Understanding Media Literacy

After reading “A Review of School-based Initiatives in Media Literacy Education,” I took way the following point: “Educators have diverse and conflicting perspectives about mass media… Media literacy education has risen visibility in K-12 schools throughout the 1990s, and although still proportionately small, a growing number of school-based programs are in place at the elementary, middle, and high school levels” (43).

Defined generally as, “the ability to access, analyze, elevate and communicate messages in a wide variety of forms (Aufderheide & Firestone, 1993, p. 7) media literacy emphasizes both analyzing media and creating media. Furthermore, what was interesting to read was that many teachers discover media literacy as an instructional tool simply from trying to motivate student’s attention and interest in learning, without any awareness that a body of 25 years of scholarship and theory exists on that subject.

Applying Media literacy in the classroom, it was noted that teachers are motivated by the opportunity that media literacy offers them to help transform the culture of the classroom and the school onto a place where student’s voices are valued and respected, where classroom learning is linked to the student’s lived experience, where students can develop the confidence to express themselves in wide variety of forms using language, imagery, and multimedia technology.

Lastly, Media literacy education has entered the K-12 world through many portals, including English language arts, social studies, fine arts, library-skills and educational technology, vocational education, and health education.
Thus, Media literacy in the United States is emerging not only from statewide or school districts initiatives but also from the bottom-up energy of individual teachers who value the way that using media, technology, and popular culture improves the quality of student motivation, self-expression.

Overall, I was able to gain an appreciation for how Media literacy can be used by teachers and educational alike.