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A growth in the popularity of remix culture has led to the phenomenon of people creating videos that explicitly imitate or copy an original work. In order to explore the potential educational value...

Efforts to integrate digital media and information literacy into education are expanding, and some schools have already adopted a whole-school integration approach. There are many pedagogical practices for using audiovisual media in ways that support learning. Media-based activities support literacy development when they strengthen the oral language, inference-making, and reasoning skills that are required for reading comprehension. To learn for a lifetime, the most practical competence is the ability to ask good questions and get answers in order to make wise decisions. The active process of learning to formulate good questions is an essential life skill that school, public, and academic librarians can help to develop in learners and patrons alike. Librarians in school and public libraries have done amazing work in paying attention to stereotypes that exist in children’s literature and books. They can also help students and parents unpack and reflect upon the stereotypes offered in children’s television shows, movies, and games. Close reading of media—the core pedagogy of media literacy—builds a habit of mind that promotes deep awareness of and sensitivity toward the rhetorical purposes of informing, entertaining, and persuading, whether it is print, video, or web-based content. There are challenges to using media effectively in some settings, including restrictive school policies for video use, how to assess credible sources, and choosing the most effective pedagogy for an audience.

Film programming is a vital element for libraries today, and there are key features of effective programs that create social and interactive experiences. Although it can be difficult to design film programs that create community, given library constraints of time and talent, partnering with community organizations can help create library film programs relevant to the communities they serve. As with author visits, filmmaker appearances, whether live or virtual, can provide audiences insight into motivation, imagination, and the creative process. Media influence our attitudes and behaviors in complicated ways not fully understood. Overuse of video games and the rise of consumerism, cyberbullying, sexting, and online pornography are real concerns. Digital citizenship is about access as it relates to the normative behaviors and knowledge that are needed for responsible participation in digital culture. To counter the paradigm of risk and harm of media use and youth, some librarians are assessing the real needs of people in their communities and using intentional and appropriate use of new media for young children, teens, and at-risk populations. Because film and media engage the head, heart, and spirit, they can stimulate complex discussion about social, political, moral, and ethical issues.

Authorship is a fundamental impulse that’s rooted in the value of “telling your own story.” When people engage in practices of creating media, they deepen their understanding of the constructed nature of all forms of media and can shift their identity in important ways. As people gain confidence in self-expression and recognize the value and power of using communication to address community and national social and cultural issues, they take on the role of active citizens in a democratic society. The library has always been a source of inspiration for people who want to make things as well as a community hub where people can come to learn, create, and explore possibilities. Makerspaces and media centers can support the mission of the library. Many academic librarians have made a deep commitment to supporting student media creation as a dimension of their academic work. And whether it’s to explain library services, document a community event or history, or market the library, when school librarians are themselves digital authors, they often have a broader, deeper appreciation of the creative process and recognize the potentially transformative impact that such learning experiences can have. Creating media can be important for advancing self-expression and learning, but it is also a time-honored way to deepen media analysis skills. Getting the balance between creative freedom and creative restraint in media production can be challenging, but from creating storyboards, book trailers, or parody music videos to documentary filmmaking, creating media in the library can reap multiple benefits and can prove that it’s through creating and collaborating that people of all ages learn best.

Librarians and educators are lifelong learners, connecting people, spaces, and film and media resources in ways that delight, engage, and transform. Because film and video are so much a part of our culture, access to film and digital resources in libraries is critical. Film and digital collections do not always receive the same level of love and appreciation that librarians hold for books, but they deserve equal footing. Librarians are increasing community engagement through the use of film screening and discussion sessions. But librarians may not uniformly have the skills in place to create robust post-viewing discussion experiences, according to research conducted in hundreds of public libraries. Some educators are exploring the value of online dialogues through synchronous and asynchronous video create robust opportunities for interpreting, discussing and sharing ideas about film and media. Teachers have different motivations that underlie their interest in digital media and learning, and professional development programs can be designed in ways that are sensitive to differing motivations and areas of interest. For their own professional learning, librarians rely on email listservs, which democratically enable any member to bring forward a question or solicit the experiences and opinions of the professional community. Globally, the concept of media and information literacy (MIL) is on the rise as librarians and educators link the information and learning process and the decision-making process in using appropriate resources and technology for critical thinking. Information literacy is a key pathway to promote the competencies required to use film and media for learning purposes.

