Wes Fryer's website, Moving at the Speed of Creativity, offers fascinating insights on K-12 education and technology integration. It's one of the "must-read" blogs in our field. On January 11, Wes posted a fascinating article reflecting on a particular situation involving the misuse of media in the classroom. To his chagrin, Wes discovered that his son, who is a middle-school student, will be watching 10 popular children's films in his Leadership class. Films include Mulan, Toy Story 1 and 2, and the Bee Movie, among others. When the permission letter came home, authorizing parental permission for viewing full-length movies, Wes wondered about the issue, writing, "It seems like a GREAT idea for a teacher to use excerpts and clips from movies to illustrate leadership principles and concepts, but it does NOT seem legit to show ten full length DVD movies in class to ostensibly achieve this same purpose."

He invited his many readers to reflect on the legal and pedagogical issues involved, and asked "What Would Renee Hobbs Do?"  How very flattering! Thanks, Wes! So here's my two cents:

1. It's legal. Section 110 of the Copyright Act of 1976 authorizes teachers to use whole films for educational purposes. Surprisingly, one teachers on Wes Fryer's website noted that his school actually pays license fees to view this type of videos. (That may be needed if the film is used for entertainment purposes, like an evening fundraising event.) But when films are used for an educational purpose, Section 110 covers this practice 100%. Even if you use 10 or more movies in a semester, there's no need to pay license fees.

2. Is it educationally sound? That's the real issue. Please take a look at my article from Learning, Media and Technology, entitled "Non-Optimal Uses of of Video in the Classroom" to see just how common this practice is in K-12 environments. (Sadly, it's a bit of a problem at the college level, too.) My research showed that many teachers use video and mass media in routine ways without much explicit reflection on their educational aims and goals. In my article, I offer a typology of misuses based on the observations and interviews I conducted.

While video usage is common in American public schools, many teachers have not fully thought through their own educational goals and objectives for using these materials. Many of the educators who contributed to Wes Fryer's blog post agreed, noting the colossal waste of time involved, given students' extreme familiarity with these texts.

A carefully-selected 10-minute clip from these videos would be more than adequate to launch a meaningful discussion about leadership styles and communication issues. Media literacy educators might also ask students to watch videos at home and select scenes for themselves that reflect a key idea about leadership. Students could make oral presentations where they play a short clip they have selected themselves and talk about it, applying a key leadership concept.

3. How do educators or students make a clip reel? Under the doctrine of fair use, teachers and students are legally allowed to make film clip compilations.  But it's hard to do this ever since the VHS tape disappeared. In my testimony to the U.S. Copyright Office on May 6, 2009, I note this irony, explaining that the rise of the DVD player has inadvertently made it more difficult to use film in educationally sound ways in the classroom. Why?  Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it's illegal to bypass the encryption codes on DVDs which "lock up" the content. This discourages educators from using excerpts and promotes the time-wasting practice of watching whole films. On behalf of educators and students, I've asked the Copyright Office to grant an exemption that would make it legal for educators and students to "rip" DVDs for educational purposes. We'll find out sometime soon if this exemption is granted.Stay tuned!

3. How best to engage in dialogue with teachers about misuses of film? In his blog post, Wes recognizes the need to say something to the teacher. It's important to decide how and when to do this -- and how to do it in a way that leads to teacher growth and development. I raised this issue with my kids' teachers -- and discovered for myself that it can be complicated for parents to offer feedback on the educational decision-making of their children's teachers.  Think about it this way: many teachers are simply reproducing practices that they remember from their own childhood. Some are astounded to discover that other educators find these practices problematic  because the overuse/misuse of film is a longstanding tradition in many American school settings.

But it's the plain truth that showing whole films is a strategy used by many teachers who don't have the imagination or skills to use classroom time more productively. It takes time to select and cue up clips. It takes imagination to set up engaging learning experiences that capitalize on the intense vitality of a Hollywood produced movie. (And students will always groan when you stop the film to start discussion!) School leaders need to promote more strategic use of video and expect that teachers invest time and energy into selecting and using video resources wisely and well. 

