This week we join the National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE) in celebrating National Media Literacy Week.
Organizations, schools, educators and Media Literacy Week partners from all over the country have partnered with NAMLE to participate in events including #MediaLitWk classroom lessons, virtual events, online chats, screenings, PSA’s, panel discussions and more.
What is media literacy?
“Media Literacy is the ability to ACCESS, ANALYZE, EVALUATE, COMMUNICATE and CREATE using all forms of communication. The mission of Media Literacy Week is to highlight the power of media literacy education and its essential role in education today.”
Why teach media literacy?
As access to media has evolved, our students are inundated with information/misinformation 24-7 – and need a skill set for determining credibility.
From deconstructing websites to teaching Google search skills, we need to be having conversations with our children/students about the importance of media literacy and knowing the reliability of sources. It’s very easy to fall into the trap of “believing and sharing everything you read” because in most cases, the articles, websites, stories and images appear to be credible at first glance. Fact-checking is so important and often a missed step when rushing to complete an assignment. There are many resources available online to help students fact check. Get started by exploring some of our resources below.
Media Literacy Resources
Parent’s Guide
Building Healthy Relationships with Media: A Parent’s Guide to Media Literacy
NAMLE and Trend Micro created a parent’s guide to assist families in starting media literacy conversations at home. They focus on teaching children to ask questions. With real-life examples of conversations that may come up at home, the guide provides parents with some simple ways to encourage critical thinking. The guide is available in English and Spanish.
Conversation Starters for Parents
What is media literacy and why is it important? (Common Sense Media)
Explore questions by age – from preschool age children to teens 13+
How can kids figure out what’s credible news and what’s fake news? (Common Sense Media)
The quantity and types of news sources in the digital age have made it more challenging to determine what’s real and what’s fake.
Curriculum for Teachers/Students
Be Internet Awesome: Don’t Fall For Fake (Google)
Turning Your Students into Web Detectives (Edutopia)
Eduptopia shares “Five vetted resources students can use to separate truth from fiction” in their article By Jeff Knutson
5 Essential Media Literacy Questions for Kids – Video (Common Sense Media)
Use these five essential questions as a springboard, and help kids dig deeper with even more critical questions of their own.
Beyond Fake News: Media Literacy Toolkit for Educators (Common Sense Media)
From lesson plans about fact-checking to clickbait headlines and fake news, they’ve covered everything.
Student Challenge/Contest
Media Literacy Student Challenge | Explore Your Relationship With News (New York Times – by Katherin Schulten)*
* If any of your students craft an essay or create a video for the above Media Literacy Student Challenge, please contact us through commenting below. We would love to showcase their work.
Follow the Conversation on Twitter
The Media Literacy Week emoji is live on Twitter. When you tweet, just type in all or any of the following hashtags (#MediaLitWk #mlw17 #GetSmartOnline) and the emoji will automatically show up in your tweet.
Media Literacy is a skill all students must have. When we started teaching Digital Citizenship over 10 years ago, our media literacy focus was on teaching students how to identify “hoax” websites. As Google became the world’s leading search engine, we added searching tips to our workshops and growing resources. Today we recognize the need to address news and its distribution through social media. For more resources, tips and strategies, we will be offering a 1-hour workshop (Truth,Truthiness & Fake News – Media Literacy in a “Post Truth” Era) to EGUSD teachers/staff at the January 27, 2018, Digital Kids, Digital Classroom Saturday Seminar. We hope you can join us.
