Media literacy is the thing!

As teachers we are faced with many competitors for our students time and attention. They are checking facebook and texting friends, and we cannot delude ourselves into thinking that our class is the most important thing in their lives. Frankly, it isn't any where near the top most of the time. We are given around 200 minutes a week to help them to understand our subject and how it connects to the wider world. We try to get them to think and apply knowledge. We try to get them interested in science, or history, or math and hope that they will use the knowledge and skills they have learned in their lives at large.

That being said, I propose that we take up another teaching task that should make their lives more informed and more full. I think that we should teach media literacy, or the skill to discern valuable and verifiable information from the vast volume of information that we are bombarded with every day. As we all have heard of the Kahn Academy, so have our kids. It has also been pointed out that some of the information in the KA videos is not entirely accurate. If our students are watching the videos for extra help, they should also be able to question the authority and the facts that they are presented with.

I do believe that a good teacher already does this in class and gives the students a base line to measure things by, and the students will be able to discern a valid source from an invalid source. It is important for a student to be able to do this in order to become an informed member of society. To simply take a KA video at face value, which seems to be what most of the country is doing, is folly because there are experts in the fields that Sal Kahn is lecturing on who have more accurate information and a better way to help our students understand. It is very important that we help our students to question the validity of the sources of information that they are using.