Media literacy

Right, this is a topic I've been thinking and working with a lot lately. The authors discuss this as a tool for secondary school (mostly), but the principles apply equally to adult learners and collaboration, learning communities and communities of practice.

The reference list is also a valuable resource. More to add to my reading list...

Robin Good's insight:

Paul Mihailidis, has an interesting essay on "Exploring Curation as a Core Competency in Digital an Media Literacy Education" in which he offers "a prospective attempt to build curation into the media literacy conversation..." by analyzing the analyzing effective curation practices, and six highly relevant teaching points for using a news curation tool like Storify in the classroom.

His essay "seeks to encourage instructors, particularly on secondary and tertiary education levels, to bridge the gap between informal learning outside of the classroom with formal learning to create a more dynamic place for students to advance critical inquiry, dialogue, and engagement through new forms of content creation, curation, and dissemination."

He writes: "Through student-driven, creation-driven, collective and integrated teaching approaches to curation, the framework aims to build towards savvy media consumption and production, critical evaluation and analysis, and participation in local, national and global dialog.

The framework also addresses the ability to see diversity and civic voice as core competencies in the curation process.

As students learn to build cohesive stories and ideas from a wide variety of sources, they can learn about the diverse types of content that inform a story, and the avenues they have-through social media tools and platforms-to be part of the discussion."

Curation can be an extremely effective approach to develop critical thinking skills and practices, as it forces students to evaluate, vet, verify and decide what really matters.

"When students develop a credible list of professional and personal sources around an issue and/or event, they must acknowledge how much subjective weight they place on a tweet, a blog, or a Facebook post and in relative comparison to an advocacy group, cable television operation, or news service. Arguing for the credibility of a myriad of voices online forces students to build valuable justifications for what they choose to believe, and why."

Informative. Examples-rich. Educationally useful. 8/10

Full essay: http://www-jime.open.ac.uk/jime/article/viewArticle/2013-02/html

I am very excited to find this work to share with my teachers. I continue to get pushback as I try to encourage them to allow time for students to curate.  The fact of the matter is that true curation takes time, but the skills gained by students cannot be ignored, and research and critical analysis are found throughout the Common Core Standards. Curation is also a pathway to personalized learning as students pursue their own areas of interest through the art of curation.

An interesting take on Digital Literacies

Check it out...

An interesting discussion about aspects of Digital Literacy with ideas for making the classroom more inclusive

Revoluções Digitais e Sociais.

Awarness is a good thing. changing habits is a different matter!