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Method of Presentation Delivery
Facts:
Differences between U.S. and International media education:
The reason for the difference according to Roger Desmond of the University of Hartford is the "deficit model" versus the "acquisition model" of media literacy.
Desmond extracted five purposes of media literacy from early media literacy studies
that took a critical view of television:
According to Desmond, "since [these five purposes of media] grew out of fear of television-related child deficiencies," these purposes were based on deeper rationale and assumptions about media.
Rationale for the rise of critical viewing programs in the 1970’s and 1980’s include:
These constitute the deficit model.
Desmond sees hope for media education if it moves away from a deficit model of media education to one he calls an "acquisition" model. Instead of focusing on what’s wrong with media, the acquisition model would focus on the positive aspects of information acquisition for teaching and learning.
The acquisition model would provide a framework for questions regarding issues such as:
These and other issues related to skill and information acquisition have the potential to unite the concerns of researchers, educators and activists in ways that may prove fruitful.
The deficit model remains the primary rationale for media literacy in the United States and was developed from models created for critical viewing of television back in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Tyner clearly says that Desmond is an advocate for the acquisition model. (1st paragraph, 155) (An example of media distortion)
Dissecting the critical viewing movement of the 1970’s
The U.S. Office of Education (USOE) framed the issue of critical viewing in a way that
excluded the historical, economic, and additional cultural contexts of media representation.
The USOE issued the following guidelines in its request for proposals for critical viewing
projects:
With the USOE guidelines, media education was narrowly confined to a television universe devoid of troublesome cultural context.
The guidelines presumed that commercials have:
The USOE guidelines offered vague and arbitrary instructions to curriculum developers about why these concepts were vital to their projects.
The television should be isolated as a medium of study, because of its "power," was simply assumed.
James A. Anderson recommends curriculum development must be tied to three forces in order to
create successful implementation strategies:
No one factor contributed to the demise of the critical viewing movement of the 1970's.
Most likely the culprits were:
Conflicting purposes of literacy
Most adherents agree that media literacy teaches students to be critical about media, but disagree about what "critical" means, as well as the purposes for such criticism.
At least two approaches to media education in the United States are familiar to international
educators in the field:
Two others also emerge:
These approaches are rooted in general assumptions and beliefs about overall purpose for education and parallel approaches that can be found in alphabetic literacy.
Every approach positions media education as a way to address improvement in U.S. education, as well as an overall strategy to use media to improve the lives of children.
Conflicts between present-day approaches to media literacy are in line with historical
tension that being:
Much of the tension can be reconciled, but the split between the advocates of the deficit model of media education and the advocates of the acquisition model remains wide.
Protecting other people's children
The deficit model advocates the use of media as a lightening rod for a general frustration with the values inherent in the pervasive, hypercapitalistic consumer culture of the West.
A few of the concerns that drive campaigns against media are:
The deficit model follows a protectionist approach.
The protectionist activists wish to define the appropriateness of media and information for other people's children-the State knows what is best for you and intends to protect yourself from yourself.
Protectionists cite studies that conclude with increased of television viewing, academic skills decrease. The other side indicates that there is no conclusive evidence that television use has any correlation to reading scores and that studies suffer from sloppy research methodologies. In addition, what is considered "heavy viewing" varies from study to study. Using children in the studies as low as six is also questionable due to the fact that their overall literacy and academic skills are not fully developed making it difficult to compare with viewing skills.
Both side do have underlying similar beliefs about literacy, those being:
Jammin' for a better tomorrow
"Culture jammers" are technologically savy projectionists who through their subversive activities create a wider range of viewpoints. They consist of public access producers, independent media producers, computer hackers, community activists, and social service agencies who have learned the techniques of media production to subvert the uses of media to promote values they believe are for the social good.
They have contributed to the media literacy movement by:
Aims of the Canadian curriculum were:
Key concepts are not necessarily taught, instead the Canadian curriculum works from the underlying principles for those "teachable" moments.
