A few weeks ago, I posted about the importance of tech-ie literacy being taught in schools. Here is an article from PBS’s TeacherSource about media literacy.
Media Literacy as a Family Value
Right now I’m at an annual gathering of news executives and Web 2.0 activists in Miami, listening to speaker after speaker talking about the ever-changing media landscape. Even with all of these luminaries extolling the Internet on the conference stage, it was a dinner conversation over the role families play in fostering media literacy that got me thinking more than anything else here.
This is the second time I’ve attended the We Media conference, a gathering of some of the most interesting people involved in mainstream media and citizen journalism. There aren’t many people involved in education here, except for the good folks from Education Week; I also got the chance to finally meet my fellow PBS blogger Mark Glaser face-to-face for the first time.
Despite the lack of teachers here, I’m finding it hard to get through any particular hour of the event without someone mentioning the importance of media literacy. That should come as no surprise, since many of the people here are what you might call indirect media literacy activists, spending their time and resources creating tools and services that allow the public to create content relevant to their communities.
The opening night of the conference, I went to dinner with a group of several dozen bloggers. It was an entertaining affair, as is often the case when bloggers get together over mojitos and cupcakes. (I swear I’m not making this up.) I was fortunate enough to sit at a particularly engaging table that included NYU professor Jay Rosen and Slashdot editor Robin “Roblimo” Miller, among others. But the intellectual highlight of the evening was talking with blogger Tish Grier. She and I bump into each other a lot at Web 2.0 conferences, and we never have a shortage of things to talk about. On this particular evening, we were swapping family stories - life growing up, our parents and grandparents, and so on. As we chatted, we discovered something we both had in common: we were both raised in families where media literacy was encouraged at a very young age.
Tish recounts part of the conversation in a blog post:
My story: when I was 7, my Dad (a WWII vet with a third-grade education)taught me to read a newspaper. He also taught me to take in tv news broadcasts, and to listen to the different interpretations of the different broadcasters. He believed that an informed opinion on issues could only come from following different reports and perspectives.