Throughout life, people use film, videos, and media for entertainment and learning. In an increasing number of school, public, and academic libraries, people get opportunities to screen and discuss movies, make short animations, learn to edit videos, and develop a sense of community and civic engagement through shared media experiences. Through innovative programs, services, and collections, libraries are helping people acquire film and media literacy competencies. This book reveals five core practices used by librarians who care about film and media: viewing, creating, learning, collecting, and connecting. With examples from more than 170 school, public, and academic libraries in 15 states, the book shows how film and media literacy education programs and services in libraries advance the lifelong learning competencies of patrons and learners from all walks of life. How does it happen? Film screening and discussion programs deepen people’s appreciation for the art of film. Creating media in libraries advances literacy competencies, builds collaboration skills, and promotes community empowerment. In schools and universities, librarians help people critically analyze moving image media as they learn from it. Librarians make important choices in how they select and access film and media now that streaming media, social media, and other digital technologies are transforming access. Through partnerships, librarians help bring film and media education into communities, aware that opportunities for people to both consume and create moving image media help connect generations, cultures, and communities with important issues and ideas.

How we use audiovisual media has changed dramatically in the past 10 years. What we watch and how we watch have both been transformed by the rise of the Internet and digital culture. Naturally, as a result of this reality, educators are changing how they teach with and about film and media. Today it’s important that film and media literacy education provides everyone everywhere with a fundamental set of competencies that enable them to both enjoy moving image media and learn from it. Film and audiovisual media are texts that have as much value as books and print media, and new forms of film distribution are creating opportunities to develop film collections that reach everyone around the globe. Often in partnership with community organizations or media makers, school, public, and academic librarians bring film and media education into and through their libraries. They are also well positioned to provide resources and trainings to help people of all ages critically analyze news and information in a posttruth era. This book was written for public, school, and academic librarians and others with an interest in utilizing the emotional power of film and the fascination with popular culture to inform and entertain their communities as well as to help create discriminating consumers and media makers. The five major practices and key themes of the book are introduced, as well as what to expect in the following chapters.

Media programs in libraries can help promote lifelong learning with film and video resources. Libraries are central to empowering their patrons to use media in meaningful ways. Film and media education must grow and evolve in order to become a more important part of the future of librarianship. We see libraries as venues for the process of civic agency and social change, which can be supported by the practice of critical analysis and creation of media in the library space. Libraries that cultivate community film viewing and media making embody the practice of community building, and community spaces for gatherings and discussions are increasingly recognized as key features for libraries. Resources and programs that support patrons as media makers, not just as media consumers, are a vital part of the future of libraries. Film and media education activities provide many opportunities for partnering with the community.

To examine how teacher-librarians perceive the work of researchers in children and media and the relationship between JOCAM’s core audience and school librarianship, Renee Hobbs and Joyce Valenza share their thoughts about the future of research and practice in the field of children and media in the form of a dialogue. After discussing librarians’ perceptions of the children and media research community, we explore the relationship between research, policy, and advocacy; the ever-expanding media resources for children and youth; and the gaps between research and practice. The dialogue is intended to inspire JOCAM readers to imagine the next decade with a deeper awareness of the possibilities and benefits that could accrue by connecting researchers to vital stakeholders within the school library community.

Hobbs and Coiro describe a new approach to the professional development of educators, librarians, and media professionals that emphasizes the value of collaborative, interdisciplinary relationships. The authors explore why creative collaboration using digital media texts, tools, and technologies is vital to support the professional development of educators. Creative collaboration experiences generate personally meaningful, transformative learning by promoting personal reflection in a social context. It is important to provide cognitive and emotional support for the risk-taking cycles of experimentation and trial-and-error process that is essential for learning to use digital tools. By using inquiry learning practices through collaborative and creative media production, adult learners thrive by taking on distinct and enmeshed roles that inevitably involve creative tension that stimulates and energizes innovation.

