Today I received a great letter in the mail from Southern California Academy of Sciences letting me know that my presentation at the annual meeting one the “best student presentation” award. I am honored and excited to continue to share my research and continue on to grad school in the future.
As others had mentioned previously, I too had never known very much about media literacy before this class. I had somewhat underestimated it in the beginning. I had no idea just how many complexities and aspects there are to media literacy and just how important and necessary of a skill it is to learn. These readings really opened my eyes and taught me so much more. They were very enlightening and made me think about things in ways that I perhaps had not truly thought before.
Beginning with the piece, “What is Media Literacy?” was definitely good as the initial building block. It provided well done definitions and explanations from experts who definitely helped to clarify the topic as well as the differences between media literacy and media education. The exert that actually really stood out to me was the one from Neil Andersen in which he distinguished media literacy and media education from one another. He did it in such a simple, straightforward, and informal manner in which even children would be able to understand. Using basic comparisons and somewhat silly sentences made the topic much friendlier to people who had never had experience with it before.
The next article, “The Core Concepts: Fundamental to Media Literacy Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow” pointed out some very important ideas and I was particularly interested in a lot of the information that came from Len Masterman, who was the primary developer for the discipline. The first point that I thought was particularly good was the notion that “media education is nothing if it is not an education for life” (Jolls and Wilson 70). Having media literacy is of such great importance in life and is a necessity in order to think and question critically. It is not something to be learned and then immediately forgotten once the class is over. It is something that you should always keep with you. My other point of interest had to do with “Masterman’s 18 Basic Principles for media awareness education”. They were all certainly very knowledgeable and important points but one that really stuck out to me when first reading them was the principle: “Media Education involves collaborative learning. It is group focused. It assumes that individual learning is enhanced not through competition but through access to the insights and resources of the whole group” (Jolls and Wilson 70). The reason was because it had a big connection to important ideals that I have learned in previous classes, especially my Computer Literacy for Educators class. It had focused a great deal on collaboration and why it was important and beneficial for students to do so. We live in a society; we are always surrounded by other people. When we get a job, you are supposed to be able collaborate with coworkers. So why is education different? Why had it been so self-focused and isolated rather than being able to work together and share knowledge? This principle definitely reinforced this important ideal.
The three models of media literacy were very interesting, especially when comparing them to one another. While the article, “That It Was Made by People Our Age Is Better” talked largely about a study with teenagers and youth culture with media, it also did well going further into depth about the three models. From the readings thus far, I feel that the Protectionist view is the least practical and beneficial, while the Constructivist is the most. The protectionist model claims that young people need to be “protected” and that “students are considered ‘cultural dupes’ who cannot resist powerful media and who must be taught correct discriminatory practices” (Zaslow and Butler 33). This is completely underestimating the students. Students have their own experiences and views which they can contribute to further discussion. It is extremely important to engage students in the process. Doing so will help students to learn more, be able to view things with a greater range of perspective, and greater cement the skills that they achieve. This is why the constructivist approach seems to be more beneficial. This view rightfully “advocate[s] the development of students’ analytical skills while also allowing for the experiences of pleasure that young people take from media” (Zaslow and Butler 33). It encourages students to explore rather than trying to hide them from “bad media”. Students become active learners in their education.
Finally, the topic about television and its effects on children contained a deal of information to debate. The article from the University of Michigan Health System, “Television and Children” and some of the ideas from Chris Worsnop’s “Orthodoxy is the Enemy: Four Ways NOT to Teach Media Literacy” contrasted each other well. I was somewhat surprised by the first article and how negative it was. When viewing statistics, it is always startling but as a whole, the article felt overly critical and too presumptuous. It did not take into account many other factors that could be affecting children. It is not the mere act of watching television that will be the whole cause for why a child may be violent or for their academics dropping. Such events cannot be pinned on this single factor of watching television. Worsnop’s article views television and other media in a more realistic fashion. He brings to attention that fighting against children watching television or other popular culture activities will only alienate them. Worsnip prudently claims that “the minute we criticize the stuff kids like to read, watch or listen to as being in some way inferior, we have lost their attention, pushed them into an attitude of rejecting our values as strongly as we reject theirs” (Worsnop 3). In order to help guide and educate children, teachers need to accept their students and the culture that defines them.
As can be seen from even just the readings there is an infinite source of information that can be discussed and debated upon about media literacy. In such a small amount of time, I feel that I already have and will learn a great deal which I aim to retain and make use of in both everyday life and hopefully as a teacher in the future.
In the first reading, The Inversion of Visibility, one sections talked about spotlighting accountability, not possibility. What caught my eyes is when Volatile states ” Perhaps the biggest problem Americans are facing as a society is that we have a hard time believing in possibility, imagining that things could be otherwise”. I thought this sentence related well with the videos we watched because I think we are so stuck on the roles that males are better than females and we just keep things the way they are instead of challenging the possibilities of what could be. We could have more female roles in movies, female presidents, and so many more other possibilities to give women a stronger role in our society. Since I can remember I’ve always herd the role how women should be the ones who stay home with their babies, clean the house, and cook. We need to challenge those stereotypes and roles because maybe the female wants to go out and get a big time job and not have to be the one who is being depended on to stay at home. This brings me to the other reading, The Children Are Watching How the Media Teach About Diversity. Stereotyping has been a another social issue. For this to end we need to stop categorizing and generalizing about people according to Cortes. TV newscasts, TV shows, movies, and so many other types of media keep backing up the idea of these generalizations and stereotypes we have in our society. Cortes states, ” Teachers constantly disseminate or contribute to student construction of group generalizations”. (149, Cortes). In the end schools need to educate students to look at these labels, stereotypes, and generalizations in detail. Looking at all the evidence that is out there. Being able to generalize without stereotyping. This will help students process information they see in our multicultural society in a constructivist viewpoint.
Watching the first video it was my first time learning about what a trope is. Ive watched all those movies she mentioned and it is funny how I never realized the Smurfette principle. I even laughed at the thought that princess Leah in Star Wars was the only visible female character in the whole movie and whole “galactic empire”. I never opened my mind to these ideas or questioned why this was. Agreeing with Katlyn and how professor Tollefson stated in her video the five key questions that media literate people ask, maybe if I had been more open minded and more media literate I would have noticed these things. This type of trope is still an ongoing problem in our daily media intake. The second video where she talked about the Bechdel test was also new for me. I would love to go back to all the movies I watched and see if this is true for most of them. There were three questions that need to be asked. The first is, “it has to have at least two women”. Second, ” do they talk to each other”. Lastly, “do they talk about something other than a man”. Again she showed so many different movies that did not past the test and a lot of those movies I have watched, but once again did not realize the sexism and lack of female roles in them. Maybe now when I watch movies I will keep an eye out for these different topics and viewpoints.
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