This course serves as an in-depth examination of the ways in which popular forms of mass media have been incorporated into various educational settings, from kindergarten to graduate school. This course looks critically at the range of rationales that drive educators to use film, video, newspapers, magazines and comic books as educational tools in the classroom. We examine those practices which qualify as media education, including the study of television news, advertising, media economics, and media violence. We examine the varying reactions of children and young people regarding the formal learning of media analysis and media production in the classroom, and we explore various theories of the presumed impacts of this pedagogy on learners, teachers, parents, and the media industry.
Teachers have a good deal of ambivalence about media culture.
Most see television as a tool for learning about the world, for relaxing and being entertained. Because media culture can be a tremendously powerful force in a child's life, some scholars and educators argue that if children are given the critical thinking skills and an active sense of participation, media culture can be a productive tool in the classroom to build reasoning, communication and critical thinking skills. This course will explore how media literacy concepts ihave been applied to the K - 12 curricula in language arts, social studies, health, and the fine arts. Media education is defined here as the attempt to teach media literacy skills, the ability to access, analyze and produce communication in a variety of forms, an extension of the traditional literacies needed to participate in the society in which we live. Instead, media literacy pedagogy involves asking questions about media messages concerning authorship, intention, point of view and construction methods.