I believe that both Information Literacy and Media Literacy are the huge umbrella under which all forms of Literacy belong. No one literacy stands alone. One must learn to read before one can learn to write, one must learn to listen carefully in order to view with success...

I also believe that students need to be told how the courses they choose will benefit them in "the real world". When I was teaching, four essential reasons I gave my students for taking Mass Media were:

1. As teenagers, you have spent more of your time with some form of media than anything except sleeping. And...today, with the Internet, and video games beckoning, even sleep has been shortchanged!
   
2. It is critical that you examine the effects that media has upon your lives and the media decisions you make. To what extent do your favorite music, films, TV programs or chat rooms form your attitudes and actions, let alone the persuasiveness of advertising?
   
3. You also need to think about and discover what effect you can have on the media. Is there any way that your concerns can be heard, and if so, can they affect any change?
   
4. With the creation of media messages of your own, you will gain both a better understanding and appreciation for all of media and its power to shape our world.

When we look at the current Wisconsin Model for Academic Standards in the area of Media and Technology it states:

• Students in Wisconsin will use Media and Technology critically and creatively to organize, prepare and share information to persuade and entertain. (The standards are the same for grades 4 through 12.)
  The rationale for teaching is as follows:
  
• In a world in which thought is increasingly dominated by all of media- from Newspapers, Film, Radio and TV to the Electronic Networks - students need to understand the impact of media in daily life.
  The Performance standards are simply this:
  
• Students need to make informed judgments about media and its products. And lastly, they need to understand a working knowledge of media production.

There you are - the same rationale and performance standards that I was teaching 30 years ago are as true today as back then, and with the added power of the electronic age of computers, there is even a greater need for its inclusion in our curriculum. Even so, too many educators still do not recognize the power of media in our society and the need for media education.

A remarkable thing happened to me in 1992 when The Discovery Networks decided that teachers teaching teachers about their marvelous Educational programming was the way to go. I was asked to be one of their teacher- educators; and when I learned that their second goal was teaching Media Literacy through their subject matter, I felt it was truly a gift. For the past eight years I have traveled throughout the country, giving workshops for Discovery. During the workshops, one important thing I do is remind teachers to use television in a positive manner. If we turn out the lights as we slip in a video, and spend the time correcting papers in the back of the room, students pick up that the message - video is a filler, not a learning tool. We need to preface the video with giving students key points to look for, pause or rewind the tape to emphasize important points and follow with discussion and activities which underscore the learning we want to take place. By the way, Discovery and most educational television is deliberately timed for maximum use in the class hour. The high school segments run about 25 minutes where the programming for younger students on The Learning Channel vary from 3-5-to 10 minutes in length.

Parents are also deeply concerned about the mass media's role in forming the attitudes and values of their children. To suggest eliminating all media from their lives is an unrealistic solution. They will watch it at a friend's house. And when it comes to warning labels, 5th graders have told me the programs they're warned about are the ones they are sure to 'not' miss!

What are some of the important FACTS that students need to remember about the media?

• Students MUST learn that ALL media is a construction and created with a specific purpose from someone's point of view,
  
• We, as the receiver of media messages, always negotiate OUR meanings of what is being sent. We filter what we read, hear and see and accept-reject-modify these messages according to our backgrounds, religion, etc. This is especially important to remember in a political year. When we decide to support a candidate, we project our own beliefs on him or her. We screen out what doesn't fit the image we want! Students can easily grasp this idea by writing some of the reasons why they believe as they do about an issue, and then question their parents or other adults on how they view the same issue and why.

After the students discuss different purposes for the use of media - to inform, educate, entertain, and persuade, for example, they can start to recognize the choices which are made by the producers of the media messages, and then how each message is constructed. Such choices include:

1. The use of narrators and other speakers
   
2. The choices for the use of the camera
   
3. The choices for the music and sound effects
   
4. The choices for uses of color and black and white
   
5. The use of 'experts'
   
6. The use of photos and documents

It is great fun to watch, listen and evaluate how particular programs and advertisements are constructed and guess who the target audience is. Students can watch a number of programs and judge the intended audience with the music, visuals and commercials used.

On another level, have them critique videos you use in class. Are there too many talking heads, is the pace too fast or too slow, or the vocabulary too difficult? Have them look at a video of the novel read in Literature Class - did they stay true to the story, did the characters fit their visualizations while reading, did they use metaphors and other techniques to enhance the learning process? Have students read a story, or the script from a current ad and design their own choices for production. One assignment I gave was to have them create a 30-second Public Service Announcement. Their audience was to be from their age group and the subject of interest and concern to them as teen-agers. The idea, the script, the storyboard, the acting and the camera work was all theirs to create.

Another important learning experience should come from written media. Study and critique the newspaper's and magazine's slant on stories. The nightly news is an important source for objectivity. Tape the different newscasts, local and national, for objectivity in reporting, and how by their beginnings, using music and visuals, as well as their studio's settings and the appearance of their anchors, lend credibility to their version of the news. Search for vocabulary used which is less than objective. There are so many other avenues to explore. The false claims and emotional appeals of advertising, as well as the propaganda techniques used in campaigns are fun to explore, and eagerly accepted by students as a "cool" and eye opening way to explore the effects of media.

We MUST take on this task in our media dominated world, and the tools you need are all there in your classroom. How to start? Think big, but start small. When you take the time to point out media strategies as you are teaching the materials, our media-saturated students are eager to explore this world they are surrounded by, and will quickly develop the skills needed for them to become "Media Smart.

Resources:

• Mary Moen, email: marym@discoveryschool.com
  
• The WI State Model for Academic Standards (paraphrased in part in this article.) For more information CLICK: http://www.dpi.state.wi.us
  
• The National Media Council, headquartered on the UW-Madison campus in Madison, WI and its publication, Telemedium - The Journal of Media Literacy, filled with articles and activities by internationally known Media Literacy experts. For more information call: 608-257-7712