Evolution of Media Education

IM 212

“Mainstream” Media Education

(1950’s-1970’s) • First Phase: Methodology was

simple: Educators ignored the media.

• Newspapers were not only ignored, but actually confiscated if a student had the audacity to bring them to class.

• Books were the only medium worth time and effort.

English TeachersEnglish Teachers taught bookstaught books

Music TeachersMusic Teachers Classical musicClassical music

History TeachersHistory Teachers Ancient HistoryAncient History

Realization:

• When it became clear that popular mass media would not just wither and disappear, media education entered its second phase

• Placed emphasis on mass media and communication education

Educational and Recreational Technology in Media Education

(mid 70’s – 1990’s) • English teachers

anxiously delved into the study of ancient English Madrigals. (A Capella)

• Students studied ancient Greek myths while Walt Disney was busy creating American myths of Davy Crockett or popularizing uniquely American fables.

• Schools continued to purchase video recorders, computers, and other visual technologies

• 1970’s - Much greater concern about ideology, power, social relations, and the way knowledge is constructed, carried, and conveyed by media representations.

(60’s –70’s)

• Arthur Treacher on the Merv Griffin show reciting the lyrics to some rock and roll song with his uniquely upper-class British accent. He choose songs like "Get A Job" (where the lyrics were "Sha-na-na-na. Yip. Yip. Yip") or "Da Do Ron Ron" to make the whole thing even funnier.

Sample topics:

(mid 60’s –70’s)

• Film study usually consisted of showing clips of a rebellious Marlon Brando or James Dean, with the inevitable message that the popular media were turning out a generation of delinquents.

Multi-media before:

• "multi-media" meant that your teacher would accept maybe a chart as part of your written report. But no pictures.

• Traditional advertising media include newspapers, magazines, billboards, radio and television

• Showed a clip from "West Side Story" just before reading "Romeo and Juliet,"

• Study of current events begun in social studies and students were allowed to actually read newspapers (but only for the news, not for the comics or sports or anything entertaining).

1975

Critical Viewing Skills Curriculum :

• When media literacy asks

• How do media operate?

• Whose interests do the media operate in?

• How is meaning created by the media?

– higher order thinking skills must be activated

• Realization: We are not getting information from books or even newspapers, but from television.

Late 70’s – 1980’s

• 1980’s - along with traditional media education focusing on TV and mass media, a new brand of education was in its infancy, i.e., educational computing (Sesame Street, IskwelaTV, & Batibot)

1989

• Media education started to be linked in the public's mind with the recreational technology of television, which was not accepted by more serious-minded researchers.

• At the same time the teacher's role started to change.

Media Literacy

• Media literacy : most of their information comes from television and the mass media, not textbooks."

(Considine 1995, 41)

New (Telelogic) Media Education (1996-present)

• Aesthetic and moral values--the whole question of how good or bad a film or television program was—pushed away from the centrally dominant position it had always held in media education.

• Use of technologies became critical

Curriculum challenges:

• New technologies represent a new curriculum that requires new competences and a new definition of how and where learning takes place

• concludes that teachers and their students should "recognize and reconcile the mixed messages young people receive when the curriculum of the living room contradicts or challenges the curriculum of the classroom" (Considine 1995, 32).

Information Shift:

• Mediacracy – ruling by those who know how to manipulate symbols, information, and the media" (Walcott 1992, 6)

• A distinct shift from traditional mass media to MICT and ODL tools and techniques

Modern Information and Communications Technologies

Open Distance Learning

Information Shift:

• Teacher was no longer the arbiter of taste, but a partner or co-investigator in what was now a much more open ended process."

• Role of the teacher as the accredited expert and purveyor of approved knowledge within the classroom.

• A different approach should be implemented, focusing more specifically on MICT, ODL and all the telematic tools now accessible.

Information Shift:

• Digital interactive advertising media started with the Internet, accessed at an indoor computer, but is quickly spreading to television, cellular devices and outdoor locations.

• Main task of this kind is to look after changes occurring in learning environments from the point of view of the teaching/learning process.

WWW: Information Super highway

• The World Wide Web (WWW) - a different kind of learning and working environment meant that the traditional "mainstream" concept of media education is no longer enough.

Sample adsFood (Coca)• http://www.ifilm.com/video/2751122

Food (KFC)• http://www.ifilm.com/video/2672780

Food (McD)• http://www.ifilm.com/video/2878836

Music Info• http://www.ifilm.com/video/2678342