Archive | September, 2011

Picking a Fight

27 Sep

I’ve never thought of myself as the kind of person to pick a fight.

I do like to deeply engage with ideas, of course, and I prefer to engage in arguments that are well-supported with evidence and reasoning. And of course I can spot and attack “gee-whiz” marketing hype from 500 yards. But no one I know has called me a mama grizzly.

And I’ve never been someone to bludgeon someone over the head with my own ideas. Like any academic, I do like to talk about my work– but I also like to ask questions. I aim to learn from others, even when their viewpoints are very different from my own.

But when I read a recent issue of the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, it simply made my blood boil. Jim Potter’s invited essay for this important and well-respected journal claims in its title to depict the state of media literacy. But it omits so much of the innovative and important work that has emerged in the last ten years from scholars across the fields of communication, education and public health. My grad students, colleagues and Labsters will remember that week — I could hardly believe Potter’s essay had been published. I simply went ballistic! I pounded out a rejoinder (in a verbal body slam of sorts) and e-mailed it off to the journal.

What made me see red? By conceptualizing media literacy primarily as a response to counteract the negative effects of mass media and popular culture, Potter’s vision of media literacy mischaracterizes the field. At a time when more and more stakeholders are embracing the depth and complexity of media literacy, Potter publishes a narrow little piece that boxes media literacy into a wee corner of the media effects tradition. Yikes!

Let’s set the record straight. Jim Potter has long had a rather ambivalent relationship with the larger community of media literacy educators and scholars. He’s published a best-selling textbook titled, Media Literacy and another book titled, The Theory of Media Literacy. But he’s never participated in the discourse community of media literacy scholars. To my knowledge, he’s never attended a media literacy conference— and there have been dozens and dozens of them over the past 15 years. We travel in different circles, I guess you might say.  Unfortunately, some communication scholars still see media literacy simply as a minor variant within the media effects tradition precisely because Jim Potter has carefully positioned it there– not as a field of inquiry, a place of advocacy, an innovative pedagogy, or a community education movement,  but simply as an antidote to all manner of negative media effects, including media violence, materialism, stereotyping and much more. I thought this argument was nearly over in 1998, when I thought I had nailed the coffin on this issue by identifying it as one of the seven great debates.

Jim’s going to publish a response to my critique of his essay, as well he should. Maybe we will get a chance to duke it out at ICA, NCA, BEA or AEJMC. Two big ol’ bears growling at each other– it could be crowd-pleasing fun! But special thanks are owed to Susan Brinson at the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, who accepted it for publication. You can read my critique of Potter’s essay by clicking here.

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Big Ideas from September

24 Sep

Here’s a short visualization of some of the big ideas we’ve been unpacking during the first month in my New Media Literacies class this Fall.

BTMM 4455 syllabus Fall 2011

Our Class Blog

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Reflections from an English Major

22 Sep

Back in the day, when people debated about what to call this new enterprise, this practice of engaging learners in noticing, analyzing, reflecting on, and composing in response to their own mediated culture, I was deeply torn about whether it should be called “media literacy” or “media education.” I opted for the latter for many major initiatives (including the Harvard Institute on Media Education and, of course, the Media Education Lab). Some readers will remember the vociferous 1990s debates we had as the discourse community sorted out what we meant, exactly, by terms like “critical analysis” and “authentic audiences” and “autonomy.”

But “literacy” has been the most problematic and slippery term of all. As an undergraduate, I was a double major in English and Film/Video, of course. I was (and still am) enamored with documentary film and the editing process. Deeply connected to the practice of reading. A lover of words. I brought to this work a deep sense of the connectedness between reading and writing in relationship to the many different symbol systems, genres and forms of expression that are part of our culture.

But at a very critical period in my life, a mentor invited me to consider the long-term potential impact of my work in K-12 education, encouraging me to reflect on whether I would be OK if reading films replaced the practice of reading books. Impossible, I remember thinking. But it’s an issue that can still keep me up at night. Today, as I struggle to get my undergraduates to read, it’s becoming more central to my sense of professional identity as a teacher. For in the zero sum game that is education, more time with one form of expression displaces time spent with something else. And since each media form demands particular kinds of attentional and cognitive skills that are unique to the medium, and different media genres require more sets of specialized skills, I’m right to reflect on how my teaching practices support (or supplant) the particular values associated with reading. I deeply care that people continue to value poetry, for example, and short stories, and drama; I want to explore how the use of new media and technologies can nurture and support this process. As an eternal optimist, I love how T.S. Eliot invites me to embrace how the creative individual makes, destroys and remakes the world through life and through art:

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others…)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea’s throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

- T.S. Eliot, “The Four Quartets”

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Why Leadership Matters

13 Sep

I’ve been thinking a lot about leadership recently, and some of you know why. In January, I’m going to become the Founding Director of the Harrington School of Communication and Media at the University of Rhode Island. It’s a terrific opportunity to help the faculty grow and develop a distinctive new type of communication school that connects the traditional communication disciplines of journalism, film/media, public relations and communications studies with programs in writing and rhetoric and a graduate program in library and information science. In my view, this is the perfect constellation of departments for a 21st century learner. So imagine how excited I am about the possibilities!

Which leads me to reflect on the nature of leadership. Some of the best leaders I know I encountered at business school. For nearly 20 years, I taught media studies at Babson College and was fortunate to have been mentored by distinguished faculty leaders including Al Anderson, Allan Cohen, Sydel Sokuvitz and Dick Mandel.

