Republic of the Philippines

City of Taguig

Taguig City University

Gen. Santos Avenue, Central Bicutan, Taguig City

Written Report
In
Popular Media in
Teaching
Topic:
Challenges in Media Education
(Strategies and Approaches in Media
Literacy)
Submitted by:
Vislenio, Windy E.
Ngoho, Jennifer H.
Aringo, Rhea Mae
BSESCIA42(AM)

Submitted to:
Prof. Editha Mateo
 Republic of the Philippines
City of Taguig

Taguig City University

Gen. Santos Avenue, Central Bicutan, Taguig City

Introduction:

We live in a world where media are omnipresent: an increasing number of people

spend a great deal of time watching television, reading newspapers and magazines,
playing records and listening to the radio. In some countries, for example, children
already spend more time watching television than they do attending school. Rather than
condemn or endorse the undoubted power of the media, we need to accept their
significant impact and penetration throughout the world as an established fact, and also
appreciate their importance as an element of culture in today's world. The role of
communication and media in the process of development should not be
underestimated, nor the function of media as instruments for the citizen's active
participation in society. Political and educational systems need to recognize their
obligations to promote in their citizens a critical understanding of the phenomena of
communication. Regrettably most informal and non-formal educational systems do little
to promote media education of education for communication. Too often the gap
between the educational experience they offer and the real world in which people live is
disturbingly wide.

Media education will be most effective when parents, teachers, media personnel
and decision-makers all acknowledge they have a role to play in developing greater
critical awareness among listeners, viewers and readers. The greater integration of
educational and communications systems would undoubtedly be an important step
toward more effective education.

CHALLENGES IN MEDIA EDUCATION

Despite increasingly widespread adoption of technologies in virtually every aspect of K-12

education, significant challenges are preventing widespread effective implementation. According
to researchers, though some of those challenges are systemic and some related to the
technologies themselves, teachers and education leaders share in the blame as well. "The NMC
Horizon Report: 2013 K-12 Edition," put together by the New Media Consortium as part of
the Horizon Project, identifies challenges that represent significant constraints on the adoption of
technology in education. In past reports, those challenges have centered largely on reluctance on
the part of administrators and teachers, lack of preparation, and lack of support or funding. This
year's findings followed largely along those lines as well, though some new challenges were
identified as well.

Challenge 1: Professional Development. Key among all challenges is the lack of adequate,
ongoing professional development for teachers who are required to integrate new technologies
into their classrooms yet who are unprepared or unable to understand new technologies.
"All too often, when schools mandate the use of a specific technology, teachers are left without the
tools (and often skills) to effectively integrate the new capabilities into their teaching methods,"
according to the report. "The results are that the new investments are underutilized, not used at all,
 Republic of the Philippines
City of Taguig

Taguig City University

Gen. Santos Avenue, Central Bicutan, Taguig City

or used in a way that mimics an old process rather than innovating new processes that may be
more engaging for students."

Challenge 2: Resistance to change. Resistance to technology comes in many forms, but one of
the key resistance challenges identified in the report is "comfort with the status quo." According to
the researchers, teachers and school leaders often see technological experimentation as outside
the scope of their job descriptions.

Challenge 3: MOOCs and other new models for schooling. New in this year's report, new
models for teaching and learning are providing "unprecedented competition to traditional models
of schooling." In particular, the MOOC (massive open online course) probably the hottest topic
in higher education right now was identified as being "at the forefront" of discussions about new
modes of delivering K-12 education.
"K-12 institutions are latecomers to distance education in most cases, but competition from
specialized charter schools and for-profit providers has called attention to the needs of today's
students, especially those at risk," according to the report.

Challenge 4: Delivering informal learning. Related to challenge 3, rigid lecture-and-test models

of learning are failing to challenge students to experiment and engage in informal learning. But,
according to the report, opportunities for such informal learning can be found in non-traditional
classroom models, such as flipped classrooms, which allow for a blending of formal and informal
learning.

Challenge 5: Failures of personalized learning. According to the report, there's a gap between
the vision of delivering personalized, differentiated instruction and the technologies available to
make this possible. So while K-12 teachers seem to see the need for personalized learning, they
aren't being given the tools they need to accomplish it, or adequate tools simply don't exist.