Why is propaganda important to media literacy educators? The concept of propaganda offers enormous insight on the complex realities we face today, if we are courageous enough to tackle its diverse connotative meanings. We emphasize the role of digital platforms, the importance of recognizing self-interest and new challenge to find a new path from transmission education to empowerment education.

This chapter illustrates how media literacy pedagogy and conceptual principles connect to contemporary approaches to reading/language arts education. It examines how a new vision of literacy can be incorporated into educational resources for students and teachers. Language is the most important element of our humanity, and yet, it is only one of a number of symbol systems which humans use to express and share meaning. Media literacy incorporates the theoretical traditions of semiotics, literary criticism, media studies, communication theory, research on arts education, and language and literacy development. Technology plays a greater role in American classrooms than in the schools of most other industrialized nations. The new vision of literacy has consequences for some of the most important issues that face American educators today. Multicultural education is education that values human diversity and acknowledges that “alternative experiences and viewpoints are part of the growing process”.

Teachers need knowledge and skills to make effective use of the growing variety of media and technology texts and tools available for use in elementary and secondary education. For this reason, pedagogical media competencies are highly relevant for teachers’ professional development. The theory of media pedagogical competencies is first defined and then located in the context of the relevant scholarly literature from both Germany and the United States. We conducted a comparative analysis of German and U.S. pedagogical media competency models and report data on a survey of teacher education programs in Germany and the United States to identify the proportion of programs of study that include courses in media didactics, media and school reform, and media education. We consider the implications of the missing connections between the theoretical framework of pedagogical media competencies and the current practice of media pedagogical teacher training, revealing implications for further work needed to improve ...

Young people are making active use of the Internet in ways that may or may not contribute to civic engagement. Whereas some scholars believe that civic engagement arises naturally from digital media use, others believe that media literacy education is needed to provide the cognitive and social scaffolding that systematically supports civic engagement. Research with a sample of 400 American high school students explores the relationship between participation in a media literacy program, academic ability, frequency of Internet use, information-gathering motives, news and advertising analysis skills, and the intention toward civic engagement. Findings show that students in a selective-admission media literacy program have substantially higher levels of media knowledge and news and advertising analysis skills than other students. Participation in a media literacy program was positively associated with information-seeking motives, media knowledge, and news analysis skills. Moreover, information-seeking motives...

Contemporary propaganda is ubiquitous in our culture today as public relations and marketing efforts have become core dimensions of the contemporary communication system, affecting all forms of personal, social and public expression. To examine the origins of teaching and learning about propaganda, we examine some instructional materials produced in the 1930s by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis (IPA), which popularized an early form of media literacy that promoted critical analysis in responding to propaganda in mass communication, including in radio, film and newspapers. They developed study guides and distributed them widely, popularizing concepts from classical rhetoric and expressing them in an easy-to-remember way. In this paper, we compare the popular list of seven propaganda techniques (with terms like “glittering generalities” and “bandwagon”) to a less well-known list, the ABC’s of Propaganda Analysis. While the seven propaganda techniques, rooted in ancient rhetoric, have endured as the dominant approach to explore persuasion and propaganda in secondary English education, the ABC’s of Propaganda Analysis, with its focus on the practice of personal reflection and life history analysis, anticipates some of the core concepts and instructional practices of media literacy in the 21 century. Following from this insight, we see evidence of the value of social reflection practices for exploring propaganda in the context of formal and informal learning. Crowdsourcing may help create increased informational clarity for consumers because ambiguous, incomplete, blurry and biased information actually inspires us to have conversations, share ideas, and listen to each other as a means to find truth.

This study documents how a high school ESL teacher working with new immigrants ages 14–20 supported the development of their critical thinking and English language skills by using advertising analysis activities. The article examines the use of key critical questions for analyzing media messages and documents instructional activities designed to strengthen students' vocabulary, reading, and discussion skills to build inferential thinking and critical analysis skills. The researchers focus on four instructional practices used by the participating teacher, which rely on strategies for applying critical questions to analyze advertising: the cloze technique, the question generation approach, practice in analyzing ads using critical questions in class discussion, and a collaborative online writing activity resulting in the creation of a multiparagraph multimedia document. These activities provided a meaningful opportunity for students to practice speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills in English while supporting the development of abstract thinking, balancing the learning of new academic language and cultural knowledge, and connecting with students' prior knowledge, home cultures, and everyday experience.

