Teaching (Digital) Media Literacy with a Cape after SXSWEdu
At SXSWEdu, I hosted a campfire session on media literacy. I used the this slide show that went over trending questions on how do teachers teach media literacy, what resources are available online, how do you avoid political fights, and how to teach students to get news on their phones.
Before the campfire, danah boyd in her keynote speech did also question how the process of truth seeking or etymology is working in the modern digital world. Important questions that I tried to respond to in this article on Media Shift entitled Teaching Media Literacy with a Cape after SXSWEdu.
As journalism teachers I think it is important that we not only share how we are teaching students to create journalism, but also read journalism online. The three “easy buttons” that I think we can all do and probably are doing consist of:
- Question Online Sources – Facebook, Twitter, and Google searches are “dumpster fires” of fake news and false information.
- Produce Journalism – Having students produce short journalism projects is a great way to teach media literacy skills and the major concepts of bias, and recognizing fact from opinion.
- Use Free Online Resources – From NewseumEdu to NAMLE to Checkology there are a wide variety of free online resources that are built to help any teacher teach media literacy.
