Educational Integration 

Different types of Media

 

 

-Curriculum, classes and activities must be designed that will engage students in problem solving and discovery, in learning how to learn. Some call it "inquiry-based learning." Using today's multi-media culture, which includes print but is not limited to it, provides a nearly limitless resource for acquiring a range of skills, e.g. how to identify "point of view" by examining how camera angles influence how we think about the subject being photographed or how to determine whether information is bogus or not by learning to evaluate websites on the Internet.

 

-Media literacy in K-12 environments generally feature activities which, minimally, invite students to

•reflect on and analyze their own media consumption habits

•identify author, purpose and point of view in films, commercials, television and radio programs, magazine and newspaper editorials and advertising

•identify the range of production techniques that are used to communicate point of view and shape audience response

•identify and evaluate the quality of media's representation of the world by examining patterns of representation, stereotyping, emphasis and omission in print and television news and other media; to appreciate the economic underpinnings of mass media industries, to make distinctions between those media which sell audiences to advertisers and those which do not

•understand how media economics shapes message content

•gain familiarity and experience in using mass media tools for personal expression and communication and for purposes of social and political advocacy (Hobbs, 1994).

 

- Richard Clark ignited a debate about the impact of media on learning with the statement that “media do not influence learning under any conditions” (Clark, 1983, p.445).

Kozma (1994) has challenged Clark in the debate about the impact of media and technology on learning. He recommended that we move away from the questions about whether media and technology impact learning to questions concerning the ways we can use the capabilities of media and technology to influence learning for particular students with specific tasks in distinct contexts.

 

-So how does media literacy benefit students in later life? People who understand the media and are media-minded are better able to construct ideas, see things from another person's perspective and hence have a better mindset whilst studying and constructing academic papers. Equally, those who have a grasp of media literacy are able to use techniques in their writing to convey argument better, and hence perform better academically in general.

 

Being aware that the media is also biased is also another benefit of being media literate, meaning that better societal awareness can be obtained in later life. With a society that's becoming media-focused through new media like the Internet, it only makes sense that colleges are able to help students get to grips with this new kind of society.

 

Those who are media literate are able to seek sources of information much more efficiently, too. This can easily help students in further education that are planning to go to university, when assignments become much longer and reliant on reliable sources.