An Innovative Program Builds Awareness of Media Influence on Attitudes and Behaviors

Patrick Johnson and Erik Sakamoto, youth media educators at Youth Radio in Oakland, California, offered a day-long program, “Sports and Media Literacy” on Saturday, September 19th, 2009 at Temple University.  The program, “Health and Fitness Beat,” was developed through a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.  This new program engages young men of color in critical inquiry and reflection around a number of controversial topics in sports. The program uses principles of media literacy to address specific health-related issues with young men of color, including relationships, body image and sexuality.

The Youth Radio sports and media literacy program has three goals:

•    building awareness about health issues that are relevant to young men of color
•    increasing comfort in discussing sensitive topics, like sexuality, violence and homophobia
•    developing critical thinking and communication skills

Among the 25 attendees of the September 19th program at Temple University were high school students and young adults participating in alternative education programs in the city, as well as Philadelphia educators who work in both formal K-12 and afterschool programs. There were a number of Temple University students and graduate students – some from as far away as Ontario, Canada.

Erik Sakamoto contextualized their work at Youth Radio. This program was developed specifically with incarcerated youth.  Participating students came from a Camp Wilmont Sweeney, a juvenile detention center in Alameda County, California.  It’s a community with the highest rate of reoffending juveniles of any state in the country. More than 90% of the "graduates" of California's youth incarceration system are rearrested within three years. These kids come from neighborhoods with a high incidence of community violence, drugs and crime, where chronic unemployment is the norm.   East Oakland has the highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases in the country. In every sense, young people participating in this program are not only perpetrators of crime—they are also victims of a dysfunctional culture.

Plenty of Philadelphia students could relate to these challenges. One participant said, “Growing up—it’s what I see every day, if someone gets shot, we see it as regular. We have to make a change in the way we see things.” Another said, “The mentality of being inside the ghetto can keep you strong. But if you hold on too tightly to that mentality, it’s not going to get you anywhere.  You can keep the strength, but don’t let that limit you.

Hypermasculinity: Getting Below the Surface

To explore how health and lifestyle issues connect to discussions about sports, we explored the concept of hypermasculinity, a psychological term for the exaggeration of male stereotypical behavior, such as an emphasis on strength, aggression, and virility. Marginalized communities of men may display attributes of hypermasculinity, especially when they experience oppressive conditions that “keep them in a box,” interfering with the ability to express their uniqueness and individuality.

We discussed a college football player, LeGarrette Blount, who shocked the football world earlier this year with a blindside attack on an opposing player after the Oregon Ducks' upset loss to Boise State. Blount sucker-punched Byron Hout after being taunted. The event was played over and over on the jumbotron in the stadium. Banned from the team for the season, he became undraftable and the event effectively ended his career.

Football is a profoundly violent sport. Players’ bodies are destroyed, and their life expectancy is shortened as a result of playing the game. In the United States, the average life span for NFL players is 55, more than two decades less than a typical male. 

But athletes’ attitudes about aggression can be even more dangerous than the physical demands of the sport. When young men feel invincible, their response to threatening situations can be highly inappropriate.  In Blount’s case, his response ended his career. In other situations, an aggressive response can lead to ending a life.

We then watched a clip about Vernon Forest, a world champion boxer who was killed during an attempted robbery while filling up tires on his car.  Charles Watson, the boxer's manager, said police and witnesses told him that Forrest had stopped at a gas station to put air in his car tire when a man approached asking for money. Forrest's 11-year-old godson was with him.

Forest had his wallet out and a guy snatched his wallet and started running. Vernon pursued after him. The guy turned the corner and Forest didn't see him. He turned around to go back to the car. That's when the firing began.

Patrick Johnson asked, “How many of you know folks who probably could have been alive if they had not reacted to a situation in a certain way?” Hands went up all over the room.  Sam Reed, a Philadelphia middle-school teacher said, “We don’t celebrate when kids make choices to NOT retaliate.”

Another teacher said, “How many times have we seen two kids get into a fight and the parents walk the kids back into a corner and continue the fight? We see that this is a generational transfer of hypermasculinity.”

A high school student shared a story, explaining, “One night, a person tried to get my wallet.  I tried to fight him off. I got a scolding from my mom. I defended myself. But my mom and brother said, ‘You can never get your life back. ‘ But my pride was hurt.   I wondered: Am I a punk?”

