Teaching News Literacy During a Pandemic: Adapting to the Virtual Learning Environment (original) (raw)

Nam Fry E-Learning and Digital Media Nov. 2 2012

Since its inception at Harvard in 2004, the social network, Facebook, has grown dramatically and spread across the globe. It will soon have 1 billion users and is now operative in over 75 languages. A large percentage of undergraduates are now active on Facebook. Much of the recent literature on Facebook focuses on business applications and how it can contribute to growing profits and market share. Little attention has been directed to the academic implications of Facebook. The focus of this article is to assess critically the scholarly uses and abuses of Facebook. The article draws on several theoretical frameworks such as those of Ivan Illich (conviviality of technologies), Denis Goulet (technology as a two-edged sword), and Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi (optimal human experience and flow). Many scholarly uses of Facebook are presented documenting its potential for enhancing academic work. That is followed by a discussion of negative aspects of the technology and potential adverse effects on humans in terms of their productivity and capabilities. If used critically and creatively, these new networks can enhance in valuable ways human, intellectual, social, and cultural capital. In a networked knowledge society, students now have extraordinary new tools to help them realize their intellectual, cultural, and social potential.

Media and Information Literacy. Fresh Air: Analyse, Interpret, React

2020

Consumption Comprehension Creativity Critical Thinking Citizenship Cross-cultural communication Collaboration & conflict(s) resolution Module 1. Information factory Part I. Knowledge building 15 MIL competence breakdown categories/indicators for Comprehension Students should be able to MIL added Human Right value Freedom of expression Participation 6. Evaluation (45 min) Session 4: 45 min In small groups: look at an online article and search for key criteria All class: compare and discuss 7. Training support materials (see additional section to Lesson Plans) References to other materials and resources Useful links for pedagogical animation Glossary Useful software for MIL integration in learning outcomes (online resources by country) https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10wxgYEe9O8GiSKo8kTjv8uQqpkOeHJp5\_k0ytBcZsdU/edit?usp=sharing Describe how information is constructed Understand the way mass media and social media are organized and disseminate information Make choices about one's information diet and pluralism of sources Exercise critical thinking (verifying, contextualizing, cross-referencing) Contribute information when appropriate on mass and social media Pay attention to others' opinions and exert their rights as citizens Module 1. Information factory Part I. Knowledge building 16 STAGE 2 (continued): Evaluation 45 min Consider the disaster scenario and answer following points: 1. How was information collected? 2. What were the quality criteria used? 3. How was it organised? 4. How was it communicated? Give your own rating of the article Teacher tip: Alternately, you can make the students play a news game. See My Life as a Refugee serious game: https://mylifeasarefugee.org/game.html See "Be my saviour", the news game to save jobs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tA2sf4BTw3s STAGE 3 (18-19): Building a sustainable knowledge of the information factory (citizenship & comprehension) Elections scenario: Build a campaign for a new, young candidate 3 x 45 min Freedom of expression Participation Consumption Comprehension Creativity Critical Thinking Citizenship Cross-cultural communication Collaboration & conflict(s) resolution Understand and describe the mechanisms of information disorders Respond to information disorders and debunk them (fact-checking tools) List ways of combatting disinformation Protect themselves from excessive risks of amplification and virality Promote healthy online presence through active participation Module 2. Information disorders Part I. Knowledge building 26 REACT Consumption Comprehension Creativity Critical Thinking Citizenship Cross-cultural communication Collaboration & conflict(s) resolution Module 4. Digital storytelling and media content Part I. Knowledge building 49 MIL competences breakdown categories/indicators of Comprehension and Creativity competences Students should be able to MIL added Human Right value Freedom of expression 6. Evaluation (45 min) Go to an online website for a newspaper/magazine and ask students to evaluate the text, images and the design principles (at least 2) they recognize, following the media content and design grid below (to be reused during MILAB) Areas Question Evaluation by student: Describe and assess coherence. Justify your answers Design principles Image Composition? Sound Rythm? Text Word Emphasis?

Literacy and Pedagogy in an Age of Misinformation

Literacy and Pedagogy in an Age of Misinformation, 2021

This collection of full-length essays and interviews explores networked literacies and their impact on information systems and literacy learning and action. Understanding the underlying structures of networked literacies is essential to help students, teachers, and society members nurture the deliberative, reflective practices and pedagogies needed in our current moment. This collection brings together voices from diverse locations within—and outside of—the academy. Literacy colleagues from sites including K-12 education, social media, activist organizations, and journalism contribute interviews and short praxis essays, resulting in a networked conversation that echoes the patterns of information ecologies themselves. A central contention of the collection is that our literacy practices must adapt to take into account the material realities, challenges, and affordances of the technologies shaping information production, distribution, and reception. Recommitting to traditional information literacy and rhetorical pedagogies is not enough to counter problems posed by mis- and disinformation. Instead, the versions of critical reading and engagement offered in this collection forefront the need for students to approach texts warily, given that writers might aim to confuse, obscure, or trick, and that elements of a digital ecology—including algorithms, bots, trolls, and applications—might direct or boost information based on economic or political motivations. Interviews with practicing journalists and community literacy workers highlight the affective dimension of using our own emotional responses to information as critical, generative tools. Ultimately, this collection’s exploration of literacies (what do we need to know how to do, now?), contexts for literate action (how do we understand this moment, now?), and pedagogies/ practices (how do we work with students, now? how do understand and perform citizenship, now?) provides pathways forward, deepening both our theoretical understanding of mis/disinformation and our pedagogies in response.

A Pedagogy for Learning and Assessment based on a popular Internet Challenge

Res Militaris, 2023

There are several innovative strategies that enable students from higher education to learn in a play-way fashion. Education experts have been exploring the possible methods of effective learning with minimal technological usage for third world countries. One observation is this direction has been that peer groups influence learning among other things. This paper describes an innovative peer-learning pedagogy-Ice Bucket Challenge that is simple, interesting, and expects students to think out-of-box. It challenges students to strive beyond their boundaries and learn faster.

Using Virtual Exchange to Advance Media Literacy Competencies through Analysis of Contemporary Propaganda

Journal of Media Literacy Education

With the rise of so-called fake news as a global phenomenon, interest in propaganda analysis has advanced along with the recognition of the fundamentally social process of interpretation. In this essay, we explore the use of cross-national dialogue among German and American undergraduate students who are seeking to better understand how media messages are interpreted and how they inform and guide the civic actions of citizens. We describe and analyze five lessons that used a virtual exchange comprised of a variety of digital media platforms, texts, and technologies to support the cross-national study of contemporary propaganda. We observed that cross-national dialogue enables students to gain sensitivity to the role of cultural context in interpreting propaganda. Rather than conceptualize propaganda education as an ideologically benign set of context-free skills, pedagogies that include opportunities for cross-national dialogue foreground the importance of cultural specificity as a means to unpack the complex discursive context of propaganda as digital political communication.