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When Literacy Goes Digital

24 Mar

The anticipation is killing me, as David Cooper Moore and myself are moving into last-minute countdown mode for the release of our new book, Discovering Media Literacy: Teaching Digital Media and Popular Culture in Elementary School (Corwin/Sage, 2013) and the companion website, Powerful Voices for Kids. We are scheduled to release it at the National Association for Media Literacy Education conference, July 12 – 13, 2013.

I hope you’ll watch my recent speech which I offered to the Youth 2.0 conference at the University of Antwerp, I got a chance to preview some of the ideas in the book and show some of the videos that will be featured on the PVK website. So many talented media literacy educators were part of this process! At the conference, I really enjoyed the chance to share what we learned, respond to questions, and hear people’s responses to the ideas we’re developing in the book.

Our new book helps educators and scholars understand both the amazing opportunities and the complex challenges of implementing media literacy with children ages 5 – 11, and the online community we’re creating will enable elementary educators, scholars and practitioners to share resources, including lesson plans, video documentation of practice, student work samples and more. I created a screencast with embedded videos to capture my keynote address. I welcome your feedback, questions and responses to the ideas developed in this talk.

Introducing the Media Literacy Smartphone

12 Feb

Media Literacy Remote ControlBy Jonathan Friesem

GUEST BLOGGER

Ever since the Media Education Lab moved from Temple University to the University of Rhode Island, I was looking for a chance to update the classic media literacy “remote control,” first developed by Renee Hobbs in 1993.

While the remote control presents a metaphor for the active and structured approach to the analysis of media and popular culture, the remote control is gradually being replaced by the smartphone. So when I was preparing to present our work at conferences and meetings in China and Israel, I re-designed the remote control design, changing it to a smartphone look while keeping the key questions and core concepts the same. Now the new media literacy smartphone is available for purchase in inexpensive classroom sets for educators


 Jonathan Friesem demonstrates the new MEL app for media literacyIn early January, I was invited to present the core concepts of media literacy in front of a leading group of communication researchers, media practitioners, and journalists in Israel. The Media Regulation Forum at the Israel Democracy Institute meets twice a month to talk about the role and limitations of the Israeli media regulator, the Israeli authority for television and radio. As the manager of the Media Education Lab, I was asked to present the argument that media literacy education can be more effective than regulation.

Introducing the MEL App

Introducing the Media Literacy AppI decided to introduce the new Media Education Lab App at the forum. Using the MEL App engages people in dialogue and information-sharing, showcasing to already-media literate people how media literacy can be learned through exploration of critical questions. My idea: to consider the relationship between media literacy education and media regulation, my audience needs to directly experience the pedagogical foundations of media literacy education in practice.

I chose a media text from a North Carolina television news station that featured a report about a controversial PSA against texting while driving. The two-minute news report featured a young reporter describing the graphic PSA and then interviewing three students outside their school talking about the positive effects of this PSA. Knowing that a media text with local issues could lead the conversation away from the actual activity of deconstructing a media message, I intentionally chose to use a media text which would be not so familiar to my audience.

We watched the video and then started to go through each one of the features of the MEL App. We started with the Reality Check: Does this news report represent reality? On one hand, it is a report about a real PSA. On the other hand, this report was so manipulative that it was clear to participants how much of the footage of the report was staged.

The next topic was Private Gain or Public Gain. We got into a discussion about whether the gain from the report against texting is beneficial for the viewers or for the TV network itself. This discussion led to the next feature of the App: What’s Left Out. Participants identified the calculated framing, the selection of white teens as interviewees and the reporter’s decision to talk about the problematic visuals of the PSA without showing these images to the news viewers. The latter point addressed participants’ concern that the report was not really about the effects of the PSA but rather a dramatic promotional opportunity for the network, as the anchor commented: “It is incredibly graphic so we choose not to run all the images, but you can see the entire video if you’d like to at WXII12.com.”

