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=﻿﻿Welcome to the Media Literacy Course =

// "Web 2.0 tools and ubiquitous access to the Internet on mobile devices have transformed the way we gather, understand, and create information and, ultimately, how we build knowledge. These dramatic changes have fundamentally altered how we work, play, and interact with each other, yet are not widely reflected in schools. // //(We need to provide) a clear and logical framework around which educators can build curriculum that systematically teaches the media literacy skills kids need to make sense of and thrive in tomorrow’s digital, interactive, global village."// Frank Gallagher Executive Director Cable in the Classroom

Picture from: PBS.org

This Media Literacy Course is an interdisciplinary course focusing on the uses of the computer and effects of technology in language arts and social studies. Particular emphasis will be placed on Web 2.0 technologies and the skills and strategies students and teachers at all levels of education will need to become newly literate in today’s world. ﻿M edia Literacy is the ability to access, analyze, evaluate and create media in a variety of forms.

Eight Key Concepts for Media Literacy **Adapted from -** John Pungente, S.J. From Barry Duncan et al. //Media Literacy Resource Guide//, Ontario Ministry of Education, Toronto, ON. Canada, 1989.
 * 1)  **All media are construction : ** Media does not present simple reflections of external reality. Rather, they present carefully crafted constructions that reflect many decisions and result from many determining factors. Media Literacy works towards deconstructing these constructions, taking them apart to show how they are made.
 * 2)  **The media construct reality:** Media is responsible for the majority of the observations and experiences from which we build up our personal understandings of the world and how it works. Much of our view of reality is based on media messages that have been pre-constructed and have attitudes, interpretations and conclusions already built in. Media, to a great extent, gives us our sense of reality.
 * 3)  **Audiences n﻿egotiate meaning in the media : ** Media provides us with much of the material upon which we build our picture of reality, and we all "negotiate" meaning according to individual factors: personal needs and anxieties, the pleasures or troubles of the day, racial and sexual attitudes, family and cultural background …
 * 4)  **Media have commercial implications : ** Media Literacy aims to encourage an awareness of how media is influenced by commercial considerations, and how these affect content, technique and distribution. Most media production is a business, and must therefore make a profit. Questions of ownership and control are central: a relatively small number of individuals control what we watch, read and hear through media.
 * 5)  **Media contain ideological and value messages : ** All media products are advertising, in some sense, in that they proclaim values and ways of life. Explicitly or implicitly, media conveys ideological messages about such issues as the nature of the good life, the virtue of consumerism, the role of women, the acceptance of authority, and unquestioning patriotism.
 * 6)  **Media have social and political implications : ** Media has great influence on politics and on forming social change. Twitter can greatly influence the election of a national leader on the basis of image and ability to reach an audience. Media involves us in concerns such as civil rights issues, famines in Africa, and the AIDS epidemic. It gives us an intimate sense of national issues and global concerns, so that we become citizens of the global village.
 * 7)  **Form and content are closely related in the media:** Each medium has its own grammar and codifies reality in its own particular way. Different media will report the same event, but create different impressions and messages.
 * 8)  **Each medium has a unique aesthetic form : ** Just as we notice the pleasing rhythms of certain pieces of poetry or prose, so we ought to be able to enjoy the pleasing forms and effects of the different media.

** Five Key Questions: ** when analyzing media messages, we need to answer the following questions to better understand the message.
 * 1) Who created this message?
 * 2) What techniques are used to attract my attention?
 * 3) How might different people understand this message differently from me?
 * 4) What lifestyles, values, and points of view are represented in or omitted from this message?
 * 5)  Why was this message sent? ** Source: ** Center for Media Literacy (CML).