Innovative educators know media literacy is important. Common Sense Education explains that media literacy helps kids with the following:
- Learn to think critically.
- Become a smart consumer of products and information.
- Recognize point of view.
- Create media responsibly.
- Identify the role of media in our culture
- Understand the author's goal.
What innovative educators may not know is how to get started with teaching students about media literacy.
Key question resource grid
The National Association of Media Literacy Educators (NAMLE) has a useful key question grid resource to help teachers get started. The grid provides questions in three categories, each with subcategories.
- Audience and authorship
- Messages and meaning
- Representations and reality
Tips to Consider
Media literate people learn to ask themselves questions in each category. Showing students the questions is where you start. Next have a discussion with your students using the questions to discuss media, keeping these two tips in mind:
- Questions may have many different answers.
- When sharing answers students should provide evidence sharing how they know what they know.
Here are two powerful videos that would serve as great resources to launch this work with secondary students:
Lisa Nielsen (@InnovativeEdu) has worked as a public-school educator and administrator since 1997. She is a prolific writer best known for her award-winning blog, The Innovative Educator. Nielsen is the author of several booksand her writing has been featured in media outlets such as The New York Times,The Wall Street Journal, Tech&Learning, and T.H.E. Journal.