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Project Look Sharp: Media Literacy Handouts

June 15

In another LIS course that I’m taking now, I became aware of some free classroom materials for students K to college. I decided to take a look at this web tool in Project Look Sharp - a program of Ithaca College that aims to educate children and young adults about media literacy.

 

https://www.projectlooksharp.org/

 

The team of educators seeks to achieve this mission through a process called media decoding and from a constructivist approach that involves inquiry-based teaching to give the students the skill for critique thinking. Through coaching, the students will learn to analyze and evaluate media material and construct knowledge for themselves.

 

You are able to search for free media decoding lessons using a keyword search that also includes the subject and grade/level. I searched for “social justice”-subject: “social sciences/history”-grade/level: “upper elementary”.  The site returned 24 lessons. The lesson may include a lesson plan, activities, worksheet, tips for online media decoding, and further resources. All materials are free for view or download with user registration.

 

Some of the lessons in my search results are:

·       Intolerable Acts

·       Mr. Rogers: What do we do when our feelings are hurt?

·       Cyberbullying: How it hurts and how to help?

·       Harriet Tubman seizes freedom – many stories

·       Unearthing stereotypes

·       Sculptures of Dr. King: Reading messages

·       Oil spills: what’s the problem

 

There are other ways to look for class materials. You can get it from “Subject area kits”, “Feature topics” and “Guides by subject area/grade” by clicking on the tab. There is also a “Popular Subject Collections” tab which allows you to search Project Look Sharp curriculum kits by grade.

 

You can choose your role, as teacher, librarian, school & organization, and teacher ed. There are different resources available for each role, including lessons and professional development resources. Under Librarian’s Created Material, I found that Dr. Susan Allen was the author of an unique media literacy lesson named “Censoring Seuss: cancel culture or cultural respect."  This is an interesting topic reflecting the current cultural debate.

I also found Dr. Suan Allen’s name in the team introduction page.

 

“ From September 2021-2023, Susan was Project Coordinator for Project Look Sharp’s New York State ML3 initiative, Librarians as Leaders for Media Literacy. She helped develop lessons, coached the 19 school librarians who were members of the ML3 group, helped in the early development of the online class and served as a general consultant on things dealing with school libraries and school librarians. Susan continues consult with Project Look Sharp’ about school librarian preservice education.”

 

It’s interesting to see how one thing leads to another and how everything is connected. In the end, it seems that a web tool that we are writing about for this course has real life and professional implication.


Critique and suggestions:

 

1.    I would like to see the contents organized and displayed more clearly. For example, what are the objectives of this web tool? What are media decoding and constructivist approach? I would like to see a more understandable definition of these key concepts.

 

2.    It would also be nice to make some free materials and handouts available for view without requiring user registration. It would give the users a better idea of the media literacy lessons that are the focus and purpose of this web tool.

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