

• Students are already writing in a lot of different genres outside of class. Let’s incorporate their enthusiasm (Yancey)

We can tell our story through a picture of my world exercise

• This is engaging to students• Respects and honors individuality of

student• Also recognizes diversity of viewpoints

How to implement in classroom

• In first few meetings of class, ask students to keep clinical diary of what kind of media they have in their lives and how much time spent with media (media includes: TV, radio, computer internet, newspapers, magazines, books,cell phones, ipod and combination there of)

Diary leads to summary

• Students then write up a summary of what percentage of time was spent with different media. If there are overlaps – such as texting while watching TV, then they point that out.

Also a visual summary

• Students will also add a visual of what their media world looks like.

• They can use different kinds of media to make their picture of their world. They can even use printed text, remix (copy and paste) pictures they see on the internet (like Google pictures !)

Scaffold to other projects

• This can lead to bigger writing projects that are part of the requirements in a composition/communication class in college.

• This can also lead to multimedia projects that combine different kinds of affordances – text, pictures, video/audio combined

The bigger picture of this lesson

This is just one specific lesson plan

throughout a comp class that has media

literacy organically woven throughout.

Through this assignment and others, students will hopefully be aware of their worlds and how many forms of “texts”/ arguments there are in the world – not just traditional print. And also how to be ethical “prosumers!” (Jenkins)

The End…

…But also a new beginning… for all of us media literate social agents of change…