Reluctant Media Participant

I am a twenty-eight year old person who had the internet in high school, video games as a child, and e-mail as a college student and yet I find that rather than being pulled into the vast worlds that are available in the internet age I have resisted a large online presence. This is my first participation in a blog. I am not on Facebook, MySpace, or Twitter. I have never played a Sims game or loaded a video onto YouTube, however I have been challenged to think about the ways that media literacy can effectively be taught in the classroom and how libraries can support this instruction. I looked at some of the elements that I felt could fit a variety of media platforms as a way of bridging the gap between my lack of media experience with the task of working with students in this very realm.

Some of the characteristics that Jenkins attributes to the informal learning that accompanies participation in popular culture is the experimental and innovative aspects. There is a lot of space for exploration and participation that is not always encouraged in traditional classrooms. This asset to media literacy allows for a lot of trial and error and risks without the drama of a failed test. The participants are challenged to question the very core of the game and to take chances with their understandings and expectations. As a best practice for cultivating media literacy, this freedom in the exploration should be encouraged and celebrated.

Another aspect of media literacy education is knowing the student population. Will the students have the equipment and access to effectively carry out a media-based assignment? Does the school have the resources to support an aggressively media centered educational initiative? I worked in a school where students struggled to supply their own pencils, paper and an adequate lunch, so media education will need to be creatively implemented during class time or with the school's computer lab. Jenkins examines the challenges of students who have their primary media experience in the classroom. These students rely on the teacher or other students to learn skills that others students have already learned at home. The educator must be carefully navigate the wide range of skill levels and acknowledge the different levels have more to do with experience than effort.

An important aspect of media literacy and the educational practices that support it is the critical examination of sources. Marlee Asselin in her article entitled "Towards a Transformative Pedagogy for School Libraries 2.0" encourages educators to cultivate student's ability to deeply and critically evaluate information by asking the questions of "what is credible?" and "who decides?" She remarks that many times students' information is found by a quick Google search and then scanning the first search option listed. Students need to be aware that these items found in search results have various levels of commercialism, credibility, and relevance to their intended topic. A huge part of best practices for media literacy is teaching students how to identify and evaluate the information that is presented. As internet resources continue to expand both in quantity and quality, Jenkins argues that new sources will make huge strides in credibility. For example, Wikipedia has been found to be roughly as accurate as Encyclopedia Britannica, but lacks the same credibility as the established resource. Renee Hobbs in her article in the American Behavioral Scientist also identified critical maturity and self-confidence when judging texts as a tool that can be applied to media education on a world wide scale. As students continue to be bombarded with texts, images, videos, and audio files they must learn to identify the sources and biases within the information in order to effectively navigate a media saturated world.

Once students have the skills to critically evaluate information, the possibilities and benefits of networking and negotiation in an online environment will be even more apparent. Jenkins defines networking as the ability to "sample and distill multiple, independent perspectives" (Jenkins 2006, 51) as well as the ability to navigate social networking sites in an effective manner. These spaces offer a place for students to share their work with a community and allows the community to respond to the student's ideas. Both aspects of networking are used in this process as the student must wade through multiple perspectives and share their ideals in a social environment.

All in all, the writings of Jenkins, Hobbs, and Asselin have identified skills that students need in order to effectively navigate the media world. Best practices for media literacy should include activities that allow students the freedom to experiment, innovate, and critically examine texts so that they will be able to fully participate in the changing landscape of the public life.

Aussie Internet Filter

Although I realize our discussion on internet fair use and censorship is a couple weeks away, an article caught my eye this week in the Associated Press: US concerned by Australian Internet filter plan. It talks about Australia’s plan to impose a countrywide filter on the internet that would exclude websites containing child pornography, sexual violence and criminal drug use. The filter would be constantly updated based on recommendations and public complaints. Numerous companies (such as Google and Yahoo) as well as the U.S. government have voiced their concern over this action that could become law later this year if the Australian Parliament approves it.