Then we continued to explore the topic of Values Check. Besides the obvious fact that texting is dangerous while driving, we identified two values: first, the the concept of materialism in relation to technologies like the smartphone, and the second, the decreasing value of parenting. The students who were interviewed were saying how this PSA was much more effective than their parents’ guidelines. Then we tackled the topic: Read Between the Lines. What was the actual message of this report? Is it a commercial hidden as their top local news story? Was it a message about the failure of the educational system to educate about safety? Or was it a message about white privileged teens who do not listen to their parents and get into accidents?

Structured Critical Analysis

As the discussion around the table got steamed up, we moved to the next app: Stereotype Alert. We asked ourselves why the reporter chose the three white teenagers who were filmed from high angle. Analyzing their clothing, gestures and accessories (such as the smartphones they used to watch the PSA) made it clear that there is a subtext about the culture of privileged teens. How could those three adolescents (who for some reason were not in class at that moment) be persuaded in four minutes to stop texting?

The answer for that question is the next app: Solutions too Easy. The two and a half minute report explains the problem of texting while driving and offers the quick solution: parent should go to the network’s website and show their teens the four-minute-long PSA. Using the last app – Record/Save for Later – I asked the participants if this report is important to them and if there is any value to store and show it later. There were mixed reviews and feelings about this report.

To conclude the activity we went to the bottom part of the MEL App to see the different media genres content that can be analyzed. It is important to understand that this activity can be done not only with TV messages but also with newspapers, movies, tablets, radio, comics, books, music, video games, and even social networks. On the other side of the MEL App we reviewed quickly the five critical questions that reframe critical analysis using the concepts of authorship, purpose, contructedness, point of view, interpretation and omission.

Of course, the distinguished group of scholars, the executives, and the journalists knew full well how to analyze this report without the instructional scaffolding that the remote control provides. However, this activity showcased to them that media literacy education can be done in a fun and engaging way using a structured learning process.

I was asked to come and talk about media literacy as part of the debate on whether the legislators should protect the viewers by regulating the media industry or investing in media literacy education to empower viewers’ critical thinking. It seemed that the activity and the presentation of the MEL App gave participants an experience that demonstrated the efficiency of media literacy education over media legislation, which in the digital age, cannot be entirely regulated.

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A “Ripping” Fine New Year

1 Jan
I'll be ripping clips from Gnomeo and Juliet

I’ll be ripping clips from Gnomeo and Juliet to help K-12 teachers teach media literacy.

My New Year’s Resolution: In 2013, I’ll be “ripping” DVDs to make clip compilations for media literacy. And I’ll be encouraging K-12 teachers, school librarians, and technology educators to do the same.

Why? Because finally, as of October 26, 2012, the U.S. Copyright Office, as part of the DMCA 1201 rulemaking process, has declared that K-12 teachers can legally bypass copy-protected software on DVDs and online streaming media to make short clips.

How did this happen? As a copyright education activist, I participated in two rounds of rulemaking proceedings in 2009 and 2012 concerning the anticircumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which is the law that exempts YouTube and other ISPs from liability from copyright claims and criminalizes the circumvention of digital rights management (DRM) software that protects DVDs from being copied. I was in good company among other copyright education activists including Peter DeCherney, Martine Rife, Spiro Bolos, and the ALA’s Jonathan Band. Professors Victoria Phillips and Peter Jaszi supported my work through the Glushko-Samuelson Intellectual Property Law Clinic at Washington College of Law at American University.

Every three years, citizens can protest if they believe their fair use rights have been compromised by the current law; the Copyright Office pores over the petitions, weighs the pros and cons, and then offers recommendations to the Librarian of Congress, who ultimately grants or denies the exemptions.

In 2009, we were successful in expanding the law so that college professors and film/media students can legally “rip” DVDs for fair use purposes. In 2012, we were successful in expanding the law to include the right of teachers in kindergarten through twelfth grade!