Patrick Johnson responded by explaining how many of our ideas about our own identity are shaped by media messages, often without our conscious awareness.  Young men often feel invincible. Sometimes, they feel that their death is inevitable. Boxers experience these feelings just as a part of putting themselves in the ring each day.  But the same mentality in the real world can be dangerous.  As Johnson put it, “When I define myself as tough because I’m from this project or I’m from this neighborhood, I limit myself.  We have to challenge this--- we have to flesh out all our identities and respect them all. In the case of Vernon Forest, he was not only a boxer, a world champion, and from Atlanta.  He cared about the people in his community.  He was a father and a godfather.“  But some identities trump other identities because of the power of media representations.

The Connection between Sports and Hip Hop

Hip-hop celebrates another kind of masculine ideal: one who is flashy, displaying power, money and women. One who brags about himself, maintains elaborate rivalries, and puts others down. Johnson asked the group, “How do hip hop and sports inter-relate?” 

One student raised his hand, saying, “Little Wayne made a whole song comparing himself to Kobe Bryant.”  Another participant explained, “If you see Jay Z liking Lebron, you will like Lebron.”  An educator pointed out, “They’re both black—they have similar life stories and can relate to the struggle for success. Plus, consider the stress, clutch moment, the pressure--- rappers and ball players have this in common. Rappers couldn’t play ball, but they used other skills: talking, posturing, carrying themselves like a ball player.”

Patrick explained that historically, sports and entertainment were the first opportunities available to black men in mainstream society.  In both cultural worlds, spectators and fans don’t usually see how much work, how much practice, how much effort is involved in getting to be good at the craft.

Instead, the focus is on looking flashy—and that’s what’s considered valuable. Johnson explained, “Both the world of hip hop and the world of sports has told us that looking good is important. Having a flashy look --- but does that really work? What are the consequences of a focus on this?"

We discussed the case of Alan Iverson, a talented player with a complex reputation for flashiness, both on and off the court. As one critic wrote:

In order for Iverson to be at his best, he needed to surrounded by inferior talent. He needed the ball, and he needed everyone else to play defense. And at his absolute apex, when he was surrounded by the perfect mix of players, he could only take a team to the doorstep — not all the way to a championship. For all the reasons Iverson was a joy to watch — his desire to take every big shot, finish every drive at the basket, initiate contact on every play, and wear his heart on his sleeve — his decline as a player hasn’t been fun to watch. He’s going out shooting, and his body is wearing down. His pride prevents him from making the transition to a role player, and as a result, he makes teams worse with his me-first approach.

After showing a highlight reel from ESPN, Patrick Johnson explained, “The top plays in ESPN sports center--- they are all over-the-top, bizarre things.  From the media, we know a lot about marginal players who do wild things--- that’s what gets attention.  When the culture emphasizes that, for young black males, it’s all about getting attention, those messages will have an effect on making responsible choices in everyday life.  Asking a rhetorical question, Patrick Johnson asked, “Why is there a need to dominate and embarrass and put down others? How much of that, from a male perspective, do we buy into? And where does this lead? What are the real-world consequences?”

The Pedagogy of Media Literacy

Participants experienced how viewing and discussing video clips about sports created an opportunity for sharing meaning and reflecting on attitudes, values and behaviors.  When participants offered their reactions and interpretations, they also shared pockets of expertise—in music production, computers, BMX biking, skateboarding, and many more topics and issues.  Everyone in the room benefitted from this sharing. One participant said, “When we share what’s important to us, it helps make a connection --- where each person has special knowledge that opens up conversations. This lets us understand people who might be different from us in gender, age and race. “

Media production is another important part of the program.  Just having microphones in the room makes a difference, according to Johnson. Students take the work very seriously. In the program students are responsible for creating an individual audio commentary -- -an opinion piece with a personal perspective.

They also participate in a roundtable discussion, which is a debate with structure. Johnson explained the format of a roundtable discussion by pointing out that everybody has two or more different groups of friends.  “When you are the host of the roundtable, you have to get them to talk to each other. You have to know how to create questions that work for each friend. You have to know how to cut someone off respectfully. “

Patrick Johnson revealed that it’s not always easy to get incarcerated young men to write commentaries.  He said, “Kids have been conditioned to get the work done… it doesn’t have to be great.” But with Patrick as the editor, his strategy is simply to ask questions--- questions that need to be answered in the writing itself.  “They add the answers to the new draft, and this deepens the writing.”  In the process, students discover that revision and editing are not about some artificial ideas about “good writing.” Revision and editing are what happens when we think carefully about the relationship between the reader and the writer.

