As a community educator I view the
field of media literacy and education somewhat differently than traditional
teachers. I see the potential for civic
engagement, media literacy, and community collaboration. Youth today are empowered to explore the
world with the tap of their fingers, community educators need to provide the
portals to connect those taps with relevance in both a local and globalized
partnership.
The challenges facing educators,
both within structured education and the community, is the availability of
resources. “State departments of
education do not recognize media literacy or media education as a discrete
subject area in which states award licenses to teachers or administer
standardized tests to student.
Therefore, faculty are not trained to teach students to analyze and produce
media, nor are such classes mandated as part of the student’s coursework. Interested teachers must pick up the skills
on their own…..” (Goodman, 2003, p. 100) Without a concentrated
effort to train teachers in not only the use of media, but in media literacy
there will continue to be challenges for inclusion in the community.
During my involvement, over the
past year, with Project Isaac I have seen this shortcoming. I was approached by the site coordinator of
this afterschool program to “teach the teachers” in digital storytelling. Through the development of assignments in
this course I have identified the need to provide media collaboration between
the community and the educational system.
One person cannot change the education system, but one person can make a
difference in the media literacy of many.
As an assignment for ONLR 6305,
Advanced Education Technology and Media, I developed a collaborative media
project that could be used in a K-12 setting.
That project involved taking digital storytelling in the form of a Story
Box to Project Isaac within the region. It
is the concept behind this collaboration that speaks to my desire to bring
technology into education through the community.
The text explores the relationship
between media and education and offers some interesting insight. “Technology integration has historically
occupied the instrumental wing of the media education field. From this perspective, technology has been p promoted
as a highly efficient instrument that can aid teachers in delivering
information to students.” (Goodman,
2003, p. 10) The educational system is slow to change, and
realize that media is no longer an audio visual cart that gets pulled out to
show a movie in the classroom, that audio visual cart is now at the fingers of
the students for many hours during the day.
As I proceed down the educational path
I plan to continue to build my own critical media literacy skills so that I can
provide technology support for my passion of educating the community about
history. I strongly believe that in order
to bring change about in media in the classroom there will need to be more
active participation from within the community.
As Goodman says, “Youth media really was, and continues to be, a
movement that is nurtured and sustained by nonschool institutions.” (Goodman,
2003, p. 18)
There are many facets of my own
education in the 1970s that my grandchildren will never be exposed to, such as
the turquoise AV cart that would roll periodically into the classroom, instead
they will be inundated with media on a daily, if not hourly basis. I did not need to understand how the movie
was created, or even how the projector worked, I only needed to absorb the
content. Today’s generation no longer
waits for the AV cart, they carry it with them, and they do need to understand
how it works and why it works so that they can critically absorb the content.
The following resources provide both direct and indirect
support to the theory and practice of community involvement in media literacy
in education.
Goodman, S. (2003). Teaching Youth Media: A
Critical Guide to Literacy, Video Production, and Scoial Change. New York:
Teachers College Press.
Nice connections between the course readings and the need for community-based media literacy programs! I'm really interested in project Issac! Please share success stories from you work there and let me know if there is anything I can do to help!
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