Blog 9

– What is media literacy?

According to this week’s reading, the authors define media literacy as “the medium of delivering messages (print, graphics, animation, audio, video, Web sites, and so on), the crafting of the message for a particular medium—the graphic “look and feel” of a Web site, for example, and the impacts the media message has on audiences” (Trilling & Fadel, Chapter 4). From the V&R activity, I learned that in order to become an internet resident, we need to make contributions to the net, we need to be that content creator. So media literacy is the message that we produce by using the online tools, for example, Wikipedia editing. 

– Why is it important?

The discussion of information society & media literacy in this week’s readings makes me to think of an article called “Changing literacy” by Brandt (2003). Brandt (2003) says that “ The United States has become a so-called knowledge economy or informational economy, in which mental labor has replaced physical labor and making information and ideas has replaced making things as our main economic pursuit. Human capital is now regarded as more valuable than land or even money, so literacy has become a hot commodity” (Brandt, 2003, p. 48). For me, the reason why media literacy is so important in today’s world is because it is an essential work skill that people should have. Nevertheless, not enough attention was paid to teaching digital literacy in our K-12 schools, and I think this there’s a need for us to do so. In this week’s interview with Julia Smith, I learned that people fail to see media as a literacy, we still think of media as something that entertain us, but in reality, especially through this course, we recognize this is not true. 

– Why is it dismissed?

From our guest speaker’s discussion, I learned that media literacy is often get dismissed because people are treating media as in the old days, they didn’t connect media to literacy. If we can rephrase it as the language of media, maybe that will get more attention. Generally speaking, people have the misconception that media would make people more distracted and it is unhelpful for learning. The famous article “Is Google Making us Stupid” is a prove. It is the continuum of biases and prejudice that make media dismissed.

– Why should you aim for varied views but the factual consensus in your PLN?

I would never aimed at factual consensus in my PLN because I think part of the meaning to have a PLN is to listen to people’s diverse opinions, otherwise, the meaning to have a PLN is minimum. 

Source Used  

Media Literacy – Facts Matter – Course YouTube Channel https://youtu.be/57r3-aEnci0
 21st Century Skills – Learning for Life In Our Times Trilling, B & Fadel, C – Digital Literacy Skills – Media Literacy pp.66 https://go.exlibris.link/B5rkkLw7

Brandt, D. (2003). Changing literacy. Teachers College Record, 105(2), 245-260.