! Some reservations: This article provides an excellent examination of the many skills that can be applied and developed through Media Education, and offers many examples of how those skills have been successful applied in particular programs. However, it is important to note that this article is intended to inspire educators and administrators, and does not necessarily offer methods for application in the classroom.
-There is the suggestion that young people, through pursuing their own interests connected to media, have developed this core set of skills, and were readily capable of applying those skills to classroom learning. With the example of Sam, the baseball card collector, the article states:
"On another level, the cards provided a scaffold, which motivated and shaped his acquisition of other forms of school knowledge. ... Sam developed a sense of himself as a learner."
! He did not develop his sense of self as a learner, until an educator made clear the connections between baseball cards and school subjects. It is far more likely that teachers and other students reinforced the notion that baseball card collecting is a "hobby," a free-time activity, and less important than math homework. I'm not sure that I have ever encountered a student at any age who was able to connect life learning to class learning. If I were to ask Sam in the classroom, as the article states, he would say he was "having fun."
-There are several elements that must be developed under the guidance of the teacher:
- Meta-Cognition of learning styles or process, strengths and weaknesses. Sam must be able to discuss how learning or understanding takes place, and which terms best describe his style.
- Identification of the skills applied in baseball card collecting or trading, and understanding of how those skills were used.
- Identification of the skills necessary for the academic subject, for example: architecture, 20th century American history, and map-reading (subjects identified in the article).
- A familiarity with the subject: When a teacher identifies the skills necessary for map-reading, for example, these skills will most likely remain entirely abstract, unless the student has some experience reading maps.
My point here is not to suggest that this is impossible. And I admire the zest and enthusiam for Media Education projected in this article. However, it is naive, and perhaps misleading, to suggest that life-learning and academic learning is inherently transferable. And perhaps this is not because of a lacking on the parts of the students, but rather the result of a education culture that prioritizes particular skills (math and reading, for example) and stigmatizes others (almost every subject of Media Education).
I would like to point to a particular example with Graphic Novels in Language Arts education. With the increase in publishing and availability of graphic novels, teachers have seen struggling and resistant readers eagerly consuming books with images. The assumption often made here is that reading comics will increase readers' interest in reading texts. There are several problems here:
- This reinforces the hierarchy of texts over comics. The comics those reader love are devalued when treated as a stepping stone to texts.
- This fails to consider the many cognitive skills necessary for understanding and making meaning from comics, as well as the skills necessary for text reading.
I suggest instead, that the teacher must make transparent the process of reading comics and reading texts. Where are skills supported with the other? What are the potential limitations of each medium? A comic reader must be able to see herself as a comic reader even when reading texts.
-"...researchers such as Black and Henry Jenkins have argued, the new digital cultures porvide support systems to help youth improve their core competencies as readers and writers."
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