June 19, 2020

It’s Different This Time

In a deeply personal blog post, Project Look Sharp’s Executive Director reflects on the roles that media have played in bringing us face-to-face with racial violence and police brutality, and how her own lived experience as a media literacy educator in a family of color have made a difference.

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May 12, 2020

Teaching Critical Thinking and Protecting the Science

How can we teach students to think critically about scientific disinformation without just telling them the facts and what to believe? Is presenting media messages reflecting different perspectives for analysis too big a risk when the science is clear?

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April 22, 2020

Honoring Earth Day and Green Media Literacy

Sustainability and environmental issues have long been a key focus for Project Look Sharp, and April’s Earth Day provides a great opportunity to showcase hundreds of our free lessons on those topics, for elementary grades through college.

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March 31, 2020

Cultivating Resilience in a Time of Uncertainty

Written at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, this post explores ways to use media analysis to help build resilience through engaging in powerful dialogue and reflection about media, fear, and our commitment to take actions for a better future.

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March 24, 2020

Using Project Look Sharp’s Free Resources and Lessons for Online Learning

When schools and colleges suddenly went online in the spring of 2020, many educators struggled with how to keep students engaged. We explore and demonstrate ways to do that using constructivist media decoding with our free materials.

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March 10, 2020

Why We Need to Think Critically about the Facts – and the Factcheckers

In today’s complex information world, factchecking (and critical thinking in general) is more important than ever. But what does “critical thinking” mean? And how can we do our own factchecking – including questioning those who do factchecking for us?

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March 3, 2020

Girls and Women: History, HerStory, a Movement Forward – and We’re Not There Yet

Our curriculum kit, “Media Constructions of Social Justice,” includes units on Women’s Suffrage and Women’s Liberation, and there are dozens of other lessons that revolve around media messages showing women in politics, as environmental heroes, and much more.

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February 25, 2020

Now’s the Time for Media Literacy: Politics, Polls and Debates

Any election (especially a national one) provides numerous opportunities for media literacy, from many curricular perspectives – analyzing language in TV commercials, statistics in political polls, historical contexts, identity politics, and more.

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February 18, 2020

Black Lives Matter at School and Black History Month through a Media Literacy Lens

Exploring the free Look Sharp lessons that will be useful for Black History Month for both elementary and secondary grades, this blog post provides links to specific lessons and curriculum kits to explore racial stereotypes, Black identities, and more.

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February 11, 2020

Valentine’s Day (and Other Holidays) through a Media Literacy Lens

Holidays have rich histories that can be research and discussed at many grade levels (applying media literacy questions about sourcing and credibility), and holiday messages lend themselves beautifully to media analysis.

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