The idea of a national filter imposed by a democratic government shocked me when I initially heard the story. But as I began to think about it, I realized that we are not far from this standard, especially when it comes down to America’s public institutions. Although we have weeks dedicated to the reading of banned books, many schools and libraries think nothing of filtering the internet. Schools and libraries often have internet filters in order to prevent students and patrons from accessing “unsavory” webpages and information. However, even with the most positive of intentions, these filters often block users from accessing information that may not be so heinous. The issue I find with internet filters is that often the first intention often snowballs, so that once one keyword or site is blocked, it is much easier to continue the process. In the elementary district where I work, the filters originally started by blocking sites with profanity, nudity and sex. I’m sure that it stemmed from a desire to shield our youth from images and words that were deemed beyond their maturity level. However, in recent years, the district began filtering many web 2.0 sites including Facebook, MySpace and YouTube. While its true that some of these sites may contain questionable content, the main reason that these sites were blocked was because they were seen as “timewasters.” It seems to me that once censorship starts, it is difficult to contain it.

While I don’t deny that child pornography, sexual violence and criminal drug use should be condemned, is it right to censor and filter our link to the web? It would seem to me that if websites are breaking the law by posting such things that the authors of these pages would be prosecuted and the sites shut down anyway. I realize that with the complexity and vastness of the internet, that policing the World Wide Web cannot be an efficient task. Perhaps it is much easier to simply block keywords across the board. However, the easiest path is not always the most logical one. What are we truly teaching kids when we block their searches at school? Is it simply to just wait until they get home and retry on an unblocked and unsupervised computer? If we as educators and librarians do not get the chance to teach our patrons and students proper use, who will?

I will most certainly be following this story, because it will truly have huge ramifications for the democratic world if legislation passes. I also hope that as the U.S. government stands ready to condemn this action that they in turn take a look at what our public institutions already have in practice. Perhaps it is time that we take a look inward.

Comics and Game-Related Collection Development and Programming Resources for Librarians

A few resources to get you started....Remember to look back on our class notes slides on Moodle for links to other relevant sites.

Comics-Related

Mike Lavin at the University of Buffalo has a great starting point for information about comics. Here you can find resources to broaden your understanding of the history of comics as well as links to best-selling comics and reviews for librarians.

The Cooperative Children's Book Center at the University of Wisconsin also maintains a comics-related resource page that lists articles, links to review sites, and names titles useful for collection development.

If you're interested in more historically-focused information on comics, you can't beat the New York Public Library's Comic Books Research Guide.

Games-Related

Although it was included in the readings for gaming, Scott Nicholson's Games in Libraries links to useful information on all aspects of gaming.

It's brief, but this Library Journal blog post offers a good rationale for collecting and programming with games in libraries.

Check out this New York school library system's game library website for a rationale, ties to learning standards, and more.

--Carol

The Creepiest (Humorous) Children's Books Ever

I thought that some of you might find this slideshow called The Creepiest Children's Books Ever humorous. I think the title is a bit misleading as not all of the books are creepy but rather quite funny instead.

Teaching in a Brave New World

Earlier this year, a student sent me this thought-provoking cartoon comparison of the the dystopian visions of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, based on the writings of culture-critic Neil Postman. We discussed it in my senior English class after reading M.T. Anderson’s Feed. In our discussion, students themselves questioned the impact on society of our increased engagement with electronic media and some wondered if they themselves weren’t as “smart” as a result (several gave the example of having trouble with simple math as a result of their reliance on calculators). While they (and I) weren’t saying that we should toss out all our computers and iPods and cell phones and GPS systems, it does make me wonder how to use all of this to our benefit and not to our eventual destruction (not to be too dramatic about it).

