Where I Am and Where I Want to Go
Whenever curriculum shifts, the high school library moves with it. My school’s ELA department has been hard at work designing and redesigning new class offerings and updating their lesson plans together, and one element that has emerged that I’ve been working on contributing to in my role is media literacy.
Skills in information and media literacy are obviously central to the library mission, and ELA’s new course offerings include a new version of our Media Studies offerings and more units that emphasize these skills in both standard curriculum and in electives. Naturally, my coworkers are looking for a sounding-board to work with them in finding the most useful texts and choices for unit activities.
If you had asked me about my comfort level and understanding of media literacy some years earlier, I might have expressed greater surety about my knowledge and the current state of this topic. AI, fake news, and other immediate trends have really awakened me to the reality that, especially in a climate of rapid changes, one can never really rest on past laurels and assume that one has answers without doing some footwork to make sure to be current and out ahead of what students themselves will need to know. Likewise, the question of options for differentiating this content is as broad as the types of media that high school students consume. Some of our strategies involve not just evaluating others’ work, but responsible content creation and individual thinking that students must construct themselves, ranging from podcast episodes to blogs just like this one.
Here are some sources that I’ve looked at while working these questions out with my fellow teachers. Some of our process has involved sharing some background reading for our own use to inform approaches with students. Some of the links that informed our discussion are found here:
Edutopia: Media Literacy in High School
In our collaboration process, I had specific requests for information to address AI in classrooms as a more specific topic, as well as interest in ALA’s links on lateral reading and lesson plans on fact checking. The three links below include a make-and-take slide deck shared through my CESA’s library networking, as well as some of the resources I’ve already shared with those teachers in response.
Comments
Post a Comment