teachingmedia

Media Cloud

Media Cloud.

Media Cloud is a system that lets you see the flow of the media. The Internet is fundamentally altering the way that news is produced and distributed, but there are few comprehensive approaches to understanding the nature of these changes.

Media Cloud automatically builds an archive of news stories and blog posts from the web, applies language processing, and gives you ways to analyze and visualize the data. The system is still in early development, but we invite you to explore our current data and suggest research ideas

. This is an open-source project, and we will be releasing all of the code soon. You can read more background on the project or just get started below.

News Literacy & K-12 Teaching Standards

News Literacy & K-12 Teaching Standards.

I was pleased to be among those participating in "Rebooting The News," a three day event at Temple University in Philadelphia. (read School Library Journal's preview) Attendees came from journalism, news, education and activism, just to name a few. Among the highlights (to me) was hearing details of the newly developed News Literacy college course at Stony Brook University, New York. The developer of that course, Howard Schneider, spoke at the event on Friday morning, and according to what I saw/heard, what his students are going through is rigorous.

This is not about journalism education, but rather education for all. Working groups had lengthy discussions about what this might look like in American schools and why all of this is critical. Details are available at the event's wiki.

Another related initiative, dubbed The News Literacy Project, aimed at middle and high school students, is the brainchild of former Los Angeles Times reporter Alan Miller, and has just gotten started: details here. As part of the continuing project to spread the word about "news literacy" and its importance in K-12 education, I have volunteered to assist the RTN project's co-directors, Renee Hobbs (Temple University) and Bill Densmore (University of Massachusetts), correlate the program's goals and objectives to current K-12 teaching standards. In addition, I will use this space to provide links to news stories, previous research and surveys regarding young people, civic engagement and news. Frank Baker, (Media Literacy Clearinghouse) October 26, 2008 NOTE:

Read the Connected Classroom Wiki blog post about this project; or Inkworthy's post What is news literacy? A definition offered by Howard Schneider (Dean of Journalism, Stony Brook University): “the ability to use critical thinking skills to judge the reliability and credibility of news reports, whether they come via print, TV, on the Internet” (we don’t use the word truth) “reliable information is actionable information-- it allows news consumers to make a judgment, reach a conclusion, or take an action”

Rebooting The News conference participants' definition: "News surrounds us and as such news literacy is an essential life skill for everyone. To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson: Knowledge of current issues is essential to informed citizenship in a democracy. We are concerned about the effects of media messages on children and others. Modern participatory culture makes every citizen a potential creator of news in social media, blogs, email and the web. We believe a literate citizen understands the purposes, processes and economics of news.

Therefore, it is time for American education to include the acquisition of 21st-century, critical-thinking skills for analyzing and judging the reliability of news, differentiating among facts, opinions and assertions in the media we create and distribute. News literacy standards can be research based in multiple content areas. It can be taught most effectively in cross-curricular, inquiry-based format at all grade levels. It is a necessary component for literacy in contemporary society. "

News Literacy & Media Literacy: What's the difference? Not much really. If you take the time to read NAMLE's media literacy core principles and critical thinking questions, you might agree that news literacy does not have to be invented: much of the work exists already. K-12 Teaching Standards When we think about the news and how young people are exposed to and think about news, a number of topics arise, all of which can be used as teachable moments for educators.

News comes in all forms (TV, newspapers, magazines, Internet, cable TV and more). How do students use "critical thinking skills" (if at all) when they are exposed to news/information? Why do they seemingly believe everything they, see, read and hear? What are the pressures on news organizations today; how is news made and who makes it; what is the function of a gatekeeper of news; how is news received and understood? Why do Comedy Central and cell phones get more attention than traditional news sources? Who sets the news agenda; and who owns the media and why does it matter? All of these topics are perfect opportunities for educators to meet state standards requirements- for example: - critical thinking; critical viewing - media codes & conventions; - distinguishing fact vs. fiction; - understanding techniques of persuasion; - word choice; - point-of-view (perspective); author bias; - understanding informational texts and text features; - information/media/visual literacy; - economics and more.

Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy : March 2009

Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy : March 2009.

Commentary Learning Argument Practices Through Online Role-Play: Toward a Rhetoric of Significance and Transformation Richard Beach Candance Doerr-Stevens

One important literacy practice is the ability to formulate effective arguments to convince others of the validity of one's position. In this commentary, we discuss the literacy practices involved in formulating arguments as well as the challenges involved in helping students acquire these practices.

In contrast to more traditional approaches to teaching argument, we propose that students can learn these practices through participation in online role-play activities. We also argue that students will be more motivated to engage in online role-play if they are debating an issue or problem that affects their everyday lives and that will lead to change, an approach driven by what we describe as a rhetoric of significance and transformation.

 We believe that it is important that students learn how to engage in these collaborative arguments with others to address and solve problems in their everyday lives. In this commentary, we propose some activities designed to foster use of collaborative arguments in the classroom through the use of online role-play.

Learning to Engage in Written Arguments

Students typically engage in arguments in schools through writing persuasive essays in which they voice opinions on an issue, but they generally provide little support for those opinions (Felton & Herko, 2004). These formalized approaches to teaching arguments are often divorced from students' uses of arguing in everyday conversations in which they are more likely to employ counter-claims, rebuttals, and qualifications than in formal persuasive essays (Felton & Herko, 2004). Their persuasive essay tasks also occur in a rhetorical vacuum.

 One possible explanation for students' poor performance on National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) persuasive writing assessments (Greenwald, Persky, Campbell, & Mazzeo, 1999) has to do with the authenticity of test-taking rhetorical context in which students are writing for no authentic purpose and audience, a limitation that the new NAEP composition assessments are addressing. When students have a specific purpose and audience for their written arguments, they are more likely to consider counter-arguments and rebuttals (Midgette, Haria, & MacArthur, 2008). Moreover, in writing persuasive essays, students may have little ownership of or conviction about the position they are adopting, resulting in writing as no more than an exercise in “knowledge telling” (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1984).

 Instruction in argument is further limited by a focus on adopting a competitive, confrontational stance, particularly in oral debates in which the goal is to win over audiences and defeat opponents. This competitive approach differs from a more collaborative perspective in which people collectively posit, test out, and revise alternative positions within a larger context of engaging in community rhetorical action leading to change (Flower, 2008).

 Students' notions of argument are also shaped by their experience with portrayals of argument in the media designed to influence audience beliefs. Unfortunately, students often find that the media appeals to the beliefs of certain niche audiences who gravitate to those outlets reporting news consistent with their beliefs. While U.S. audiences largely acquired their news from the same outlets up until the 1970s—CBS, NBC, ABC, the AP, and major newspapers—since the 1980s, the news has increasingly been channeled and filtered by outlets such as Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, the Wall Street Journal, MSNBC, CNN, or the Huffington Post, targeted to certain niche audiences who then adopt the beliefs espoused by these outlets (Manjoo, 2008).

Audiences therefore construct their beliefs about information on issues according to their identification with their particular values groups—“conservative Republicans,” “environmentalists,” “libertarians,” “liberal Democrats,” and the like—associated with and constructed by specific media outlets. An analysis of Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and the Wall Street Journal characterized these outlets as “echo chambers” in that these outlets restrict access to alternative, competing news sources and negatively portray political opponents (Jamieson & Cappella, 2008).

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