Here’s the fine print: “The person engaging in the circumvention must believe and have reasonable grounds for believing that the circumvention is necessary to achieve the desired criticism or comment, and where the circumvention is undertaken solely in order to make use of short portions of the motion pictures for the purpose of criticism or comment in the following instances: (i) In noncommercial videos; (ii) in documentary films; (iii) in nonfiction multimedia ebooks offering film analysis; and (iv) for educational purposes by college and university faculty, college and university students, and kindergarten through twelfth grade educators.” You can read the text of the Copyright Office decision here.

Why it matters. By asserting that K-12 educators have the right to circumvent encryption to make fair use of copy-protected DVDs and online digital media for teaching and learning, the law begins to move beyond the needs of large-scale content owners to include the rights of educators and students.

But if K-12 educators don’t take advantage of their new legal rights, has the law really changed? This new provision of the law is definitely a “use it or lose it” situation – if we can’t demonstrate the need for the special exemption in 2015, we may lose it. So, my friends, get “ripping.” Unleash your creativity to create new kinds of educational materials with film DVDs. To help you learn how, here’s a “how to” lesson on using the free software Handbrake to rip on a MAC and here’s how to do it on a PC. And please, inspire your colleagues by posting your own plans for “ripping” in the comment space below.

First things first. You might wonder why I’ve set my sights on “ripping” clips from Gnomeo and Juliet (2011, dir: Kelly Asbury). Of course, there’s the wonderful opportunity to hear my favorite classic Elton John songs (like “Your Song,” for example). But the film has so many possibilities for exploring literary concepts like adaptation and intertextuality and for discussing the concept of nostalgia as it shapes the production of films for child audiences.

Among the gems in this film is the infomercial for the Terrafirminator, the “un-neccesarily powerful” lawnmower that’s “a weapon of grass destruction,” so intimidating that “your lawn will be afraid to grow!”

After viewing the commercial, the gnomes use a laptop to order this high-tech lawnmower.

After viewing the commercial, the gnomes use a laptop to order this high-tech lawnmower.

It’s a classic example of those Saturday-morning high-pressure sales pitches we see on TV.  And even very young children will recognize the now-familiar trope of slow-motion ninja fighting when it occurs in the timeless conflict between the red gnomes and the blue gnomes. I can imagine playing the “Spot the Reference Humor” game, where students clap their hands when they recognize an example, using this activity to discuss the complex interpretations viewers make as part of the film viewing experience. Of course, older students will enjoy the chance to discuss how and why the Shakespeare tragedy is bizarrely altered to create the happy ending required for a children’s film.

Now that the U.S. Copyright Office has permitted K-12 educators to “rip” videos for media literacy education, we can celebrate! Happy New Year 2013!

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A Loss to the Global Media Literacy Community

13 Oct

You Will be Missed!

I was deeply saddened by news this morning that one of the founders of the Italian media literacy community, Roberto Gianatelli, passed away on October 12.

I first met Roberto in 1990 at the legendary Guelph conference, where media literacy educators from around the world first gathered, and where only a handful of American scholars and teachers were present. His passion for teaching was evident from the moment I met him. After that, we met (nearly annually, it seems) during the 1990s as the international media literacy community began gathering steam. In 2000, we participated in Summit 2000: Children, Youth and the Media: Beyond the Millennium, an amazing onference held in Toronto Ontario, which brought together media educators, media producers and more from around the world. At this event, more than 1500 people from 53 countries participated — it was the largest gathering of media literacy educators in the world.

But it was only when Damiano Felini spent time with me in Boston when he was finishing his dissertation in the late 1990s that I had the chance to really understand the sources of momentum that were propelling the media literacy education community in Italy. I decided to spend my sabbatical leave in 2001 in Italy, where I got to meet with Damiano, Roberto and other media educators, including Alberto Pellai and Pier Cesare Rivoltella. Since then, I have had the great opportunity to meet many brilliant Italian media literacy educators including Maria Ranieri, Alberto Parola, Luciano di Mele, Isabella Bruni, Roberto Farne, and many more.