So when the National Association for Secondary School Principals asked me to write about digital and media literacy, I wrote about some Philadelphia leaders, including Sam Reed of Beeber Middle School and Jessica Brown, principal of the Arts Academy at Benjamin Rush High School. I thought about all the principals and school leaders who I have learned from, beginning with the legendary John Katsoulis, Assistant Superintendent of the Billerica Public Schools and Damian Curtiss, Chairman of the English Department. Back in the early 1990s, these two school leaders inspired me to help them make a difference in a single school district, and from them, I learned alot about the process of making change by supporting teachers as learners and leaders. One of my former students, Amy Purcell Vorenberg, is now a principal. She started her career as a teacher at the Shady Hill School in Cambridge, where she participated in the Felton Scholars Program in Media Literacy, which I ran at Babson College. Today she is the Principal of the Philadelphia School.

One of the best principals I ever met was Dr. Paul Folkemer, who was the principal of the Benjamin Franklin Middle School in Ridgewood, New Jersey and then became Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction in Scarsdale, New York. Paul’s insight on managing educational change was informed by his own passion for “teaching the news.”

From these leaders, I discovered how important it is for educational leaders to listen well, take strategic risks, build meaningful relationships, see the big picture, work the system, and hold on to your own passions – even in balancing all the many challenges of management and administration. Leaders need the same kind of intellectual curiosity, flexibility and openness to new ideas that should drive the entire educational enterprise.

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Building Bridges and Identifying Distinctions

4 Sep

I’ve been trying to build bridges between digital literacy and media literacy for a bit of time Building Bridgesnow because the sea change that’s resulted from the rise of the Internet helps magnify the power of the key concepts of media literacy. It’s also important to identify what’s distinctive about digital literacy and media literacy in relation to the broader conceptualization of technology in education. As New York Times reporter Matt Richtel ably demonstrates in “In Classroom of Future, Stagnant Scores” (Sept 3), the deep investments being made in K-12 educational technology may or may not help raise test scores. But one question in his report looms large for me: does technology in education substitute student engagement for the more fundamental development of critical thinking and communication skills?

In Digital and Media Literacy: A Plan of Action, a white paper I developed for the Aspen Institute under the auspices of the Knight Foundation, I make a point of distinguishing between mere technology usage and the more complex and holistic competencies of digital and media literacy (access, analyze, compose, reflect and act), offering a framework that promotes intellectual curiosity, critical thinking and communication skills. As I see it, digital and media literacy is rooted in a belief that instructional practices that address the confluence of popular culture, mass media, the Internet and digital tools for information-gathering and creative expression cultivate the intellectual curiosity, literacy competencies and critical thinking skills that enable people to become lifelong learners.

Today, it seems, those of us in education are not talking enough about intellectual curiosity: instead, we’re talking mostly about using tools for student engagement. And more than ever, the focus seems to be on the tools. Search tools, widgets, social media apps and collection tools all offer new possibilities for teaching and learning. Philanthropies like the McArthur Foundation and the Knight Foundation are spending enormous sums on developing new digital learning tools just as school districts are spending economic stimulus billions on new data projectors and digital white boards.  Of course, as a learner myself, I like using new tools myself, to be honest. I enjoy the opportunity to explore the blogosphere with online search tools like Now Relevant. In my own creative work and with my students, I also use blogs, wikis and screencasting tools like Jing.

But for those of us interested in supporting students’ digital and media literacy competencies, we can get resentful of all the focus on the tools (and not on the instructional practices or the big conceptual ideas that enable the tools to be used wisely and well). Every week, it seems, there’s a new tool to explore. For example, Mozilla offers a suite of tools (www.hackasaurus.com) that offer simple tools that help youth play with online digital code by remixing their favorite web sites. It’s possible that such playful work builds a deep understanding of the constructed nature of online media and promotes a sense of oneself as an author. But it may also just reinforce the “gee-whiz” gadgetry ethos that’s pervasive in our culture today.

That’s why I like to examine the work of ordinary classroom teachers who integrate digital and media literacy into the curriculum in ways that are not dependent on heavy access to computers, those who are not generally working in a one-to-one laptop classroom. It’s all about making connections between the classroom and the living room, between school culture and the “real world.”

High school history and English teachers who use popular culture to promote critical thinking skills seem particularly ready to adjust to the unpredictability that can result when students get to articulate their own ideas and values. When students get to dig into some of the pleasures, paradoxes and contradictions at work in popular culture, they learn more about themselves, their values and their society. With support from a skillful teacher, students can make connections between the present and the past. This process nurtures intellectual curiosity, which occurs when students use what they already know to generate their own questions, exploring the gap between what they think they know and the vastness of the still unknown.

As Matt Richtel ably demonstrates, the deep investments being made in K-12 technology may not support the development of students’ knowledge and skills when they substitute student engagement for the more fundamental development of reading comprehension, reasoning and critical thinking skills. Those of us who work with college students recognize the problem immediately as we discover the difficulty many students experience when they’re asked to summarize what they’ve heard, read or viewed.

But while technology usage alone won’t rectify the problem, neither will a return to traditional teaching methods. In Digital and Media Literacy: Connecting Culture and Classroom, I show how these practices don’t require technology at all—but they do depend on a skillful teacher who creates a learning environment where genuine and robust dialogue between students and teacher can occur.

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