well welcome to the media literacy now show i'm aaron mcneil today we're talking to your own roy he is visiting us from dallas texas a little colder here than it of so we've been talking all day about media literacy and now we're going to talk a little more your own spend teaching youth in the city of dallas for almost twenty years now because you care so much about teaching them these important life skills that we call media literacy so tell us a little bit more about what you what you teach well let me ninety six i had an opportunity to spend a week alone seminar to be certified in media literacy training so the methodist university and my mentor her name is deborah concept of where what and why we should be doing and learn about me literacy that it just hit me was such a strong impact and especially with my love and passion for music  for the first time in a long time of the involving music realizing that music was a type of a media form and i never really thought about it like that so that really made the light go on for me and  so just getting involved on that level and then also the awareness for was having taken for granted so much for being exposed to certain media and media being exposed to have an access to me and i never had thought about it like most people you know it just really just made a strong impact on my awareness where where i was with things  and how other people that were just like me were being affected by media and in such ways that we never even would imagine because we never we never think about it when we take so much for granted you know how did you come to you take part in this class what what what made you come to an understanding that there was this thing called media literacy that you will learn about i read somewhere in an advertisement about the a very interesting i really would like to attend his worship so i was working in a school at the time and i wasn't in the school district and i talked to the principal because it was going to be a whole week that i would need to be  and since i had done some projects there with the kids at his school and he saw the you know the fact that it was having with the key is a positive effects that he had with the keys of the programs i was doing he said hey no problem  were coach and you realized that the media was having an effect on the kids and that you wanted to teach them something about understanding the messages that they're seeing and so this class was the first thing that you really got you launched yes it was it really was so why why it's important for kids well today just like what happened to me the benefit for me with the light going off just realizing that when i asked sense now you know and so i thought about all the things i had been doing with children involved and music and stage running yeah and that's when i realized that see how it all fits and could be in it could really all be under that umbrella you know you literacy is because since media literacy covers all the different media formats no matter whether you know the visual part of a performance from most the time a lot of times from the time they're in the creel so you've got the students in in the room you're going to teach them media literacy what's the first thing you do what do you ask them well the first thing i know that i asked hands to go up and then i wait and wait really they don't have an answer no one else and i mean sometimes you get all kind of different houses i mean i think what does it matter it matters because with i'm there to teach them about media literacy they're not going to really understand what in the world i'm are talking about if they don't have a basic understanding especially a simple understanding of what media is so the definition years ago i came up with that i give them enough found that it helped me to go forward immediately was that media is something that you can get information from  h that definition sure they would they were sooner or later realize that there's talking about t v and radio station you know mass communication organization but but before what i'm trying to do with them right know they need to just get the basic simple just show it out now you know that what you want them to get out of your class what i want them to get is basically is an understanding that media literacy is basically a process that we go  through trying to help people not just him kids but everybody parents teachers everybody that we're teaching about the the different ways we use a variety of media formats as communication tools in our society especially today because with the way technology has grown in leaps and bounds and everything you know it's important that media literacy is really just a benefit of that is designed so that it will increase their critical in their analytical thinking skills and this is what a lot of kids that are falling short in school this is what they're missing and so they need anything that's going on par with them to increase their critical in their analytical thinking skills and media literacy is a good way to do that because you're dealing with a different variety of media that you're showing them how to better understand because they're already using a lot of different types of media to communicate themselves they just don't think about it you don't have to show the kids these days and our society hardly very much about it hands on with some of the the little toys in the immediate things that we use to communicate what each access and them you know they can have an opportunity to be able to that that's part of the you know going back to the definition of media literacy which media literacy is the ability to access and evaluate and produce communication in a variety of forms media technologies so then we go back and break that whole definition down they understand and then it's important that they do learn how to analyze and how  their target audience is their friends and social media you know or if somebody is just just really really just focus on trying to come up with something where they can create to  right well you got to be careful what you're trying to go viral with because the again maybe implications of something that you may be doing in the process of what you created could be illegal or some parts of it  you that after the scandal and has a little too late i think that they should be doing looking