After sharing ideas with the Italian delegation at the World Summit on Children and Media in Karlstad, Sweden in 2010, I was especially delighted to collaborate with Damiano Felini and Professor Gianna Cappello (president of MED, the Italian media literacy association) to create a special issue of the Journal of Media Literacy Education where we worked under the auspieces of two journals devoted to media literacy education: the Journal of Media Literacy Education (sponsored by the National Association for Media Literacy Education) and the Italian Media Education: Studi, Ricerche, Buone pratiche (sponsored by MED, Associazione italiana per l’educazione ai media e alla comunicazione).

I offer my condolences to the many Italian educators who are mourning the loss of their mentor, guide and friend, Roberto Gianatelli. An ordained priest in the Salesian Roman Catholic order, he was a warm, kind and brilliant man. His sense of humor was infectious. Because of his leadership, the Italian media literacy community embraced the contributions of elementary and secondary teachers as well as university faculty and he inspired many to “think big” about this emerging field. It was such a treat to be with him in the summer of 2011 in Corvara, a beautful village in the Dolomite Mountains where the Italian media literacy community gathers for its annual summer course in media education.

This weekend, Italian media educators will gather at the University of Udine for a professional development gathering entitled, “Media Education: Crsecere e insegnare nella societa dei media.” In spirit, I will be there to lift a glass in memory to this Italian lion of a leader in the global media literacy comnunity. I am confident that the Italian media educators will carry on and extend the legacy that Roberto helped begin.

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Activating Young Leaders To Create a World Where Hate Cannot Flourish

16 Jul

Brianna Pescok and Renee Hobbs visit the State of Deception exhibit at the United State Memorial Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.

One of the best things about my new job is the extent to which I’ve been able to think deeply about the needs of college-age students in relationship to the unknowable future we all face. In aiming to create a school of national distinction, I’ve been asked, “Who is the ideal University of Rhode Island Harrington School student?” My answer never wavers. It’s someone with three essential qualities: (1) a “doer” with intellectual curiosity, tenacity, and ambition; (2) someone eager to develop outstanding skills of expression and communication using a variety of forms (written, oral, visual, multimedia, digital, etc); and (3) someone who is relationally-oriented, full of compassion and community-mindedness, and possessing a deep sense of what it means to “do the right thing.”

This summer I was delighted to meet many young people with all these qualities and boy, was it inspiring! For the second year, I participated in a special leadership development program, held in Washington, D.C., called “What You DoMatters,” a three-day program for college students supported by the United States Memorial Holocaust Museum. Students came from more than 40 colleges and universities around the United States and across the world.

The lineup of presenters was impressive. We heard from Carl Wilkins, the last American to remain in Rwanda after the genocide began in 1994. And Eboo Patel offered wise words about the ways that religious understanding can change ourselves — and the world. Former University of Maryland wrestler Hudson Taylor inspired us all with the tale of how he grew into the role of becoming a LGBT rights activist, helping change the culture of college sports.

The conference is designed around a special exhibit at the Holocaust Museum, State of Deception, which is an exploration of the rise of German propaganda in the 20th century. To open the event, Sara J. Bloomfield, director of the Museum, welcomed the student leaders, explaining that Nazis didn’t just spread hate. They also promoted an agenda of freedom, unity and prosperity that many people found alluring, using mass communications and the ability to exploit the Germans’ hopes and fears.

JoAnna in action

JoAnna Wasserman created “What You Do Matters” as part of her work for the U.S. Memorial Holocaust Musem.

One of the things I liked best about the conference was the time allotted to dialogue and informal sharing. Conversations were real, personal and authentic.

Some sessions took a close look at contemporary propaganda. Journalist Lou Jacobson took us behind-the-scenes at Politifact.com to see how they help readers distinguish between many shades of lies and truth in the propaganda machine that is Washington, D.C. You’ll also be pleased to know that I offered a session entitled, “Lessons from KONY2012″ where we critically analyzed various perspectives from journalists, activists, critics, and social media experts on the meteoric rise and fall of the activist Jason Russell, whose creative new ways of reaching audiences with powerful messages captured the world’s attention in the spring of 2012. I’ll be sharing the lesson plan that I created for this session as part of a back-to-school suite in September. Stay tuned!