As Johnson understands it, the writing experience is a vital part of the program’s success. “They will need to be self-advocates in their careers,” he said.  “To write a good commentary, they have to take a stance, and that’s not always easy for them.”

When they perform their commentaries to create an audio piece, “We watch as they become proud of what they have written.”  It’s a satisfying job, Johnson acknowledges. “Trust is an important part of this program,” Patrick Johnson explained. “Sports is an umbrella for dialogue than enables us to listen to each other, to respect each other, and to explore the causes and consequences of the choices we make in life.”

Chris Sperry offered an engaging keynote presentation on media literacy education, sharing his experience as a high school English and Social Studies teacher at an alternative high school in Ithaca, New York.

Participants watched the final presentation of students who were enacting a UN debate on the Israel-Palestine conflict.  Students were immersed in the identities they were playing.  In role-playing the leaders of various stakeholder nations, they had mastered the some of the nuances of the various positions and points of view related to the conflict.

Chris also shared some of the highlights of the curriculum resources he developed to explore the representation of the Middle East, a topic that is dear to my heart.  The Media Construction of War curriculum, developed by the Project Look Sharp team, is a comprehensive resource for high school social studies teachers.  This curriculum explores a fundamental issue that drives our interest in news media literacy: exploring what we believe and why we believe it.

He showed an array of engaging activities that strengthen students' ability to analyze media messages.  Over and over, Sperry offers his students creative ways to make meaning about media messages.

My favorite line in his speech went something like this: "Teaching can never be boring to me because it's always new-- it's new because I'm always listening to my kids, trying to understand how they are making sense of ideas in the world around them."  This mirrors my own sentiments about the joys of teaching.

Because Chris creates a warm and respectful learning environment, he described how his students even deconstruct his own work.  In one story, a student discussed Sperry's own writing about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying, "Your writing is biased."  Perhaps it is, said Sperry. He asked the student to go home and make a list of the specific ways in which the writing was biased.  The next day, the kid came back with a list of 11 ways the writing was biased towards Palestine.  In response, Sperry whipped out a list of the 17 ways that writing was biased towards Israel!  What a remarkable "aha" learning experience for that student!

Of course, Sperry reminds us, we teachers do bring our own attitudes into the classroom.  He explains, "We must be clear that our primary goal is to help students think clearly and rigorously."  Critically analyzing a McCain political ad but showing (and not analyzing) an Obama political ad--- this is bad classroom practice and reveals bias. It's why the concept of transparency is so powerful and important when it comes to the practice of teaching and learning.

Now, Sperry's students share resources using the Delicious social bookmarking website, annotating the materials they discover online. They tag websites so other students can use the resources they find.  Using the Taking IT Global website, they engaged in dialogue with students in Palestine.  Sharing ideas and resources increases students' active participation in contemporary news and current events issues.

Listening to students is a key to developing their critical thinking and communication skills; listening to teachers is the key to their professional development.  But teachers also need resources, rich print and multimedia documents, aligned with the curriculum standards.  Project Look Sharp's high quality curriculum resources are a treasure for K-12 educators nationwide!

Media literacy educators value self-reflection. Our values and commitments about peace and justice must be tempered by our ability to listen really carefully to our students' ideas.  Sperry was proud to report the comments of a student who reflected on his own learning: "In most classes, I study equations.  In this class, I was the equation."

Have critical thinking skills been pushed aside in favor of the instrumental skills required for using digital media?

Cable in the Classroom's Frank Gallagher offered an inspirational reminder of how much digital media literacy has gained traction in the United States over the past 5 years. Then LSE's Sonia Livingstone offered a lecture, "From Page to Screen: Critical Reflections on the Prospects for ICT in Education." Here's some of her ideas. Digital media integrates many media forms, genres and technologies and puts them all on one screen. Like many of us at the National Media Education Conference, she wonders: Have critical thinking skills been pushed aside in favor of the instrumental skills required for using digital media?