Key concepts are:
The Canadian media literacy curriculum challenged the prevailing rationale for media literacy in the United States as a protection against the negative effects of media. They questioned the need to demoralize media and popular culture. Remnants of protectionism were still evident, but popular culture was celebrated as an asset to teachers and learners, because it opened opportunities for teaching and learning through the questioning of a wider range of social artifacts. Such a vision of media literacy education goes far beyond the projectionist "television effects" paradigm and hinted towards the kind of acquisition model suggested by Desmond. Such a model turns the "problem" of media into increased opportunities for teaching and learning.
Two approaches to media education in the U.S. that show promise in moving media education
from a deficit model to an acquisition model are:
Both position media literacy as an opportunity to increase and enhance the life chances and opportunities of students.
An Arts-based Approach to Media Education
The best media arts programs attempt to use experienced education to unite media analysis with practice. An aim of media education is to close the gap between analysis and practice. Only those who have engaged in practice are in the "correct" position to criticize; practice without critical awareness is blind and sterile.
The media are best understood as sets of processes:
Media's purpose includes the social generation of meanings. When viewed this way, production work and the simulation of professional production are of vital importance. Media studies are in the business of developing and encouraging practical criticism and critical practices.
One danger of the media approach is that in the process of "learning by doing," students can inadvertently fall into a technicist trap by marginaling the analysis component in the quest for production. Practice devoid of analysis is an unnecessarily narrow perspective.
On the other hand an arts-based approach to media education may evolve from a creative, artistic/aesthetic skill set. While the purpose for technology education may be job readiness, the purpose for art teachers who use media tools with students is to foster self-expression, creativity, and to find their own "voice."
Hands-on video and multimedia production are especially popular with students and the classes are most often student-centered and engage the students. Many of these programs were instituted to increase student self-esteem-especially for students who have not been successful in school. These programs can be soft in structure, thus shortchanging those students who may be in most need of educational opportunity.
One of the most important things that an artist can bring to the classroom is a sense of the wide range of aesthetic expression. Without this openness, hands-on production too often replicates commercial formulas for media-making: news shows, game shows, talking heads, trendy music, and textbook publishing that are the mark of an amateur production, or at least one who has only experienced a narrow range of media forms and genre.
Artists can provide models for a much wider range of independent, non-narrative experimental, and alternative media-formats that are not available in the commercial media channels and therefore media that teachers and students may have never seen before.
The San Francisco Digital Media Center: an arts-based approach in action
The media industry's focus is content. The change in a media literacy program would be broadening the meaning of the industry standard on content. In such programs, content educators would use the word "story," or even "meaning" instead of "content."
Tyner is an advocate for a teaching method analogous to the writing of print; focusing on production as opposed to consumption. If one were walking into a creative writing class, the instructor would say, “Here’s your tools, the pen and a piece of paper,” or “Here’s the word processor. Do you know how to use it? Ok, go to it.”
Tyner is a proponent for taking the same approach with what are very sophisticated machines in terms of digital video and photographic manipulation. The instructor would say, “You have a story inside you. Here are the tools. Let’s put those aside and focus on your story.” Hopefully this will simplify production issues to the extent that the students don’t feel burdened.
Tyner is also a big proponent for the use of video cameras in the instruction of video literacy because of their ease of use, which provides the student/s the opportunity of telling the story. The focus then becomes, “So what is this producer trying to tell us in their story?”
Critical democratic approaches to media education
Tyner suggests critical media education pedagogy should apply a student-centered, open-ended classroom approach. This opens the opportunity to teach students critical thinking skills though dialectic and discursive techniques. The hope is that these techniques will provide students with the intellectual sinew and strength of character to effect social and political change.
The delivery of this presentation was given according to typical academic lecturing standards and format. I stood at the lectern and delivered the presentation and either used chalk and blackboard or pen and whiteboard when illustrations were necessary for providing visual explanations of concepts. At the end of my presentation, I conducted a question/answer session.
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