So how do we avoid Huxley’s Brave New World? One way, I think, is to realize what the new media can and can’t do. As the Jenkins article suggests, the new media has created a more participatory culture. This has the potential to combat the lack of engagement and “voice” young people often feel in society and as citizens; if they feel like they are empowered, this could encourage them to keep up with current events, for example, more so than the young people of previous generations. As Jenkins also points out, however, the obstacles to this include not only the digital divide, which enables some young people greater access to this participatory culture than others, but also the “transparency problem”: students can access information more readily, but need help analyzing it independently. Young people, according to Jenkins, judge credibility of information, for example, predominately on format and design as opposed to analysis of the content itself. In general, Jenkins points out that these new literacies add to, don’t replace, traditional literacies. He writes, “Before students can engage with the new participatory culture, they must learn to read and write.” He notes that students need reading and writing skills as well as research skills and technical skills in order to fully utilize the potential benefits of the new literacies.

Other writers seem to gloss over these pre-conditions to successful engagement with new media. In Dr. Ross J. Todd’s article, “Youth and Their Virtual Networked Worlds: Research Findings and Implications for School Libraries” in the July 2008 issue of School Libraries Worldwide, Todd initially acknowledges that young people have been given too much credit for mastery of the new media. Todd writes, “According to Jenkins, as reported by Baer, on the Digital natives blog at Harvard University (2007), labels such as ‘digital immigrants’ and ‘digital natives’ increasingly oversimplify and overexaggerate generational differences, and indeed, convey the assumption that young people have innate digital skills.” Todd also cites research that concluded, “that despite increased access to information technology and information sources electronically, behaviours that predate the Web continue to persist.” In other words, students continue to underutilize advanced search options and fail to consider “relevance, accuracy and authority of information," both of which are to their detriment in accessing information. In general, Todd points out that the “Google generation” is no better at research than those who came before them. In doing so, Todd seems to be acknowledging the same needs that Jenkins does for traditional literacies.

However, Todd goes on in his articles to champion the learning potential of social networking, encouraging librarians to rethink the library as a “knowledge commons” as opposed to an “information place.” He argues that young people’s new facility with social networking should shift our focus from students as information consumers to students as knowledge creators. While on the surface, I agree with his enthusiasm for the creative potential of social networking, Todd seems to suggest that students are either information consumers OR knowledge creators, something with which I strongly disagree. I would argue instead, as I think Jenkins does, that in order to create knowledge, in order to have something to share in this participatory culture, students still need to be informed. And, in order to be informed, students need traditional literacies.

The Rice University online media guides we looked at this week for class are great tools, but without traditional literacies, I don’t know how I could get my students to locate them and read them. If we REPLACE our focus on traditional literacies with these new media literacies, our students will not be better prepared for their 21st century lives, as Todd argues, but unable to fully utilize all that their 21st century lives have to offer. The goal, as Jenkins argues, needs to be adding the new to the old and finding how the two can enhance each other. Recently, I was in the library with my honors level American Studies class. One asked if she could ask the librarian if the school library had any books on her research topic. While I was happy to let her do so, I asked first if she had checked the online catalog yet. She had not and, as it turned out, did not know how to do so. She had been at the high school since freshman year. The librarians do a wonderful job, put together excellent electronic resource lists for topics, subscribe to excellent databases, and yet students often miss the best resources because of their poor research skills. In addition to research skills, students’ ability to create with technology is also impaired by poor reading and critical thinking skills. Using iMovie, for example, requires patience, logic, and reading directions to become familiar with it, something which students in our information-rich era don’t seem to be lacking. No one entity at school is in charge of teaching these skills; students receive them piecemeal in their classes, in library visits, but without a clearly articulated vision of where/when/what learning targets/goals are to be achieved and why. With so many choices and so much information, we don’t seem any smarter.

While Todd invokes Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World as a counterpoint to what he envisions as the wonderful opportunity for school librarians to connect to students, he glosses over how we will avoid this fate. Huxley’s fears that giving us so much information will, in Neil Postman’s words, “drown the truth in a sea of irrelevance,” don’t have to become reality. We must not rush to the new media, however, as the answer to all our educational woes, but rather as another tool, one which can only be utilized successfully in conjunction with traditional literacies like reading, writing, and critical thinking.