As one of my final courses in the MET program, ETEC 531: Curriculum Issues in Cultural and Media Studies provided me with a new perspective on the role that the media plays in education. With more learners using handheld devices at a younger age with time, the educational curriculum does not seem to be meeting the demand in helping children gain the critical literacy skills necessary to filter the information they receive through the media. This course equipped my understanding as an educator with the affordances to design and carry out learning activities that will help students become media literate.
The purpose of this assignment was to help students gain digital literacy skills through the creation of content using digital authoring tools. I chose the title “Who needs media literacy education?” for this assignment because I saw a need for media literacy education to be integrated into the curriculum for younger students so that learners can have the means to critically assess the information distributed by the media.
In creating the content for the media production, I realized that media messages have not changed over time and seem to be even more aggressive today. For example, starting from about 30 years ago, TV commercials portrayed the message “Fast food restaurants are THE places to go for food” (Chen, 2013). Today, even babies need to eat at fast food restaurants. When Marshall McLuhan said that “The medium is the message” (McLuhan, 2001, 2006), he wanted content creators and viewers to be mindful of how the media will bring about change to society through the messages portrayed. I have tried to address this gap in students’ digital/media literacy skills through activities such as those found in my research proposal for ETEC 500 and the paper I wrote on Theorizing Wikipedia for ETEC 511. Without the means to critically interpret such messages, audiences are at the mercy of those who created the messages. This is why it is so important for educators to help learners gain competencies in media literacy, because skills such as critical inquiry and analysis will enable learners to consider the messages on any media in their original intents and purposes.
The particular set of skills I learned from this assignment includes:
- Application of media literacy education into the curriculum
- Writing a script for media production to engage student learning
- Proficiency with media production tools such as Windows Movie Maker, Audacity, and YouTube
References
Chen, J. (2013). Who needs media literacy education? [Video file]. University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_0CVD8FcBg&feature=youtu.be
McLuhan, M. (2001, 2006). The medium is the message [PDF document]. The New Media Reader, 203-209.
