In today’s day and age, it is important for students to develop their media literacy skills at a young age. Technology in the class room has become the norm and the traditional methods of learning, are slowly being pushed aside by technological advancements such as media texts, graphics, sounds, and mobile devices, which are being integrated into the classroom and incorporated in teachers daily lesson plans.
According to The Ontario Curriculum, to develop student’s media literacy skills, they should have opportunities to interact with a variety of different media tools and be able to explore and consider how these different media texts can be applied to their everyday lives. This is why it is important for us as teachers, to effectively introduce Media Literacy to our students so that they media literacy tools that are appropriate for their given grade level. If not, it is my job as a teacher to use my professional judgment and identify the learning needs of the students in my classroom.
Edutopia is great resource for teachers in the media strand. It is a website founded by the filmmaker George Lucas that encourages innovation in the classroom. The website has an online community that shares core strategies for teaching in areas of project-based learning, comprehensive assessment, teacher development, and technology integration among others. When we were introduced to this website in class, I was amazed at the variety of resources and lesson plans that this website had to offer for teachers. It is truly amazing to see that are actually alternative and unique ways and ideas out there for teachers to use a the simple click of a button.
While browsing Edutopia and looking for a unique resource for media literacy, I stumbled across an article for new teachers on technology integration in the classroom. http://www.edutopia.org/article/new-teachers-technology-integration-resources. This article has many strategies and tools to help new teachers effectively incorporate technology to guide educational activities and objectives in the classroom. The page provides tips and strategies on how to get started integrating technology and teaching and gives links to other related blogs on the same topic. For example, one of the blogs gives 3 strategies of balanced tech integration for using Edmodo in the classroom, Google sites, and Google Drive. This page also provides multiple resources for evaluating and selecting technology tools, managing technology in the classroom and teaching digital literacy and citizenship. All of these topic are extremely important to help students develop the skills required to understand and develop their media literacy.
Below is a photograph that I found on digital literacy and citizenship. I thought that it would be a fitting way to end my blog post because this image displays many of the social media tools that students may access and provides the acronym “think”. As teachers, it is important for us to educate our students to “think” before we post because we always have to be aware of our digital footprint and some of the repercussions of posting something on the Internet without fully acknowledging the possible outcomes of our decisions.
I hope that you enjoyed my blog and I look forward to continuing my strand blog assignment.
Kevin
[Online Image].Retrieved from https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/pmate-ppmee.nsf/eng/wz02162.html
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