Spotlight on Digital Media And Learning

8.23.10 | Renee Hobbs, founder of the Media Education Lab at Temple University in Philadelphia, has a fascinating story to tell about the power of media literacy, but she needs your help to tell it.

Using the website Spot.Us - a non-profit, open-source project through which “the public can commission and participate with journalists to do reporting on important and perhaps overlooked topics” - Hobbs pitched a 1,500-word story on a unique approach to teaching digital literacy with younger students.

Some background: Media Education Lab’s Powerful Voices for Kids program teamed up with Russell Byers Charter School in Philadelphia to examine the power of social media and its use during recent flash mobs, some of which had turned violent in the city. John Landis, a technology integration specialist with PVK, worked with a group of fourth through sixth graders to explore the choices made by flash mob initiators and participants—as well as how the media chose to cover the events.

Instead of just talking about it, however, the students used print and digital media to both find information about the topic and to dissect all the steps in the news-making process. Hobbs explains:

They read news stories from Philadelphia and Washington DC about flash mobs being used for a variety of purposes, including political advocacy, informal play, and violence. Using Red Lasso, an online TV news search engine, they had selected and watched local TV news stories on the events from earlier in the summer. At the same time, the teacher introduced children to key ideas about the structure of a news story and the reporting process. As they read and discussed these articles and TV news segments, they asked a lot of questions. This inspired them to want to learn more—about the news issue itself and about the way news is constructed and how it represents reality.

They also were able to construct their own response:

By learning to use a simple programming tool, Scratch, they made simple interactive videogames about the news event and used the games to stimulate conversation about the how the news is constructed and why news is so important in society.

The Powerful Voices for Kids wiki features some of those video games. We recently reported on the great potential of Scratch, and Landis’ creative use of it shows its pedagogical possibilities.

While Hobbs has already interviewed some of the key players in this story, her pitch includes expanding her research to include reporters who covered the flash mobs and “teachers who may (or may not) be comfortable teaching about local violence as a topic of inquiry, as well as the teacher and students who participated.” The story should appeal to educators and digital media and learning advocates, as well as social media/community activists—in short, many of us.

As of this writing, Hobbs, who is also a professor in the boadcasting, telecommunications and mass media department at Temple, is more than one-third of the way toward her goal of $100 via micro-payments (take a look; you may recognize some of the supporters).