Category Archives: Media Literacy

It’s Not That Simple

Media, Media Literacy, thinking out loud, ,

My book group discussed Mad Honey on Tuesday. Jodi Picoult is the master of nuance and boundary bending, refusing to let us get comfortable with our own prejudices. In Mad Honey, she lays bare the complexities of transsexuality. At one point, when an older trans woman is approached for advice, she comments that once you’ve met one trans person, you’ve met one trans person. The book is powerful and highly reccommended.

The line stuck with me as the group discussion unfolded. A new member of the group made an impassioned statement about how “we” are wasting our lives looking at screens. “We” could be visiting shut ins or doing other things. I couldn’t help but wondering if she included herself in that “we” but used that pronoun to make it seem less judgmental? I cannot say and do not wish to judge myself.

Here’s the more important thing for me: I don’t include myself in that “we”. Yes, I spend lots of time on screens and some of it includes surfing cat and dog videos as a break from the chaos. But I don’t worry so much. When I was younger, screen time was all about television, and there were efforts to curb viewing time. Somehow, my supposedly television-addicted peers and I grew up to become mostly productive citizens.

I did a quick inventory of what I do on my screens, primarily my phone but also my laptop, which I prefer when drafting blog posts, commenting on LibraryThing and accessing Canvas. I categorized the activities:

Digital Replaces Analog:

Digital access, especially through my library, has expanded the selection of materials available to me with the potential of connecting with a variety of perspectives.

  • Books, magazines and newspapers
  • Media
  • Games: I am learning to play MahJongg
  • Teaching: this is the BIG one for me and for many of my students, being able to teach and learn from home

Digital Supports Real Life:

  • Recipes: I often have my phone propped up on my cookbook stand.
  • Patterns and Tutorials: This is a big one for me as I crochet. Access to a wide variety of patterns along with video tutorials for complicated stitches has helped me hone my skills.
  • Art Ideas and Tutorials: From bookbinding to collage to gel printing and more, I have made art of all kinds a priority in my life. Most of my scrolling and viewing involves watching tutorials and browsing examples.
  • Communications: Being able to communicate with my family and friends via text has been wonderful. No more scheduling phone calls or worrying about long distance. If some of those texts include links to the German shopping cart return championships, so be it.

I am not trying to minimize issues related to phone addiction. There are always extremes. But when we assume that every person staring at the phone is wasting their time, we miss the nuance of the positive things digital devices can bring to our lives.

Many years ago, I was in charge of Turn Off the TV Week at my middle school, a movement that encouraged everyone to take a week off from watching what was often called the “boob tube.” The goal was to have families do things together besides just watch TV. My mother was not impressed. She felt like it was taking too much of an extreme approach. Depending on your choices, TV programs could be educational and discussion starters around potentially difficult topics. TV could be entertaining with a family laughing together on the couch. And, for those with limited mobility or community, TV could be their connection to the world. She saw the nuance.

Perhaps rather than suggesting that all screen time is wasted time, we can become more discerning about our use of time. Teach people both young and old how to use their screen time data to tease out how much is productive in some way versus how much is mindless scrolling. Instagram is my social media drug of choice, and I finally turned on the timer so I get 30 minutes a day. I occasionally extend the time as Instagram is also where many of my patterns and art ideas originate. In addition, announcements about upcoming events or challenges are posted there. I post some of my artwork with the community.

Again, there is nuance in how I use the tool. I recently read a draft AI policy for K-12 students that mentions developing the skill of discernment. I think this is the first time I have seen it used as a standard but it goes hand in hand with nuance. Maybe this IS simple: your device offers a wide varieties of experiences, and it is up to you to discern how to use it enrich rather than diminish your life. Everyone’s answer is going to be different. To paraphrase Jodi Picoult, when you’ve seen one person scrolling, you’ve seen one person scrolling.

