MEDIA LITERACY

What's the difference between digital literacy and media literacy? Digital literacy is knowing how to use tools safely and wisely, while media literacy is knowing how to critically consume and produce media messages. Today, knowing how to do both is more important than ever.

Learn the Principles of Media Literacy

According to N.A.M.L.E., the National Association for Media Literacy Education: "The purpose of media literacy education is to help individuals of all ages develop the habits of inquiry and skills of expression that they need to be critical thinkers, effective communicators and active citizens in today’s world."

These are the core principles of Media Literacy Education in the U.S. Media Literacy:

Requires active inquiry and critical thinking about the messages we receive and create.
Expands the concept of literacy (i.e., reading and writing) to include all forms of media.
Builds and reinforces skills for learners of all ages. Like print literacy, those skills necessitate integrated, interactive, and repeated practice.
Develops informed, reflective and engaged participants essential for a democratic society.
Recognizes that media are a part of culture and function as agents of socialization.
Affirms that people use their individual skills, beliefs and experiences to construct their own meanings from media messages.

National Association for Media Literacy Education

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Teach Media Literacy with Cyber Civics

Go-To Resources for Media Literacy

The National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE), whose mission is to improve and enhance media literacy education.

Media Literacy Now, the leading national advocacy organization for media literacy and digital citizenship education policy.

The Center for Media Literacy, recognized as a leader in professional development for media literacy.

Media Education Lab at the University of Rhode Island, founded by Renee Hobbes, a pioneer in the media education field.

Media Smarts, Canada's Centre for Digital and Media Literacy.

Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century, the landmark white paper by Henry Jenkins that launched the media literacy conversation.

And, of course, our own Cyber Civics curriculum!

The New Media Literacies

One of our key goals is to stop focusing quite so much on 'do kids have computers in their classroom?' and start focusing more on 'do kids have the basic social skills and cultural competencies so that when they do get computers in their classroom, they can participate fully?

--Erin Reilly, USC Project New Media Literacies

The New Media Literacies (Jenkins et al, 2007) are skills that build upon the foundation of traditional literacy, research skills, technical skills and critical analysis. They include:

Play
Collective Intelligence
Performance
Judgment
Simulation
Transmedia
Navigation
Appropriation
Networking
Multitasking
Negotiation
Distributed Cognition
Visualization

-Project New Media Literacies

CYBER CIVICS

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