A few days back I kinda jumped on a social media bandwagon reposting the Jimmy Kimmel video, Can you name a book? I cringed when I watched that video. And I had an icky feeling when I hit the Tweet button. But I did it anyway. Kimmel referred to a Pew survey released in March that explored […]
News literacy tools: Advice, four sites and a new app (Swiipe)
January 26, 2018 by 2 Comments
One of the reasons our students find and use news that is less than credible is that their news habits are less than energetic. Among the ten key trends Pew researchers gathered from among their research reports on social and news media were: Use of mobile devices for news continues to grow. Two-thirds of Americans […]
Thinking with the Super Bowl
January 24, 2018 by 1 Comment
Here in Philadelphia, we’re particularly excited about this year’s Super Bowl. It’s a bit of a challenge to remember that a lot of learning that can happen beyond what happens on the field. Each year, media literacy consultant Frank Baker reminds me that this major sports event is also particularly ripe for media literacy learning. In a […]
A true gift from SHEG: DIY digital literacy assessments and tools for historical thinking
December 20, 2017 by 1 Comment
You may remember Stanford History Education Group (SHEG) for its groundbreaking and utterly depressing report, Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone of Online Civic Reasoning. In the November 2016 Executive Summary, the researchers shared: When thousands of students respond to dozens of tasks there are endless variations. That was certainly the case in our experience. However, at each level—middle […]
UNESCO Launches Five Laws of Media and Information Literacy (MIL)
February 20, 2017 by 1 Comment
This week UNESCO launched a framework illustrating its Five Laws of Media and Information Literacy (MIL). This global strategy marries the large, but often separated, disciplines of information literacy and media literacy and creates a common vocabulary for folks in multiple areas of knowledge to engage in conversation. It also positions these critical literacies as […]
Truth, truthiness, triangulation: A news literacy toolkit for a “post-truth” world
November 26, 2016 by 44 Comments
We were guaranteed a free press, We were not guaranteed a neutral or a true press. We can celebrate the journalistic freedom to publish without interference from the state. We can also celebrate our freedom to share multiple stories through multiple lenses. But it has always been up to the reader or viewer to make […]
UniversityVideos.org: search, transcripts, and automatic clipping!
November 13, 2016 by Leave a Comment
I make so many discoveries through my grad students’ Weekly Search News presentations. This week, Emma shared Universityvideos.org. The new free video library, created by the MicroSearch Corporation curates academic videos and the metadata from a vast array of Univerisity YouTube channels, as well as TED and TEDx talks, scientific and cultural institutions like NASA […]
On magazine covers and media literacy
April 11, 2016 by Leave a Comment
Whether they are composed of photographs or illustrations, magazine covers are one of many examples of media offering candidates free coverage. They are also carefully constructed media messages ripe for closer reading and deconstruction to further our students’ digital, visual and political literacies. In his recent article in MiddleWeb, media literacy expert and consultant Frank […]
What is my movie? a cool new movie search
March 21, 2016 by 1 Comment
What is my movie is a remarkable search tool that can help those of us with memory issues remember the title of that film we are struggling to remember. Simply type anything you do remember in the search box and What is my movie will try to match your search terms among metadata from field […]
Political TV Ad Archive (and a resource round-up)
February 14, 2016 by Leave a Comment
A media literacy opportunity like this comes along every four years. Political advertising is expected to reach several billions of dollars this season, leaving most Americans both barraged and confused. Political TV Ad Archive, a free project recently launched by the Internet Archive, arrived just in time to support this learning opportunity. It is already […]
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