Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - May/June 2011 - (Page 6)

in my own words Media Literacy:Window to the Future Senior research associate and chief Technology officer, University of chicago Visiting associate Professor, college of computing and digital Media, dePaul University Nichole PiNkard, Phd Dr. Nichole Pinkard founded Digital Youth Network (DYN), a Chicago-based digital literacy program, to create learning opportunities for disadvantaged youth. Dr. Pinkard holds a BS in computer science from Stanford University and both an MS in computer science and a PhD in learning sciences from Northwestern University. Her DYN model is now being introduced into other communities around the Chicago area and across the nation. A changing landscape As part of my dissertation, I created a software program that taught kids to read using playground songs. I also did some work in traditional literacy right after grad school, but I felt that media literacy was being overlooked. A lot of kids are very intelligent, but writing research papers is just not the way they express ideas. Technology offers new tools for kids to express themselves, and I want to provide those tools to kids who might not be great at writing a paper, but who can perhaps create a documentary film that demonstrates their grasp of a subject. Media literacy has traditionally meant understanding how we consume, or use, media. Now everyone has the ability to create their own story and put it out there to be consumed by someone else. You can blog, publish on YouTube, and do citizen reporting. Increasingly, people are using video to communicate because it often provides more context for a message than just listening to someone’s words. In the lifetime of today’s college freshmen, the Internet was created, as well as smart phones, Facebook, broadband, and WiMAX. These things have transformed what it means to communicate. To be media literate today, you have to know how to produce or understand how something’s produced. I don’t mean turning on a camera, recording, and uploading without editing; I mean being intentional about how you edit in order to tell a story. If you don’t know how to produce your story, you’ll be part of a shrinking pool of people who are just consuming, and then your story won’t be heard. Becoming media literate Media tools will continue to change. The question is, Do you know how to produce? Do you understand editing, how to use color and white space, how to lay things out to make them visually appealing? It’s like understanding sentence structure if you’re talking about text. You have to know how to use the appropriate tools to create a decent product. You also have to know which medium to use for a project. A video isn’t always the proper way to help someone understand your point, just as a paper or a song might not be. With the Digital Youth Network model, we provide disadvantaged kids with media arts instruction in school and media production and workshop opportunities after school, in addition to online programs. Now we’re taking this model to five diverse communities in Chicago to support the same type of learning with other kids. We’ve also launched YoUmedia, a youth public library where mentors and librarians work with high school kids to help them develop digital literacy skills. The kids are online, connecting to each other and to their mentors, who review their work and provide feedback and critiques. Reading, writing, and technology There’s some concern that traditional literacy is being lost as technology use becomes increasingly prevalent, but if you’ve taken the time to produce a well-written video or song, you’ve used traditional forms of literacy. You might not see them in the final product, but in my experience, kids are often doing more reading and writing than ever in media literacy education. The seventh-grader who makes a 10-minute documentary film for a history fair project still has to do a lot of 6 imagine May/Jun 2011

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - May/June 2011

Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - May/June 2011
Contents
Big Picture
In My Own Words
App Quest
Become a Citizen Scientist with Your Cell Phone
Media Arts and Technology at the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards
The Accidental Animator
The New Media Explorers
Learning by Design
A Generation of Criminals
Digital Storytelling
Drama and Duct Tape
Selected Opportunities & Resources
Off the Shelf
Word Wise
Exploring Career Options
One Step Ahead
Planning Ahead for College
Students Review
Creative Minds Imagine
Mark Your Calendar
Knossos Games

Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - May/June 2011