DEJ 13

Question 1: Should media education have an explicit political and ideological agenda?

I do not think that media education should have an explicit political and ideologiical agenda. The article discussed that often times when media educators come together to collaborate that it leads to tension among the group. It seems that media education should be based on diversity and for those studying media literacy to develop their own ideas first and not be "spoiled" by others agendas.

Question 2: Based on your reading to date in this course, would you teach critical media literacy in the classroom? Why or why not? You must reference three prior course readings to justify your answer to this questions.

Yes, I would teach critical media literacy in my own classroom. I think that there are so many media skills that would be a great advantage in student learning. Students should be able to critique and analyze things that they read or watch in the media. "By sequentially focusing seven increasingly strong lenses on the news media, beginning with a close-up look at news photo, students learn to apply powerful cross-disciplinary skills of visual, news media, and information literacy to analyze current political issues." This was from the article, Seven Power Lens on 21st Century Literacy.

I would also use the article ,Learn Critical Thinking through Media Literacy to justify students needing to be able to think critically. "It is beneficial to all participating: students develop critical thinking skills and learn about media literacy; students use their critical thinking skills to score higher on standardized tests." Sometimes I feel that students are so used to having the answers handed to them that when it comes time to think critically or on there own they do not know how. I feel that teaching media literacy would help students in every grade.

The last reference source that I would use to justify my answer is, Measuring the Acquisition of Media Literacy Skills. In this article, researchers conducted a study to answer one central question , "How does media-literacy instruction, integrated within a yearlong course in high school English languagearts, affect the development of students’ message comprehension, writing, and critical-thinking skills? Their result were data that emerged from the study suggested the improvement that media literacy instruction had on the students' ability to identify main ideas in written, audio, and visual media. So, I feel that it is something that has been researched and is ready to be taught in the classroom.


References:
Atlock, D. "Seven Power Lens on 21st Century Literacy ." Multimedia Schools. (2003): n. page. Web. 18 Nov. 2011. http://www.noodletools.com/debbie/literacies/newsmedia/PowerLensSingle.pdf.

Hobbs, R. (1998). The seven great debates in the media literacy movement. Journal of Communication. 48 (1) p.16

Learn critical thinking through media literacy education. (2010, October 25). Retrieved from http://medialiteracycolloquium.wordpress.com/2010/10/25/learn-critical-thinking-through-media-literacy-education/