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The Promise of Libraries Tranforming Communities

12 May

Sometimes I wish that information specialists ruled the world. After all, people who know how to find and access information, understand it and analyze it are smart, right? Because they tolerate complexity and acknowledge the limitations of data, they are likely to make good decisions based on evidence and reasoning. I respect and trust information specialists.

But, in fact, today, communication specialists rule the world. In almost every field, the power of storytelling is undeniable in our culture. People who express ideas with the head, the heart and the emotions in good alignment are using the power of communication to make a difference in the world. Through effective rhetorical strategies, they inform, entertain and persuade, mobilizing people to action.  Effective communicators who create and sustain high-functioning collaborative teams are successful in the community and the world of business as well as in non-profit and government sectors. I respect and trust effective communicators.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how to bring these two sets of competencies together. As a 2012 Technology Fellow for the ALA’s Office of Information Technology Policy (OITP), I’ve had a chance to work with academic librarians, school librarians and public librarians on an emerging definition of digital literacy. Although digital literacy may take different forms depending on the individual, it’s a constellation of life skills that include basic foundational literacies, like reading comprehension and computer skills, as well as transformational literacies, that include the ability to access and evaluate information, create and critique messages, and use reflective thinking and civic action to make a difference in the world.

To address our most pressing social, environmental, economic and political issues at the local, national and global levels, we need people who can be both information specialists and communication specialists, working with integrity to tell stories, access and share high-quality information by using effective social skills and instructional strategies that enable people to make good decisions as self-governing members of society.

I recently attended an invitational conference hosted by the American Library Association (ALA), the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Entitled The Promise of Libraries Transforming Communities, the event brought together librarians, foundation leaders, and government agency heads with the goal of generating new strategies for expanding and deepening the impact of libraries on the communities they serve.

The host of remarkable leaders included Molly Raphael, ALA President, Jim Leach, NEH President, and Susan Hildreth, IMLS head. Also participating in the program were Maureen Sullivan, Deborah Jacobs, Karen Archer Perry, Norman Jacobs, Ron Carlee, Keith Fels, Chris Gates, Rich Harwood and Loretta Parkham, among the many impressive leaders in attendance.

The program was perhaps the most exhilarating event I have ever attended in the library community. We discussed what’s not working, what is working, and what we could be doing more effectively with collaboration. The dialogue was energizing and forward-looking.

There was an important consensus: librarians must be robust and effective community leaders. Of course, in many academic, school and public libraries, librarians already play this role. We all know amazing librarians, like my friend Joyce Valenza or Carrie Russell, who are perfect manifestations of this ideal. But it’s exciting when young people also embrace this identity, as with Anna, one of my own young graduate students, a librarian-in-training, who helped create the “A-Z (Audre Lord to Howard Zinn)” library tent, full of books and resources for protesters and their supporters, which was established at Occupy Boston last year.

Successful librarians are community-connected, comfortable with stepping beyond their expertise, and able to use digital and social media tools for information access, content creation and sharing, and advocacy.

Of course, if we want librarians to support content creation with digital media and learn to lead and collaborate with diverse community stakeholders, we’ll have to build different types of library schools where people can learn these things:

  • Librarians will need training to support the development of people’s creative and digital literacy competencies.
  • Librarians will need to be youth media and public media specialists.
  • They will need public relations and public speaking skills.
  • Librarians will have to get good at using dynamic strategies of community engagement through both traditional face-to-face methods and with online and social media tools.
  • And they’ll need to identify and respond to the information needs of communities in the many ways recommended by the Knight Commission’s report on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy.

Given that librarians are embedded in more than 17,000 communities and institutions large and small in every corner of this country, it’s a thrilling time to imagine how to awaken the public spirit and nurture librarians as community leaders and civic activists.

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The Paradox of Being Mean

1 Mar

How refreshing to see my alma mater, Harvard Ed School, welcome Lady Gaga to campus to launch the Born this Way Foundation, dedicated to creating a safe community that helps connect young people with the skills and opportunities they need to build a braver, kinder world. It looks like they’re developing a youth media organization, complete with the now de rigeur traveling “Born to be Brave” bus!