Many students enroll in video production courses in high school as part of a vocational, career, or technical program. While there has been an explosion of scholarly work in digital literacy in informal settings, less is known about how digital and media literacy competencies are developed through school-based video production courses. This study explores the relationship between civic engagement and the various multimedia instructional practices used in a high school video production course with a single-school convenience sample and an ethnically diverse population of students. Findings reveal that the best predictors of the intent to participate in civic engagement are having positive attitudes about news, current events, reporting, and journalism. Media literacy attitudes and a range of in-classroom learning experiences with video production are also associated with civic engagement.

Si bien vivimos en una sociedad global, los educadores se enfrentan a numerosos desafíos a la hora de hallar formas significativas de conectar a los alumnos con gente de otras culturas. Este artículo muestra un caso práctico de colaboración entre profesores de los Estados Unidos y Turquía, en el que alumnos de séptimo grado interactuaron entre sí a través de las redes sociales con el fin de promover la comprensión cultural. Al analizar una única actividad de aprendizaje hallamos que los alumnos tenían la oportunidad de compartir ideas informalmente a través de las redes sociales, usando su voz digital para compartir significados mediante la escritura online, publicación de imágenes e hipervínculos. Este estudio halló que los alumnos valoraban la oportunidad de relacionarse entre sí y tendían a compartir su interés común en películas de Hollywood, actores, famosos, videojuegos y programas de televisión. Sin embargo, no todos los profesores valoraban el uso de la cultura popular como medio para la búsqueda de puntos en común. En efecto, los profesores tenían perspectivas muy distintas sobre el valor de esta actividad. Mediante la comunicación informal en torno a la cultura popular en una actividad de conocimiento mutuo, los propios alumnos descubrieron que sus conocimientos en común tendían a estar centrados en los Estados Unidos, en tanto en cuanto los alumnos estadounidenses no tenían acceso a la cultura popular turca. Sin embargo, la actividad de aprendizaje permitió a los propios alumnos reconocer las dinámicas de poder asimétrico que existen en la cultura mediática global, Although we live in a global society, educators face many challenges in finding meaningful ways to connect students to people of other cultures. This paper offers a case study of a collaboration between teachers in the US and Turkey, where 7th grade students interacted with each other via online social media as a means to promote cultural understanding. In a close analysis of a single learning activity, we found that children had opportunities to share ideas informally through social media, using their digital voices to share meaning using online writing, posting of images and hyperlinks. This study found that students valued the opportunity to develop relationships with each other and generally engaged in sharing their common interests in Hollywood movies, actors, celebrities, videogames and television shows. However, not all teachers valued the use of popular culture as a means to find common ground. Indeed, teachers had widely differing perspectives of the value of this activity. Through informal communication about popular culture in a «Getting to Know You» activity, students themselves discovered that their common ground knowledge tended to be US-centric, as American students lacked access to Turkish popular culture. However, the learning activity enabled students themselves to recognize asymmetrical power dynamics that exist in global media culture

Because media literacy has been described as a “constellation of competencies,” diverse approaches have been used to measure it. Media literacy education includes the paradigms of empowerment and protection, which are used to conceptualize the potential benefits and risks of growing up in a media-saturated society. Performance- or competency-based measures examine the ability to critically analyze and/or create media, whereby learners engage in the practice of evaluating the message content, format, and techniques used to attract and hold attention. For example, in self-report measures, learners rate or agree with various statements that reflect attitudes, knowledge, or behaviors. Each approach to measuring media literacy competencies embodies core values in relation to a particular set of goals, contexts, and situations. Research is emerging that examines the intersection of cognitive and affective domains and the role of teacher motivations in shaping the learning outcomes and opening new opportunities to advance the field.