Media Literacy - part 3

Splendidlittleblog has a small, intermittent series on Media Literacy, for which I attempt to maintain. Today I was reading another post by Andy Carvin, one of my fast-becoming-favorite bloggers on the subject of education and media. He had the opportunity to interview Dan Rather at the South By Southwest conference that happened this month. (Brent & I are kicking ourselves that we didn’t make time to attend!) Carvin discussed with Rather “the role of media literacy in terms of helping people recognize the difference between online resources that are thorough and unbiased versus those that have an axe to grind.” Being a former history teacher (actually, I’ve only student taught, and then I ended up back at our media business again), this was a HUGE part of how I taught history - getting students to understand that analyzing documents begins with analyzing the source itself.

One of my favorite disciplines in educating students in history is by doing photo analyses. I first ask students to just take a look at the photo and begin to study it quietly for a few minutes. Then I lead them through a series of questions (is it black and white? what does that tell you? what is happening in the photo? etc), in order to get them to start engaging with the time period. Finally, after they write down their observations and theories about what is going on, I’ll dive into the subject matter. For example, in my lesson on bias in historical documents, I showed them this picture:

I then told them the story about Dorothea Lange who was a photographer for the US government that documented the Great Depression and how it affected rural Americans. Her job was to look for evidence that American migrants needed help from the government. Lange found a widow named Florence Thompson who was living in a camp with 1000’s of migrants in California. Lange posed this mother, and told her where to look. She took 6 photos, looking for more & more compelling shots until she finally got the right one. I lead right into explaining how oftentimes photographers, writers, filmmakers, etc, have bias, and want to share their “story” or perspective with you through their eyes. This goes for both people in history and people in the 21st century.

Anyway, I said all of that to say that I found Carvin’s question to Dan Rather an important one when it comes to media literacy. Will educators continue to share with their students how to read and learn using our highly-accessible media? Additionally, are we training the younger generation to take responsibility for producing quality media that is ethical and benefits society rather than producing careless, or even destructive material via media (a la Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will)? Check out highlights from Carvin’s interview here.

Bonus: Check out the “What is Literacy?” handout which lists a number of questions that help readers analyze what they are reading online.

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