Colleen's+Preliminary+Planning

Powerful Voices for Kids
The Powerful Voices for Kids project will study how children at Russell Byers Charter School who have taken part in media literacy education compare to those who have not through how they talk critically about media. To do so, we will watch media with the children and interact with them afterwards to see what they have to say about what they have just seen. This research will be a powerful tool for the teachers at Russell Byers because it will allow them to see if and how media literacy education is helping their students to think critically.

To get a good view of the student population, we should talk to students from multiple grades. This will give us a clearer understanding of how the children think critically through the years, regardless of the presence or absence of media literacy elements in their education. We should look at a variety of media, but also should try not to look at so much that the students become bored or disinterested in the task. First, we could have them watch three different clips from television shows such as a cartoon, an educational program or the news, and an entertainment program geared at kids such as Hannah Montana. Next, we can have them view advertisements that are geared towards them for products such as junk food and toys. After each clip, we will pause for discussion.

It would also be interesting to look at other media, such as websites, editing tools, and video games, but that depends on how much time we have with the students and if we want all of the children to view the same things or if we want to divide them up into groups that each view different things. To get a complete view of what is going on, I think it would be helpful to divide the children up. This way we will have the most amount of feedback on different types of media to analyze and compare between groups.

To get the children talking, we could use questions based off of the Key Questions of Media Literacy, as outlined by the Media Education Lab on their media literacy remote control. Of course, we will have to alter them depending on the age of the students so that they are easy to understand and the students will feel comfortable talking with us. We will listen to what the children are saying, and try to determine the amount of critical thinking in their responses. It is hard to say what key words or phrases we will listen for to determine critical thinking at this point, but after beginning to interact with the students and listen to them talk, we will be able to specify what we consider to be critical talk. 