It’s Not All Black & White When It Comes to Fertilizer

Media Literacy, technology, thinking out loud,

I was not expecting the first paragraph of Bill Gates’ plan to save the world to focus on fertilizer. Or really the whole first page. Turns out he is a little obsessed with it:

I am a little obsessed with fertilizer. I mean I’m fascinated with its role, not with using it. I go to meetings where it’s a serious topic of conversation. I read books about its benefits and the problems with overusing it. It’s the kind of topic I have to remind myself not to talk about too much at cocktail parties, since most people don’t find it as interesting as I do.

He finds its fascinating as an invention that has had a positive impact on human life, likening it to the polio vaccine.

Let me reiterate this: A full 40 percent of Earth’s population is alive today because, in 1909, a German chemist named Fritz Haber figured out how to make synthetic ammonia.

I bristled a little when I read this. As a part-time farmer who lives in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, I am biased towards hating synthetic fertilizer. Run off causes algae blooms that shade the sun and create huge problems for aquatic life.

But Gates does mention the problems of overuse and he seems like someone who would be interested in environmental concerns so I felt like I needed to do some follow up. What I found out was what I seem to continue to find out about most issues: there is no black and white answer when it comes to fertilizer. Certainly, in our country is it overused probably because it is cheap and readily available and we have decided that green lawns are an object of desire. But in developing countries with poor soil, according to Hunger Math, fertilizer can increase crop yields and that could mean the difference between life and death for those farmers who are raising the food to feed their families.

In other words, we shouldn’t deny artificial commercial fertilizer to the developing world merely out of a concern for the environment. Organic food production may result in healthier food and lower impact on the environment, but the needs of the hungry outweigh those values. First, feed the world.

They go on to suggest that the use of fertilizer might actually be “good” for the environment because by allowing each acre to produce more food, less land will need to be farmed:

The 150 million ha that would need to be fertilized, for one crop only per year, to end world hunger, is only about 10% of the total agricultural land. If we could obtain 2 fertilized crops per year from that land, we would only need to fertilize 5% of the agricultural land.

This all makes sense and feeding people should certainly be a priority. Of course, using fertilizer is only one of many potential solutions to be explored for alleviating world hunger, but if it can save lives, that IS more important than environmental impact. But, only to a point. Synthetic fertilizers do harm the environment. So, as with most of these kinds of sticky problems, we need to find the middle way. Using fertilizers where they can make a real difference but also being sure to help farmers learn sustainable techniques so that they can move in the direction of more earth-friendly agriculture.

Beyond learning something about world hunger, my little foray into fertilizer was a reminder of how much information we have available to us. When we wonder about something, we don’t have to live with that wonder until we can get to a book or talk to some expert. Instead, we can fact check Bill Gates on the spot. Gates doesn’t provide any footnotes so it’s up to us to figure out the truthiness of what he is writing. The exercise required close reading on my part, a focus of Common Core, and then the ability to frame my question, search for answers, and evaluate the sources providing those answers. Part of that evaluation was understanding that two of my sources–Hunger Math and Organic Valley–have their own biases that swing them to one side of the fertilizer question. The answer to “Is fertilizer good or bad?” is very similar to the answer to “Are charters schools good or bad?” or “Are interactive whiteboards good or bad?”: it depends.

 

Sometimes It’s the Journey

history, human rights, Media, Media Literacy,

I was prepared to write a blog post recommending Ted Bell’s Nick McIver series as great reads for middle schoolers…historical fiction with a little time travel thrown in. Maybe a little violent but in the swashbuckling tradition. They are set on the Guernsey Islands at the start of WW II but take us back to other great historical battles. In Nick of Time, we meet Lord Nelson just a few weeks before Trafalgar, and in The Time Pirate, we stand with George Washington at the Battle of Yorktown. The second volume would be a great addition to an American history class.

