Alexandra

Sam Reed of Beeber Middle School uses MySpace in the title of his lessons on digital citizenship, but the students never access MySpace in school. In fact, they never create content. Instead these media literacy lessons revolve around class discussion where they democratically discuss media literacy concerns about advertising and the internet. At the end of the unit, the students all write letters explaining to school administrators why they agree or disagree with school website blocking policies. Q: Do the letters count as the media production portion of a media literacy curriculum? Are the students producing any other media? Reed seems to have the same classroom conditions as Greg Fox of Phoenixville Middle School. However Reed has more successfully implemented a media literacy curriculum. Fox does prompt his students to think critically about media in his assignments but what is missing is discussion and production. Fox expressed his concerns about MySpace and FaceBook in the classroom environment during our interview, however, as Reed demonstrates, these websites can be brought into discussion without being a tool in the classroom environment. Fox teaches a unit on digital citizenship. From his own description of the unit he mostly focuses on ethics and copyright laws in media. Q: How similar are Fox’s lessons on Digital Citizenship to Reed’s lessons on MySpace and Democracy? Fox teaches 6th grade social studies, 7th grade communications and 8th grade public speaking classes. His students are on a rotating schedule where they move from classroom to classroom and teacher to teacher throughout the day. When Fox assigns his media literacy prompts for a writing or public speaking assignment he grades them based on his own judgment on their critical thinking. Q: Does Sam Reed teach the same students all day or is Beeber on a rotating schedule? Q: Does Reed treat MySpace and Democracy as a special unit or does he incorporate it into a traditional subject (English for example like Concord High School)? Q: How does Reed grade MySpace and Democracy? Reed claims that parents are very accepting and actually wind up learning as much as the students. Fox fears that parents do not understand and are content with traditional models of curriculum. It seems as if these two particular teachers are the opposite of what we saw in //Teaching youth media// as they have the critical thinking about the media ingredients in the classroom but lack the production aspect. - Two profiles on teachers with similar resources where one successfully implements media literacy and one is both more tentative to incorporate it and is lacking various aspects of true media literacy. - Two teacher’s different ideas of media literacy education and how it can be implemented in the classroom. - Compare and contrast the students in various areas including grades, standardize test grades, and interest. - Compare and contrast schools and/or school districts. - Use Fox to demonstrate typical teacher anxieties about media literacy and Reed as an example that media literacy in the classroom may not be as intimidating as most teachers think.
 * Sam Reed and Greg Fox**
 * Possible Project Directions:**