I chose the book The Teachers Guide to Media Literacy Critical Thinking in a Multimedia World by Cyndy Scheibe and Faith Rogow.
I would give this book a two thumbs up rating across the board! It is a fantastic resource to supplement not only this class but to use as a tool for incorporating media literacy and 21st Century skills into you classroom. This book does a really great job to support this class; it seemed to mirror and supplement each week. It is very informative when it comes to offering strategies to implement technology into the classroom. It does a great job of explaining media literacy and how to use it, as well as incorporate technology in the classroom in very effective ways. I received a lot of valuable information from this book. For an additional bonus, the book offers a companion website that includes all of the curriculum and lessons included in the book to use as a reference. It is great because you can make adaptations to the lessons to best meet the needs of yourself and your class. The book was an easy read and it does a great job to get you hooked. I found myself wanting to read more and more. It offered numerous ways to use media as well as ideas of curriculum and lessons to use in the classroom. Besides offering many resources and instructional strategies, the book had “reflection boxes” throughout the book, which encouraged self-reflection to what was just discussed. “It is possible to teach media without taking time for self-reflection, but you will be much more effective if you engage in this important part of being a media literacy educator.” (Scheibe & Rogow 2012, p. 7) I couldn’t agree more with this statement and found that having the boxes throughout the text reminded me to take time to self-reflect, which created a better understanding of the material.
Summary:
The book starts out by describing media literacy, the ISTE educational standards, the principles behind media literacy, the needs of educators and students when it comes to media literacy, and how to use the book effectively. Chapters 1-3 give in-depth reasoning about what they mean when they talk about media literacy education. They describe different types of media, going beyond technology and point out different types of media and the messages convey through all types of media. It discusses the components of media literacy and the importance critical thinking skills play when developing media literacy. The book discusses the topic of visual literacy. Taking into consideration the content of what you are looking at. “Replace the question, “What does it mean? with “When you see this, what do you do?” (Scheibe & Rogow 2012, p. 29) There was a great example about a yellow dot. Is it part of a traffic light, or the sun, or a smiley face? Visual literacy requires putting what you see into a relative context, which differs upon personal perspectives. In Chapter three the book discusses media literacy education, this is where they incorporated the ISTE standards and how they relate to teaching media literacy. Teaching students and yourself to ask questions when analyzing media messages. It talks about critical thinking and looking at the impact, context, and creditability of a source. This chapter laid the foundation for the following chapters in how to teach these skills in a classroom.
Chapters 4-7 lay out the pedagogy and practices for achieving media literacy education. The first section discusses reading and interpreting media messages. Teaching students to build a skill set to decode media documents and media messages they read. Asking productive questions such as, Is it fact or opinion?, Is it a reliable source?, What is the author's point of view?, and to draw conclusions using document-based evidence. These skills are the same as in traditional ELA standards, but just as important when taking into consideration media literacy. Using these decoding skills to find media documents and analyze them to see if they are going to be useful and supportive in whatever they are researching. Using teaching strategies that are unbiased and developmentally appropriate. I felt that these chapters pointed out the use of effective teaching strategies for overall instruction. It is just as important to keep these strategies in mind when teaching media literacy and technology skills. It gave real life examples of decoding strategies related to art and history. The book offered detailed ways to incorporate media literacy into everyday curriculum, by using it in everyday teaching strategies such as KWL charts and self-assessments. It gave examples of advertising, news reports, video games, and website home pages. How they can be set up to be misleading or bias. All the scenarios are interpreted differently from children to adults. Overall, encouraging, teaching, and promoting critical thinking skills in students when it relates to their media and technology lives.
Chapter 6 offered ways to incorporate media into every content area/ subject, giving examples of how to do it in each area. The ideas range from word clouds to electronic graphs and charts. Chapter 7 offers many detailed lesson plans that effectively used multimedia throughout the lesson and promotes opportunities for students to practice the media literacy skills they have learned. Oh my goodness they were all fantastic.
Chapters 8 and 9 are about assessment. Specifically, how to determine if your approaches to teaching media literacy have been effective. They also describe the challenges and benefits to media literacy education in the classroom. They offer assessing habits of inquiry with a traditional scale of inadequate, emerging, proficient, advanced, and elementary. Chapter nine was awesome because it challenged the question, “Sounds great, but I don’t have time! Getting past the barriers and why it’s worth it.” (Scheibe & Rogow 2012, p. 201) Teachers have excuses and reasons to why they are fearful or don’t work on creating a differentiated classroom. When I was reading the chapter they were all similar to those and they offered the same advice. Start slow, do one step at a time, and tweak it to fit your needs and those of your students, that way it will be less overwhelming and more effective.
Reference:
Scheibe, C., & Rogow, F. (2012). The teacher's guide to media literacy: Critical thinking in a multimedia world. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin
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