Angela+Cirucci

Sam Reed and Greg Fox are two teachers who seem to be integrating similar media literacy ideas, but under the surface, their classrooms are very different. We first, of course, want to get in the classrooms and just do a lot of observing, talking one-on-one with the teachers, and talking with the students. It is hard to really decide what we want to do at this time, because we haven't really being fully exposed to the classrooms.

Currently, from what little I do know about the two teachers, I believe that it would be interesting to do a comparison of the two classrooms. What kind of social media does each teacher use? How much social media does each teacher use? What exactly is social media? Do they integrate social media into other topics, or purely just talk about social networks? Have they created their own "curricula" or use others'?

While comparing the two teachers, we would really be comparing the two classrooms, and therefore would also be looking at classroom dynamics and the students. Are students more talkative in one room than another? Why? What are the different teaching styles? Does one seem to be more successful than another? -I guess by successful we could mean do more students seem engaged, do more students talk, do more students bring in their own examples, etc. - or it could have to do with student interviews.

I think we would have to do student interviews or group student interviews to get an understanding about how they feel about the classroom, the teacher, the teaching style, the teaching material. We can have them compare it to other classrooms where they have not had media literacy.

If we find that one classroom is starkly different than another, which I think we will, we can then go in and teach each teacher's lesson in the other classroom. After, we would interview all parties involved (teachers, students, maybe others?) and see what they think in comparison. This seemingly could give us a good idea as to which kind of media literacy teaching is "better" or at least more engaging or fun for students.

I am interested to see how each teacher goes about integrating media literacy. Is it just something that is "sneakily" added in that students may not even know it is happening? Or is it a separate announced thing that everyone knows is going on, like "now we are switching over to media literacy and today we are talking about this sitcom (cue clip)"?

I do have a lot of questions that really cannot be answered until we can get in the classrooms and just see what is going on. Just from our interviews though, I believe that some above ideas should work fairly well and I am sure that more things will come to us while meeting with people.