Of course, it will take more than a bunch of smart teens with a bus and foundation money to address the challenges faced as young people discover the power, pleasures and paradoxes associated with “being mean.” Adolescents are developmentally focused on taking risks, pursuing experience for the sake of experience, and seeking out novelty, complexity, and intense situations. Engaging in meanness and stupidity – and discovering the complicated consequences – is part of the way we grow up.

The Thrill of Novelty and Unpredictability. There are healthy and unhealthy ways to acquire social power. Unfortunately, among some teens, one quick and easy way to gain social power is to watch or create a drinking video. There are thousands of them online. Several have more than one million page views. These videos feature young people drinking to excess, sometimes with humiliating consequences. A few days ago, Lower Merion High School in suburban Philadelphia sent a letter home to parents informing them about YouTube drinking videos featuring their students.

Controversial online content can be tasteless, gruesome, obscene, emotionally disturbing, full of rage and pain, or just plain bizarre. Videos may feature Holocaust deniers, exhibitionists, and dangerous drivers. You can learn cutting and other forms of self-mutilation by watching online videos. And fight videos are popular online entertainment, which feature children, teenagers, or young adults engaged in real or staged fighting. Almost every high school in America has a fight video online, such as this one from Hope High School in Providence, Rhode Island.  People, young and old, are attracted to novel and unpredictable content like this because of the adrenaline rush of heightened attention that it produces.

Opening Up Conversational Space for Controversy. In order to promote digital and media literacy competencies, educators can open up a respectful and safe conversational space to examine ethical and social issues associated with controversial online content. It’s not easy, however. Lots of teens will shrug off controversial content as no big deal, maintaining a pose of disinterested stoicism to avoid revealing genuine feelings on a complex and controversial topic. Many teens maintain high levels of secrecy involving their online activities and will not admit to exposure to offensive content or participation in problematic behaviors. But I’ve found one way to open up authentic dialogue about controversial online content by discussing a particular type of YouTube video: the online scary maze game pranking videos.

The Pleasure/Power/Paradox of the Prank. Pranking videos can serve as a starting point for launching critical conversations about the complex ethical relationships that exist among users of online social media. Nearly everyone knows somebody who takes delight in playing pranks. The pleasure of the prank can be described by the concept of symbolic inversion, where expressive behavior inverts or contradicts commonly held cultural codes, values, and norms. By inverting power relationships, pranksters gain a form of social power.

I have never met a 12- to 19-year-old who isn’t familiar with this online prank. The video phenomenon began around 2002 when interactive flash videos known as scare pranks or scary mazes began to emerge across the Internet. Upon clicking the link, the viewer is presented with a puzzle game that requires a high level of concentration, only to be disrupted by an ear-piercing scream and ghastly photos from horror films. Scary maze websites were originally shared via e-mail, chat rooms, or instant messages before the advent of YouTube.

A YouTube search on the keywords “scary maze game” displayed more than 48,000 videos (up from 11,000 in 2011!) which generally feature a person who is scared by playing the game. Videos have been created by YouTube users from Spain, France, Germany, Turkey, China, and other countries. The top-ranked video, “Scary Maze Prank–The Original,” has been viewed more than 25 million times! The video features a very young boy playing the maze game on his home computer. When startled by the sound of screaming and a gruesome face dripping with blood, he screams, hits the computer monitor instinctively, and then runs away from the computer, crying uncontrollably in a deeply visceral fear response.

Educators and parents can choose to ignore or engage with young people on this important issue. Learn more about the instructional methods I’ve developed to open up conversational space about controversial videos in Chapter 7 of my new book, Digital and Media Literacy: Connecting Culture and Classroom.

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In-Between Two Worlds: From Print to Digital

24 Jan

This is a version of the presentation I made at the January 22, 2012  “One Book, One State” event which was sponsored by the Rhode Island’s Center for the Book. More than 200 people gathered in a historic church just outside of Providence to hear Geraldine Brooks, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of Caleb’s Crossing, a work of historical fiction that brings readers into the life of the first Native American to graduate from Harvard University — in the year 1665.