The promise of the Internet is seductive. In the UK, Internet materials are being used in some schools, but most schools are not using them well. There are "no profound improvements in teaching and learning," At home, parents are investing in the Internet for their children. The issue of universal access is still meaningful, with industry supporting various initiatives.  Still, many have doubts--- better technology does not mean beter learning.

Problem #1. Does it work? There's not a lot of evidence for the claim that technology transforms learning.  Teacher are focusing on the development of technical skills--- and that takes a lot of time, with a trial-and-error process that is hard to sustain in schools. Asking if technology use will improve test scores or GPAs is asking the wrong question.

Problem #2. What is learning? The promise of technology has been with us for more than 10 years old: it will liberate teachers and pupils, change the relationship between students and teachers. Disaffected students who never blossomed can thrive, developing the playful, social "soft skills" needed for success. Negotiation, discussion, conflict resolution, teamwork, plus analysis and critique. When you see kids learn to compose media, there's a kind of chaos that results-- it can be challenging for adults to bear.  We need new thinking about assessment, but without turning soft skills into a "new and burdensome learning target.  She poses a fascinating question: How radical do we want to be in reshaping the relationship between teachers and students?

We still talk about the Internet as if it was an neutral medium. The Internet is not necessarily motivating to children. "We look up stuff when the teacher is not looking." Children like to play-- trial and error learning is comfortable to them. The Internet feels easy to use, but children and teens are discovering that the Internet has unreliable information. Thy may rely on "big brands" like the BBC or make use of superficial colors, typefaces and fonts to make decisions about they like and trust.

What's really going on? Investigating claims against evidence is difficult--- I wonder if the big technology companes are shaping the discourse of the field.  There are many high visibility stakeholders who defend the use of technology. No large scale longitudinal studies have been conducted. 

How can it be explained? What is the Internet doing to people and to society? How are our lives shifted and transformed by technology? How do children learn?  Do we expect new media to support traditional learning goals or create new goals? 

How could it be otherwise? Technology reflects the unequal power relationships in society so we must explore: whose interests are served by ICT technology? We spend lots of money on hardware, less money on software and zero money on teacher training. Children are using the Internet for games and entertainment--- we need to transfer the critical analysis skills used to analyze mass media to the Internet.

Will schools be able to transform themselves in light of the changing nature of knowledge?  The weight of tradition is overwhelming. Will the fast-paced and ever-continuing development of digital technologies further divide the rich and the poor?

I asked Sonia about whether the research game was "fixed," in a way, because of the way in which the technology companies have supported the field's development. Did it really matter that the research evidence to show technology's value has not been established? 

I also asked Sonia about the issue of Internet addiction. There are differential levels of concern about this in across different cultural contexts--- it gets high visibility in South Korea and Japan, and less attention in North America. Some people are worried about those whose use of screen media may interfere with other aspects of social life--- and some are not. Sonia pointed out that policymakers are not concerned because there is not a "policy tool" to address the problem.  She says: the Internet is not causing this problem-- children's overuse of media reflects larger issues.  Plus, her kid was a heavy user and he turned out OK.  In my view, the topic of "media addiction" is important to the media literacy education community, because we want to promote self-awareness and reflection about media and technology habits and behaviors. It's worth looking at how this idea is positioned in the news media... the US culture's technology-worship tendencies need careful and critical scrutiny. 

Amy Jensen and I proudly announced the Journal of Media Literacy Education this evening at the Leading the Field dinner event at the Westin Book Cadillac in Detroit, surrounded by 50 scholars and practitioners from the U.S. and across the world. 

It was a delightful event, made ever more engaging by a "four corners" discussion activity where we brainstormed ideas for the three sections of the journal: imagine small groups of smart people discussing ideas for scholarly articles, practitioner-in--the-field accounts, and reviews of multimedia resources useful to our work. Plus, we considered how we might best support each other in developing new work in the field. What fun!

Sherri Hope Culver's morning address to this group included a lovely interaction where she "talked" to her alter ego,  on a video screen, exploring the tension between being "live and face-to-face" and being in cyberspace.

More than 200 people from 35 states and a dozen countries have gathered in Detroit to connect, network and share ideas. There are 70 presentations and panels-- and a group of teens are here, part of the "Modern Media Makers," creating media messages and learning about media literacy.  