into these things to prevent the scandals and again that goes back again to what we're talking about getting these kids more where  become and media literate person for one thing so that they can be able to avoid some of the pitfalls that they can easily fall into by simply just not haven't the ability to really realize what they are actually  when they're produces certain types of media whether it's the photos or was the video over the sin and takes to people or you know just all kinds of things like that but what i really would like to see happen is that the focus of media literacy is to allow all the states in the country to have it so that in the legislator they were passed the laws so that media literacy training would become  part of the essential elements so they they say that you know it's essential for these kids to have math and you know reading and things like this but i was saying but what they are not looking at these days i'm saying is that right now is more crucial than ever that our children are there to be sure become a central part of the central elements you know with for them to get this training because from birth now before they even get to school or pre k anything at this there are already been exposed to a lot of these different types of technology that we're using in everything and again with that the behind the hands own that they're going to get what is themselves by trial and error or the neighborhood of relatives they're going to get their hands on this that's a given but without someone teaching the theory about the different types of me that they're involved with they're always going to be so you know subjected to some pitfalls that they could have of void it you know and i always like to use analogy just the same as if you can you know you teach a kid how to play some music whether whatever instrument it is but just a hands on approach but if you're doing that and you're still not introducing some point in a thing to do in music theory then you still  given the full benefit of well rounded you know knowledge of the language of music because it is a language and the same thing with media basically is basically like dealing with language itself because in different different formats and media you actually do have to learn certain types of language just like in t v production you had to learn production language you know to be able to function in those type of formats and that type of arena and the same least be aware of or least be thinking about because it's going to determine whether you successful in that you know with the type of media or not i was there for their future for the for job opportunities in the twenty first century that sounds like something that our students are going to need most definitely this person would go forward for the job opportunity is concerned we we definitely are nobody's disputing the fact that we are the hand in this country when it comes to technology type jobs you know that's why we have to get them involved in an early age and sort of becomes a part of the center was because wilma do that early age then what they're going to be able to do is to to get just like they get the b c s and they get the math you know the reading they don't think about that when they get it they you know they don't think about it more and it should be the same with media literacy how do you think legislation is going to help what you do well legislation that would require or encourage or raise military just as a priority in the schools how would that help well to me working from the legislative ian to get me to literacy legislation passed that's getting the grounds play i mean look the ground cultivated so did more sees can continue to get planet so that we can eventually get there is for every state in the country adopting the media literacy training as part of the central elements because in that way nobody has to be out there trying to beat the century i'm not knocking needed by they're still out there they just only has a focus of just they just you the blanket label of literacy and they're still getting a lot of support i mean from quite a few people and entertainers you know had to lead this to get a lot of people who are supporting just basic literacy literacy programs but the problem i have with their ears they have to understand those most of those literacy programs were developed a long time ago and most of what a steal out there hanging in the same format that they were then previously to me they have to understand if much more literacy back in the day it was basically simple like if you're a literate person it means you can read and write but if you cannot read and write society to stamp you writing as an illiterate person because you couldn't read or you can write but there was about it many years ago but what about today in the twenty first century where we are communicating so many other ways besides reading and writing so does media literacy the need for media literacy so that way all the different more to media type format that we use to communicate with each other in users too will allow you to save remain or become a media literate person because my prediction is within five years or less those that are not becoming the media literate person in five years ago say a list society we're pretty much look at those people as being illiterate because they're not going to be able to function so to speak in a normal basis on a jobs sometimes even in your home because  and certainly not in learning environments because they were just won't be able to keep up you know similar to the analogy of people used to use of force people that refused to accept computer they're saying yeah and we all know what happened to those people rigid because i mean we used to have to beat the doors of the people just to become computer literate but nobody has to you know talk about computer literacy anymore i mean  refused to become media literate so we've got to do something here to have to do something we have to that's our future our kids our future and if we don't prepare our future we're going to remain behind  technology jobs and and they're going to also continue to run into so many problems you know people still complain about how they dress how to talk and the different types of things and these fairs that they come up with and they don't seem to realize where they get