Accelerating tech change poses challenge to teachers of media literacy

Accelerating tech change poses challenge to teachers of media literacy

University Park, Pa. - The onrush of technological advances over the past fifteen years -- including 24-hour news cycles, dozens of TV channels, real-time global reporting and high-speed Internet -- has made teaching media literary a more daunting, yet more necessary task than ever, a Penn State expert says.

"To be media literate is to possess the habits of mind needed to critically 'read' mass media communications, be they advertisements featuring sophisticated-looking women smoking cigarettes, quick-cut shoot-out scenes in action films, or coverage of far-off wars on the evening news," says Ladislaus M. Semali, associate professor of education.

"Rather than being passive consumers of movies, TV shows and video games, or looking at them as neutral vehicles for information with a valid claim to authority or truth, students learn that media 'realities' are often 'constructed' -- whether to produce an adrenaline rush, sell a product, or reflect a social or cultural idea that perpetuate negative stereotypes and myths," Semali notes.

He is author of the chapter, "Why Media Literacy Matters in American Schools," which appeared in the recently published book, "Media Literacy: Transforming curriculum and teaching" (Malden, MA: The National Society for the Study of Education, 2005).

Internet browsers and search engines have created a veritable jungle of information and misinformation, with Google alone indexing over 3 billion documents, half of which are sponsored by corporations -- the number of Web sites funded by educational organizations is far smaller.

Web surfing, chat rooms and cell-phone conservations may be fun for teenagers but they also devour a great deal of their time, especially when combined with hours spent in front of a television. Semali cites Gallup surveys indicating that inner-city high school students, by the time they graduate, have logged an average of 18,000 hours of television watching compared to 13,000 hours in the classroom.

Information technology is redefining literacy at a dizzying pace, Semali says. As teachers incorporate more and more the new media into their own curriculums, they need to establish a set of working criteria for assessing those media products (e.g. computers, DVDs, camcorders) used by their students and for evaluating the students' own media productions, which might range from social documentaries with interviews of local elected officials to advertisements pruned of hype and subliminal messages.

"College education students cannot take for granted that media messages are innocent and harmless. On the other hand, they should not assume that popular media content is automatically evil and therefore needs to be kept from their future students," the Penn State researcher notes.

He adds, "Certainly, the media enjoy a valued place in the quest for equity, social justice and global peace, as when, for instance, TV news coverage spurred outrage that helped advance the civil rights movement of the 1960s."