Sherri points out that although we can be frustrated by the term, "media literacy," and urges people to commit to the name.  We need to embrance "media literacy" as our term. She says we are close to the tipping point, as there is a confluence of energy about the need for media literacy to become an essential part of all education. Now we have moved from a culture where "I can find anything" to the question: "I can find anything, but should I?"  

If we stop talking about what media literacy IS or ISN'T, we could do much more to connect with other organizations.  The Partnership for 21st Century Skills cares about media literacy.  The U.S. Department of Education's programs in educational technology have a new component to focuses on Internet safety. The Alliance of Civilizations (AOC) have developed a Media Literacy Clearinghouse to promote global cooperation on media literacy education worldwide.  

It's not just about us, toiling away at schools and universities, it's about a larger set of conversations about media's role and function in our rapidly changing society.

In the mid-morning, Jiwon Yoon and Nuala Cabral presented on our project about media literacy and global understanding.  Check out the video highlights of that event here. 

It's hard to believe that, at the end of this week, the Powerful Voices for Kids program will be completed--- at least for the summer.  Every day of the program --- which has run for the entire month of July-- has been a treasure, full of discoveries, challenges and pleasures! 

Watching my young graduate students acquire classroom management skills, seeing the interplay of fun and leaning, watching kids learn to use words like "target audience," "purpose" and "point of view" in creating their own websites and videos.... it's been a lot of work and a lot of fun!

And these kids have learned more than just media literacy vocabulary words.  A huge part of the experience has been in managing relationships--- with teachers, with other kids, and with our families. Working collaboratively is not easy-- when you're 6 or 16 or 60.  Listening to each other and respecting our differences takes practice.  Not everyone likes the same kinds of TV shows, movies, videogames, and websites. In Powerful Voices for Kids, we learned about how to talk about our feelings about popular culture, news, advertising and more--- and to reflect on our own attachments to media genres, celebrities and programs. We grownups may not know every little detail of kids' media culture--- but we work hard to be curious and respectful and seek out information from our students to better understand their experiences with mass media, digital media and popular culture.

In a couple of months, we'll produce a report, explaining the research we conducted and the work we've completed on curriculum development.  We're hoping to enroll 5 - 10 elementary school partners in the "Powerful Voices for Kids" program over the next 3 years.  Please help us spread the word!

Can you tell how much fun I had at the Summer Institute for Teachers last week?  It was a pretty amazing experience, with 23 remarkable teachers.... from the Russell Byers Charter School in Philadelphia, the Roberts Elementary School in Wayne PA, and teachers from the National Writing Project, coming from as far away as Colorado! 

Each day was a delight--- because teachers were so fully engaged in the conversations and activities. We had time to learn more about children's experiences with media and technology. We had time to explore some of the media and technology they enjoy. We developed new skills using online collaboration and communication tools like Wikispaces and Voice Thread.  Best of all, each teacher got their very own Flip camera-- and got the chance to interview a student participating in the summer camp program which was running simultaneously. Plus, we collected pre-test data on children's understanding of genre  -- to see how their understanding develops over the course of the program--- and beyond!

It was like being the ringmaster of a true three-ring circus---- very intense, very demanding of on the social, emotional, and intellectual capacities, and very thrilling to see how teachers' understandings, knowledge and skills developed over the course of the week.  Thanks to the Verizon Foundation for their support of our work!  You can see the topics and issues we explored here.And over the course of the summer, we'll be putting up some of our lesson plans and activities here, too.  Stay tuned!

Teachers have always recognized children's tendencies to imitate what they see on the mass media. 

Today there's a new study out from Great Britain where teachers document the common practices of aggressive behavior, rudeness and inappropriate language that they see as related to media exposure. I've aleays wanted to do research on children's use of "catchphrases" that are popular in mass media--- and this article sure makes me want to see the Catherine Tate Show!

Aggressive behaviour among pupils was highlighted by 74% of those surveyed and sexually inappropriate behaviour by 43%.

A classroom teacher at a state primary school said pupils used the taglines and catchphrases from adult programmes. "Girls mimick the body language, conversations and attitudes towards other girls they see on Big Brother. When I asked them where they had ever seen anyone speaking to someone like that I was told they do it all the time on BB."

Other shows on teachers' hit lists were The Catherine Tate Show, where pupils used the catchphrases "Whatev-ah" and "Am I bovvered?" as regular retorts.