I’ve been reading a lot more on my iPad these days. Reading online has some tiny frustrations: I miss the cover art and pagination of a printed book. But there are some deep pleasures. For example, I love the ability to highlight a digital text and then share my highlights with other readers. I love the “swish” movement of turning digital pages, I admit. Highlighting a moving, lyrical passage (and discovering that hundreds of others have identified it too) makes me feel connected to a community of readers.

From a scholarly point of view, however, we don’t know much about online reading. We know it can be different in many ways from reading from a printed page. This topic inspires my great curiosity, which is one of the many reasons why I’ve picked up my life and my family to come to the University of Rhode Island to serve as the Founding Director of the Harrington School of Communication and Media. I am relishing the opportunity to work with distinguished scholars and practitioners to create a new kind of communication school, developing innovative interdisciplinary programs that enable us to figure out how to help people acquire the new competencies required for full participation in contemporary life.

As I read Caleb’s Crossing on my iPad, I couldn’t help but have a highly personal response to this remarkable coming-of-age novel which offers readers a close-up exploration of the state of in-betweeness. It’s a major theme of the novel. We feel this state of mind as we see the young Native American boy, Caleb, encounter the strange world of the English settlers, and through the novel’s narrator, Bethia, the minister’s daughter, who gains insight on the intense beauty of the natural and spiritual world through her interactions with the Wampanoag natives of Martha’s Vineyard in the 1600s.

The state of in-betweeness is personally relevant to me. I’ve been living with it for many months, as I have anticipated the move from my beloved urban lifestyle in Philadelphia to a new life in Rhode Island, where the waves and the natural world are close at hand.  Reading the book helped me see with precision the exquisiteness of the state of being in-between. As Geraldine Brooks has captured it, it represents a place of possibility for both Caleb and Bethia as their encounters with the “other” create opportunities for deepening their personal and social identity.

Having a personal response to literature like this is certainly among the most profound joys of my life. It happens when people can not only decode and comprehend the little black squiggles, but when they feel deeply engaged in the reading process. Having a personal response to literature demands a confident stance toward reading. I’m lucky to be an empowered reader.

But I’m aware of the fact that many people never get to experience this pleasure. There are far too many reluctant readers in our society today. Too many people grow up today seeing reading as merely a chore, another set of hoops they must jump through on the way to graduation. Lots of people – and perhaps some here today – feel the urge to blame the iPad, the videogame, and the TV for this situation. But there’s no point to that.

Today, it’s more important than ever to stop the either-or thinking that pits print media in opposition to  digital media. In fact, the world of mass media, popular culture and digital media can help engage readers and promote intellectual curiosity. One example of this is work of filmmaker Anne Makepeace, whose film, We Still Live Here, offers insight on the experience of contemporary Wampanoag people who reconnect to their cultural heritage by reviving their native language. Digital media is not the enemy of print reading. Educators, librarians and authors — and ultimately all citizens– must recognize and exploit the many synergies that exist among the various types of new literacies that are emerging today.

In many respects, we are –all of us– living at a time of historic in-betweeness, as the world has shifted from a print-centered cultural environment to an increasing digital world. We may mourn the impending loss of wandering the stacks, cracking open the cover of a new book, feeling the weight of it in the hand. Yet we find ourselves surprised and pleased by the thrill of using new tools and technologies for the transformative practices of reading and writing. Living with iPads, e-books and digital media, I’m intensely aware of how many people are out there for me to discover and learn from. Like Caleb and Bethia, I relish the sense of possibility of self-discovery that results from being in-between the print and digital worlds.

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MacArthur Foundation v New York Times

26 Nov

I’ve been surreptitiously enjoying the ongoing “spat” of sorts between the MacArthur Foundation and Matt Richtel and other New York Times writers and contributors. It’s been a feisty and useful debate that demonstrates the still-robust nature of the very productive tension between empowerment and protectionist impulses on the American media education scene.

