When we think
about literacy we need to think outside the box. We need to see it as more then
just reading and writing but also our oral communication skills, our thinking
skills and learning. Language is a fundamental skill that we need to develop at
a young age. Media Studies is just another element and way of learning
literacy. Media Literacy is incorporated into our curriculum and is required to
be apart of the learning process; the following excerpt is from the curriculum:
“This strand focuses on helping students develop the
skills required to understand create and critically interpret media texts.”
Incorporating
media studies into language can help students express themselves through a
number of media texts (i.e. with words, through images, through graphic
representations), help students lead a creative imagination and help construct
meaning behind media texts. Media is apart of the 21st century
learner and it is up to us educators to incorporate this style of learning to
into our classrooms. Media studies can encourage students to question,
evaluate, understand and appreciate their media culture. It can help students
to be more active and engaging. When it comes to expressing ourselves some do
it best in front of a group, others do it best through images and some express
themselves through their words. Each of these ways can be embodied with media
literacy. Educating our stude3nts on the tools and resources that media has to
offer can help encourage creativity and help students to learn and understand
by doing.
Throughout my
first month of teacher’s college we have created and learned a variety of tools
and resources related to media. Each week in Tech class we learn about
different websites and tools to create projects, presentations, and how to
interpret and use different brainstorming and mind map applications. The reason
I mention this class is because the tools gathered can be incorporated into a
students learning for literacy. For example if we wanted a student to create a
story and we allowed them to create a story on anything and in any way some
students would use their words, others may use images to interpret their
stories. When we allow learners to be creative in any means we are opening
their minds up to different possibilities. We give them tools such as Bubbl.us
or Popplet to get started on brainstorming and then introduce them to apps like
Comic Life and my Story Maker to start creating their stories how they want to.
Incorporating
media literacy to the classroom is an imperative way of blending the learning
for a student. It allows for students to be collaborative (both in the
classroom and at home), allows for student to interact more with society and
other students on a global scale and broaden their range of information sources
they have available to them. By
integrating media literacy into the classroom it is vital that we teach our
students about media and different types of technology we can use. As educators
we need to be open to learning about media ourselves so we can make it an
integral part of our teaching.