There’s the recommendation…here’s the journey. Along with the review, I was going to post a list of links related to WW II and the Revolutionary War as part of my Diigo posts. I’m still going to do that but as you browse the links, you’ll see the  journey I took from checking out these animated maps to learning about the Battle of Gallipoli (which, for the record, is a WW I battle but was the brain child of Winston Churchill) to checking out even more interactive maps to thinking about the definition of genocide.

The interactive maps are examples of the way media can bring history alive. As I was reading about Gallipoli, I was thinking how useful a map would be and was a little relieved to discover that I wasn’t going to have to create it myself.

But the definitions demonstrate a much more profound use of the Web: opening the world of ideas and debate to our students. As I read about Turkey’s plan to keep Australian officials from attending the 100th anniversary, I thought about the treatment of native peoples’ around the world. Why wasn’t that genocide? Turns out there is disagreement about the definition and its application despite the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which was adopted by the United Nations in December 1948.

Meanwhile, how did I know I had reached the end of my journey? It took me here.

 

 

 

Getting Some Perspective

21st Century Skills, journalism, Media, Media Literacy

It seems we cannot blame social media for the shoddy performance of news outlets last week. They’ve always done a poor job with breakout news, at least according to Larry Sabato at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. His description of the reporting of John F. Kennedy’s assassination includes lots of similarities to the Boston bombing from identifying innocent people as suspects to declaring arrests when none had occurred.

The difference, of course, is the ubiquitous nature of media in our lives. Sabato points out that most people were at work or school when the shooting occurred and wouldn’t have had access to the news. So, they missed the initial erroneous reports. I think, however, that Sabato misses the more crucial difference: the people who heard the erroneous reports could only spread them so far…perhaps over the back fence or by telephone to a friend. They couldn’t tweet and retweet and like and share, editing along the way to fit into 140 characters, or creating their own false reports that were then picked up by the media as truth.

I think Sabato offers sound advice:

Media gaffes and goofs should not be easily excused, since commendable restraint — occasionally, simple silence — is the obvious remedy. There should be a penalty for a big error, even if it is only severe criticism.

A simple statement: “here is what we know for fact and here is what we’re still checking out” would help give viewers perspective as they navigate the chocking flow of information. It allows news outlets to have it both ways: report the hearsay but make sure everyone knows it for what it is.

Thinking About Media After the Marathon

21st Century Skills, Media, Media Literacy, social networking

I’ll start by thanking Chris and Melissa Bugaj for re-energizing my enthusiasm for podcasts. I used to listen to lots of podcasts but, for some unknown reason, stopped. Maybe it was just media overload, or switching to iOS from Android. After participating in the recent VSTE webinar (scroll down to find the archive) on integrating audio in the classroom, I installed the Podcasts app on my phone and iPad and added a few podcasts to my library.

On of my previous favorites had been On The Media, a program sponsored by WNYC. Brooke Gladstone takes an engaging, reflective approach to the workings of the media, often interviewing journalists involved in the week’s news about how and why they did the things they did. Not surprisingly, this week Brooke focused on the Boston Marathon bombings and the somewhat shoddy performance of the media in their seeming willingness to abandon long established principles such as confirming stories with multiple sources in order to beat others to the story. They reported erroneous information rather than wait to make sure it was correct because if they got it right, they would be heroes and if they got it wrong, they could just blame fluidity of the situation. That excuse ignores the important role of the formal media in our live: we rely on them to get the story right before they tell it.

But, there seems to be a very fuzzy line these days between journalists and bloggers and tweeters with journalists being lured away from their role as the nation’s fact checkers. Reporters are monitoring police dispatchers and, according to On The Media, those dispatchers were actually monitoring Twitter and reporting on things they heard. It became a closed loop where no one was doing any fact checking at all.

And, of course, there were the fake twitter accounts from the bombers that immediately got reported as real messages.

The program is worth a listen and, I hope, will prompt discussion about the role we all play in the exchange of information. Meanwhile, Slate offers some good advice about what to do the next time there is a breaking story. I’m planning to finally read Proust.