Week 2 - Blog Posting #3 - Media Literacy

Media literacy has a whole new meaning going forward into the 21st century. In the past media literacy was more concerned with your ability to access, analyze and evaluate media(Considine 1995). Media literacy in the 21 century is much more focused on a collaborative participation approach to media literacy. We must focus our attention on teaching student how to critically think while they are creating media. Teachers need to help students create media that they have critically thought out so that students may begin to understand the real power behind the web 2.0 movement. According to the center for media literacy students need to consider five key question both in analyzing and creating media. Here is a link to those five key questions

http://www.medialit.org/pdf/mlk/14A_CCKQposter.pdf

Although all of the five key question have value, I would like to focus this blog discuss only one, the question of why are they creating media or for what audience are they creating the media.

The information this week gives quite a few different reason why student might create media. But most of my students give little thought to the purpose for creating media. If students don't stop to consider things like, the likely audience of the media, people who may read or even contribute to the media then how can they make a valuable contribution to the collaboration world that they are engaging in.

Many times through out my program here at Full Sail I have heard fellow collaborator talk about making your media interesting and worthy of the time someone is spending interacting with your media. Whether that be tweeting , blogging , face booking , or some other form of collaborative web 2.0 media, if you do not spend time considering your audience then you are not only wasting your time but the time of the audience that comes across what you have produced. I will give you a personal example:

My father, who I love dearly, is always sending me emails of (jokes, ads, pictures, ect), I know he means well and it is my father so I look at them, well some of them. He's got way more time then I do, so he forwards almost every thing he runs across, I'm not even sure he reads all of the things he forwards and I'm sure that he does not consider who he is sending things to because he has, on more than one occasion, forwarded very inappropriate things to me.

One the other hand, many of my classmates here at Full Sail have great information and seem to be very aware of the audience. It make a huge difference. We all have people that we pay close attention when they send something to us to look at and we all have other people that are like my father.

Considine, D. (1995). An Introduction to Media Literacy. Retrieved September 12, 2009, from Mastering the media at Appalachian State University: http://www.ced.appstate.edu/departments/ci/programs/edmedia/medialit/article.html