Why is it this fall season I see so many real benefits associated with picking a fight? (Hmm..perhaps this is a topic for me and my therapist!) In my view, the empowerment-protectionist tension captures exactly the genuine paradoxes at work in the lives of many teachers and parents today. Who doesn’t have a significant “love-hate” relationship with digital media, mass media and popular culture?

After nearly $80 million of MacArthur hoopla has been spent on demonstrating the wonders of digital media and learning, the NYT writer Matt Richtel has been exploring some of the omissions, paradoxes and contradictions in the enterprise,  nearly always featuring some of the MacArthur scholars in response to various and sundry critiques. For example, I especially enjoyed the October 23rd story on the children of Google executives who attend a Waldorf school where technology is not used.  When Richtel then wrote about the amplification of teenage identities and the resulting potential negative impact on human attention, intellectual curiosity and emotional responsiveness, the folks at MacArthur’s Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning hammered out a critique.

Dismissing or Trivializing Educator Concerns

There are some annoying characteristics about how this generally healthy debate gets played out in the blogosphere, however. I’m especially frustrated by a certain dismissive attitude about educators’ questions about or resistance towards the use of digital technology in education. Teachers who resist e-books are sometimes treated like pariahs, for example. Several times, there’s the insinuation that older teachers simply have to die out, like the dinosaurs. Perhaps I’m just too sensitive, but it doesn’t feel quite right to make teachers feel guilty or ashamed of their anxieties or their lack of interest in using technology. In my view, teachers’ attitudes about media and technology are a highly significant place of inquiry – a place of conversation and dialogue, not a “problem” to be “solved.”

The healthy tension between the NYT and the MacArthur Foundation mirrors an instructional practice that I have used with both educators and college students for several years (something I have written about in my new book, Digital and Media Literacy: Connecting Culture and Classroom). Called “Our Love/Hate Relationship with the Media: A Four Corners Activity,” the lesson never fails to generate meaningful dialogue about the many paradoxes associated with our complex and multifaceted engagement with print, visual, sound and digital media. Through a structured dialogue activity, participants inevitably reveal their capacity to articulate both their many “loves” concerning media and technology along with sensitive and often poignant reflection about those aspects of life with media and technology that they “hate.” The lesson works because it enables participants to deepen their awareness of just how many different aspects of contemporary life and cultural values are inflected by media and technology. Such dialogue naturally builds an appreciation for the many valuable perspectives across the whole continuum of attitudes and beliefs and it results in a clearer understanding of the practical need for digital and media literacy education in both higher education and in K-12 schools.

A Timeless Concern: The Impact of Media on Human Development

In critiquing the idea of neuroplasticity and the potential impact of digital media on attention, the MacArthur post actually quoted a silly Tweet from Siva Vaidhyanathan, stating “there are no wires in the human brain.” And so when Chrisopher Chabris demolished MacArthur’s own Cathy Davidson in reviewing her new book about the brain, attention, learning and technology, one line was particularly resonant:

Like many authors who embrace new ideas rather than build on what has come before, Davidson sets out to destroy the old beliefs, as if burning down a forest in order to plant new crops.

Perhaps that’s what’s most frustrating to me about the overall tone of the MacArthur digital media and learning project. Framed as “something completely different,” digital learning may lose touch with its deep roots in inquiry learning, creating ed tech champions but alienating the larger mass of classroom teachers who don’t get all doe-eyed and gushy over apps, cell phones and gaming in schools. That’s why it was so refreshing to see a nicely balanced, sensitive and nuanced piece from the New America Foundation’s Lisa Guernsey about the best approach to address digital and media literacy in the elementary grades. In my experience, I’ve found that elementary educators perceive many subtle ways in which media and technology displace other forms of expression and communication in problematic and limiting ways. Their concerns about media, popular culture and technology are worth respecting. But because they also fully embrace the opportunity to educate the whole human being, elementary educators can often make use of popular culture, media and technology in creative ways that support the development of students’ imagination, creativity, collaboration and communication skills.

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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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