The Media Literacy Clearinghouse           

I had a very interesting conversation with one of my teachers today who is worried about students' ability to process information in this busy digital world. She would love to do a study on the difference between students who write things down on paper to learn vs. students who use the computer keyboard to process information they are learning. She is willing to accept that she learns better by writing things down physically, but isn't sure if that's a generational thing now. In this presidential debate season, it becomes even more fascinating to observe how students take in the information they watch, view online, text about and even tweet about. How are they processing all of this? Who is helping? How are we doing? All this wondering lead to a very cool website that is not very pretty, but beautifully masterful at helping us with media literacy. This "tuesdays" is for your consideration of the media in the changing world around us.

   

Frank W. Baker is one of the nation's leading media literacy experts. He has created the Media Literacy Clearinghouse to assist K-12 educators who want to teach standards that include non-print, media text, learn more about media literacy, help students read the media, locate appropriate resources and much more. This website is loaded with resources including categories that are most popular, concepts, teaching standards and makes articles and resources available on 21^st Century Media Literacy, Pop Culture Criticism, and Guides for the Presidential Debates. Frank travels around the county to districts and conferences and does webinars for teachers and students on topics such as, "To Kill A Mockingbird-Teaching The Film: Helping Students Appreciate the Language of the Moving Image." There is no doubt that our children are growing up in a media rich environment, but how rich are they at deciphering what is truth? We play a huge part in helping them learn to be critical thinkers and decoders. The Media Literacy Clearinghouse just makes it a lot simpler. Thanks, Frank W. Baker.

I love the Wikipedia definition of media literacy. "Media literacy is a repertoire of competences that enable people to analyze, evaluate, and create messages in a wide variety of media modes, genres, and forms." Our students love to create their own media, have you noticed? One of the most popular forms of expression today is video. Students are constantly recording with their cell phones. Video used to be such a huge undertaking that most teachers didn't want to touch it with a 10-foot poll, but today we have multiple ways to incorporate many forms of media: images, audio, video, presentations, Web 2.0 tools and any and all emerging technologies. I would like to encourage you to incorporate more media in the classroom while applying time-tested strategies to help students better understand the content. The newest buzzword is multi-modal text that allows for text to be from a book, from a video, from a presentation or other form of multimedia. If you want to know if your students understand a topic, encourage them to make a video. You may be pleasantly surprised.

How do you navigate a clearinghouse website? First, you do not look for pretty images to draw you in. Second, you examine the site by categories. My absolute favorite is the Media Literacy Timeline from 1905 - 2011. As I examined each of the categories in the clearinghouse, I was very impressed with the timely video segments for the 2012 Presidential Election. He has done a great job making vetted materials available to teachers for all subjects. I hope the idea of media literacy doesn't just fall under the Language Arts/Reading/English teachers or even the Social Studies teacher because EVERY subject as a multi-modal element that can help students understand and express the content we yearn for them to learn. Media Literacy helps educators be more professional in bringing media to our 21^st century classrooms. Please tell us your media rich experiences on my blog. I'll be sure to share because that's what we do!

"Media study does not replace text. It broadens and deepens our understanding of texts."

Philip M. Anderson 

ipadio   

LiveBinders 

Doceri 

NASA's Image Gallery 

Popplet 

Zoey's Room
Finance in the Classroom
Fotopedia 

The Common Good Forecaster  

Google Earth 

UJAM 

Symbaloo.edu 

Google Science Fair 

Stossel in the Classroom
Word Sift 

Lee Kolbert