Why Media Literacy?

 

Media literacy is, shall and will always be involving the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and create media. The media mentioned here shall include among others:

(i)   television, (ii)  radio, (iii) Internet, (iv) newspapers, (v)  magazines, (vi) books, (vii)                billboards, (viii)               video games, (ix) music, (x)  and all other forms not mentioned here.

I have tried here to answer ‘The Why Media Literacy’ question in the following lines:

(i)           The importance of information in society and the need for lifelong learning has increasingly become significant in that we cannot be able to lead to the next step without media literacy.

(ii)          What about the increasing importance of visual communication and information in day to day experience in and outside class room.

(iii)         Media helps in shaping individual perceptions, beliefs and attitudes about the seen and the unseen.

(iv)         Media has a great influence in any democratic process in or outside classes.

(v)          There is simply a high rate of media consumption and therefore there is need to integrate it in learning/teaching process.

In my ASSURE lesson plan I focused on reflection of bending of light. Below are some of the images you would want to explore.

Ciao!

Guidance to Becoming Responsible Digital Citizens

Digital literacy involves finding, evaluating, utilizing, sharing, creating content using IT and the Internet. The activities may include writing, creating multimedia presentations, and posting information about yourself or others online. All of these activities require varying degrees of digital literacy.  However, It’s amazing to be SMARTER while using the internet in promoting digital literacy; that

(i)            Its not quite good to give all your personal details in terms of age, names or address. Keep some important features of yours confidential, you will be safe.

(ii)          There might be no need for you to meet someone you talk to online. Let online conversation be online with exception of the people you know.

(iii)         Restrict opening emails from untrusted sources. Do not accept.

(iv)         Beware that not all information got online are reliable.

(v)          Tell by communicating to others what you could have found on line, good or bad.

 

Long ago, the term “literacy” was synonymous with the printed word. Today, that definition has evolved and being literate necessitates more than simply interacting with text. We must be digitally literate, too. Teachers have an even harder task; we must cultivate this ability to adapt to constantly changing media scapes while simultaneously preserving students’ writing skills in their purest form. This may sound intimidating, but there are simple things you can do to help prepare students.

(i)           Teach How to Mindfully “Read” New Media.

(ii)          Help Students Become Makers and Tinkerers of Text

(iii)         Offer Guidance to Becoming Responsible Digital Citizens

Ciao!

Infused Lesson Plans with Digital Literacies

The Digital Age has brought us the following literacy types:

No.	Literacy Type	Description and Application
1.	Layered Literacy	Describes the way that print and digital overlap one another.
2.	Intertextuality	Created as a result of overlap between prints and digitals
3.	Transliteracy	Offers the capacity to read and write across a variety of media formats
4.	Electracy	Involves pedagogical skills essential for new digital skills
5.	Digital Citizenship	This gives rights and responsibilities of an individual within the digital world.

With these developments in the digital age, we dare need not to go back to yesterday, because we were different persons by then.

 

It is becoming increasingly important to know how digital literacy affects us the teachers and the learners. We therefore, need to translate these into some values to the learners. This can easily be done through:

(i)           use of Digital Sound, Moving Images, Digital Texts and manipulating Still Images.

(ii)          Learning how to summarize texts and write reports by teachers.

(iii)         Using any other additional related resources.

(iv)         Use of different learning activities that can be used to help students develop digital literacy skills.

I now think that it’s much better at this digital age not to predict the future but to task our selves simply to be able to plan, manage what there is and to be able to work tirelessly at creating what should and what could be done using digital Literacies in our infused lessons.

Ciao!

Digital Literacies from FutureLab

This is a brief review on the assessment of the Digital Literacies (from FutureLab) Gr 6-7 Science: Electricity in which students had Christmas decorations with flashing lights! In this case, the students produced a multimedia presentation to document their electricity learning.

Evaluation Tool for Primary School Case Studies: Electricity

Item Content	Multimedia Evaluation
	4 (V. Good):60- 79.9	5 (Excellent)-80-100
Collecting	Children participate in designing their curriculum by voting which involve gathering and collecting data, 76%
Organizing	Students worked together in groups of two or three for better organization, 77%
Manipulating		Students were able to use the videos, cameras and microphone,89%
Formatting	Students were make choice on which video and audio clips to include in the presentation,71%
Communicating		Students developed their group decision-making skills by deciding which pieces of information needed to be recorded., 92%

Overall Assessment 81%: Excellent

The review below gives a lesson intended to teach Newton's third law of motion. The table shows my assessment of this lesson (http://www.cpalms.org/Public/PreviewResource/Preview/35387)

Evaluation Tool for ‘Newton's 3rd Law of Motion

Item Content	Demonstration On Newton’s Laws of motion
	4 (V. Good):60- 79.9	5 (Excellent)-80-100
Collecting		Asking students to think about the meaning of the law and how it relates to the picture involves collecting data, 80%
Organizing		Students given some minutes to organize notes, 89%.
Manipulating	students able to manipulate  their understanding on the scale relative to the learning objective, 71%
Formatting	Asking students how they have been able to move an object requires them make formatting 79%	.
Communicating		The teacher communicates clearly to the students on how they will be exploring how rockets use Newton's Third Law, 90%

Overall Assessment 81.8% Excellent.

Ciao!