Week+8

Media Literacy:

I love that we got to discuss media literacy this week as this has been my main concern from the beginning of the class, I was just unsure what to call it exactly! Media literacy should be in classrooms every step of the way so long as technology is going to be an integral part of the classroom as well. Students need to know how to think critically about the mediums they are engaged with. Its about looking deeply at the messages being presented to us through various mediums, and about how the mediums themselves affect us as well. Its about developing critical thinking skills; something which is absolutely necessary in this day in age.  Our guest lecturer, Barbara, also discussed with us media literacy triangles (i.e., **text** (types of -narrative, persuade), **production** (process, techniques, tools, copyrights), and **audience** (target audience, message). These three aspects must be taught in order to form a complete and informed, media-literate student.

Marshall McLuhan - The Medium is the Message I included a few McLuhanisms on the home page, but thought I would reproduce them here: []

**We look at the present** through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.

**Today** each of us lives several hundred years in a decade.

**The ignorance ** of how to use new knowledge stockpiles exponentially.

Technological Evolution:

Now, this week was not also without its technological evolution as well. Today we were introduced to Comic Life, a wonderful illustrating program which is sure to capture the attention of many kinds of learners. Although it is a very 'cool' and 'hip' way of getting students to present information, there is still a need to focus on story if using language arts expectations. Afterall, it cant just be cool pictures and an appealing format. Yet Comic Life is a wonderful way to assess learning --- as a diagnostic, students can use comic life to recount a story, for example. Using Comic Life in the class is also not without some direction... students can be taught about the different types of shots used in the comic genre in order to get them to better communicate their story - e.g.. establishing shots (conventions in the comic genre). Also, when it comes to this program, it would be worthwhile to explain to the students that if used as a summary project, students need to decide whats most important for their comic as it is not necessarily about whats in, but whats been taken out.

Here's my own **Comic Life**:



We were also introduced to **bitstrips**... here's my own avatar!

Students can use this program to make cartoon characters that they can put into their illustrative work...



We also discussed some assistive technologies today... **co-writer and write-out-loud**. Both of these programs would assist students with special needs in formulating text, predicting text, and actually recording their ideas efficiently and effectively.

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A final note rests on a diagram Barbara showed us which summarizes **Bloom's Taxonomy**, but digitally!