Sustainability Education and Media Literacy

Related to kit: Media Constructions of Sustainability: Food, Water, and Agriculture

This article looks at how the topic of climate change can often provoke deep emotions in students, and suggests that instead of shying away, teachers should use media literacy activities to foster discussions of what the future holds. The author stresses the importance of connecting to the emotional lives of students when raising the complex issues around sustainability.

Credibility, Information and Science

Designed for secondary science and environmental studies teachers, this 2 hour to full day workshop will explore the role of the internet and other media on our students understanding of information.

Media & Health Issues

Media literacy education is a powerful way to approach the impact of media use and media messages on a wide range of health issues for today’s youth by emphasizing media analysis, critical thinking, and self-expression. This 2-hour to full day workshop can address multiple health issues or focus specifically on one of them, including: nutrition, body image, advertising, alcohol and substance use, smoking, bullying and put-downs, safety, and teen sexuality.

Teaching Media Literacy & Sustainability for Younger Learners

Related to kit: Media Constructions of Sustainability: Lower Elementary

This webinar offers pedagogical techniques and curriculum materials to support a deeper understanding of how to use media documents that: support content teaching about water quality, climate change and hunger, introduce media production as a way to deepen media literacy awareness, and encourage core subject integration of ELA, math, science and social studies.

Teaching about Climate Change Using the Tools of Media Literacy

This webinar offers pedagogical techniques and curriculum materials to support a deeper understanding for how to use a wide variety of media documents that: - Support content teaching about climate change - Examine media representations of global warming related to media literacy concepts of credibility, bias and impact - Encourage strong sense critical thinking by asking questions about all media messages, not just those with which we may disagree.

Media Constructions of Energy Choices: Empowering Students to See Through the Smoke

Related to kit: Media Constructions of Sustainability: Food, Water, and Agriculture

This webinar offers pedagogical techniques and curriculum materials to support a deeper understanding of how to address issues of bias in media documents about energy choices. Learn to to seek out and use media sources to deepen critical thinking practice about authorship, purpose, credibility and economics.

Where Media Literacy Meets Sustainability Education

Related to kit: Media Constructions of Sustainability: Fingerlakes

The webinar offers educators and teachers-in-training pedagogical techniques and curriculum materials to support constructivist media decoding to help students engage in critical thinking about the complex environmental, economic and social systems that underly sustainability.

Elementary Level: First Contact Between Europeans and Native Americans

An example of leading a class through a constructivist media decoding using our lesson, First Contact. Students in this video decode two opposing paintings to understand how Europeans impacted Native American life.

Elementary Level: Decoding Money

Related to kit: Introducing Africa: Critical Thinking and Media Literacy

An example of leading a class through a constructivist media decoding using a lesson from our kit, Introducing Africa. Students in this video compare two African currencies to the U.S. Dollar to gain insight about cultural differences.

The Impact of Using News as a Primary Source in Classrooms

This article, by a high school senior who was working with Project Look Sharp’s Chris Sperry, explores the use of news as a primary text in a Humanities class to teach students to think critically about the news, world events, and their own perspectives.

RX For an Infodemic: Media Decoding, COVID-19, and Online Teaching

After describing the historical, political and social causes of our viral age of “fake news,” this article explore how constructivist media decoding provides a methodology for addressing the polarization of truth, with examples of how this work can be done in the classroom through face-to-face and virtual learning.

Checking the Facts: Media Literacy and Democracy

By integrating the process of critical questioning of media messages into the everyday classroom curriculum, we can help produce a citizenry with the skills needed to negotiate future threats to truth.

An Assessment of Student Critical Thinking Skills

This describes a high school level assessment of media literacy and metacognitive skills in which students examine a YouTube video, excerpts from an opinion article, and a webpage screenshot about GMOs and answer questions about media messages, authorship, purpose, bias, credibility and how the students’ own biases impact their analysis.

A Deeper Sense of Literacy

Related to kit: Media Constructions of War: A Critical Reading of History

Basic principles and best practices for using a curriculum-driven approach are described, with specific examples from social studies, English/Language arts, math, science, health, and art, along with methods of assessment used to address effectiveness in the classroom. By Cyndy Scheibe, American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 48 No. 1, September 2004.

High School Social Studies: Soviet History-Posters

Related to kit: Soviet History Through Posters: A Visual Literacy Kit

An example of leading a class through a constructivist media decoding using a lesson from our kit, Soviet History Through Posters. Students are led through a decoding of five Soviet government posters from 1918 to 1988, where they apply historical knowledge while practicing media literacy skills.

College Level: Decoding "Last Words" by Nas

Related to kit: Media Constructions of Social Justice

An example of leading a class through a constructivist media decoding using a lesson from our kit, Media Construction of Social Justice. Students in this video decode the rap song "Last Words" by Nas to gain insight about prison life and the greater justice system.

Critical Thinking and Health: Media Literacy Lessons for Elementary Grades

Related to kit: Critical Thinking & Health: Nutrition and TV Commercials

This webinar offers pedagogical techniques and curriculum materials to help young children understand biases and misleading messages found in food advertising and toy commercials aimed at them, including cereal ads and advertising for foods and beverages that imply they have a lot of fruit in them. Part of the webinar specifically focuses on gender techniques and gender stereotyping in toy commercials.

Elementary Level: Gender In Children's Commercials

Related to kit: Critical Thinking & Health: Nutrition and TV Commercials

An example of leading a class through a constructivist media decoding using a lesson from our kit, Critical Thinking and Health. Students in this video decode the commercial "Magic Kissing Dragons" to analyze media messaging about gender.

Elementary Level: Paintings of George Washington and King George

Related to kit: Causes of the American Revolution

An example of leading a class through a constructivist media decoding using a lesson from our kit, Causes of the American Revolution. Students in this video decode differences in paintings of George Washington and King George.

High School English: Examining Credibility and Bias in Web Sites

Related to kit: Media Constructions of Martin Luther King, Jr.

An example of leading a class through a constructivist media decoding using a lesson from our kit, Media Constructions of Martin Luther King Jr. Students analyze the white supremacist website martinlutherking.org and reflect on critical thinking and the internet.