Challenge 6: Failure to use technology to deliver effective formative assessments. The

report noted: "Assessment is an important driver for educational practice and change, and over
the last years we have seen a welcome rise in the use of formative assessment in educational
practice. However, there is still an assessment gap in how changes in curricula and new skill
demands are implemented in education; schools do not always make necessary adjustments in
assessment practices as a consequence of these changes. Simple applications of digital media
tools, like webcams that allow non-disruptive peer observation, offer considerable promise in
giving teachers timely feedback they can use."

MEDIA LITERACY

For centuries, literacy has referred to the ability to read and write. Today, we get
most of our information through an interwoven system of media technologies.
The ability to read many types of media has become an essential skill in the
21st Century. It is the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, create, reflect upon, and take
 Republic of the Philippines
City of Taguig

Taguig City University

Gen. Santos Avenue, Central Bicutan, Taguig City

action in all forms of communication media. The other meaning of media literacy is not
so much a finite body of knowledge but rather a skill, a process, a way of
thinking that, like reading comprehension, is always evolving.

STRATEGIES IN MEDIA LITERACY ACCORDING TO ELIZABETH THOMANN

1. All media messages are constructed

This is not only about the act of deliberately writing for a TV program or a
radio segment. The idea of constructing media messages is the intentional
act of delivering a message over a particular media. And this message is
determined as influential or effective in driving people to do or believe in
something. Messages in media are neither right nor wrong because these
were only constructed and are subjectively true or false depending on the
people who view it.

2. Media messages are constructed using a creative language with its own
rules.
Different media requires a different language. This "language" must not be
taken in a literal sense (such as English spoken language). This word refers
to the techniques that are utilized in order to convey particular emotions or
messages to the audience. Thus, if people have a prior knowledge of these
techniques then their blind side about mass media effects will be filled.

3. Different people experience the same media differently.

No two people are the same. Educational attainment, age, gender, interests,
and affiliations all play a part in their media preference. Even twins may not
have the same preference when watching TV or listening to the radio. This is
because we, as unique biological beings, were reared very differently from
the rest of the population. We may have the same environment but inside us
we are composed of different strands of DNA which determine how we react
to certain stimulants. In fact, Renee Hobbes (1995) maintains the idea that
skills are learned at specific stages of a person's life and that these skills
"give them a new set of glasses with which they can 'read' their media
culture." That is the reason why we can never expect people to have the
same experience with regards media viewing.
4. Media are primarily businesses driven by a profit motive.
Mass Media will not be called an industry if it is not profit-driven. While there
are certain programs which serve the interest of the people, we can assume
that all of these programs that we see or hear in different media firstly
considers the profit incentive before consumer well being. Sesame Street is a
very educational show but it was first a bankable concept before it became an
award-winning children's educational show on TV.
 Republic of the Philippines
City of Taguig

Taguig City University

Gen. Santos Avenue, Central Bicutan, Taguig City

Also, if you think that you are critical enough by realizing that advertisements
only sell the products to the consumers, think again. While the products are
being sold to the viewers, the unseen transaction lies in selling the audience
(potential buyers) to the manufacturers and advertisers of the products.

5. Media have embedded values and points of views.

Obviously, people pay for media coverage to promulgate their own ideas.
When this happens, the mass media company owner can already choose
what setting or personal background information will be given to the
characters of a story or future plans.
If there is a reason why these mass media literacy strategies were made, it is
to lessen or totally eliminate the gullibility of the society. Despite the
persuasiveness of these different platforms, being media-literate allows a
person to keep uncovering hidden messages while everyone else already
believed in the messages they received.

APPROACHES IN MEDIA LITERACY ACCORDING TO THE MEDIA LITERACY

RESOURCE GUIDE

1. The Inquiry Model

The inquiry model is a structured framework that will help students
recognize basic issues and provide strategies for developing subject content.
This model helps to stimulate open questioning and encourages students to
be intellectually curious about the world. The inquiry model is especially
suited to the introduction of media-literacy activities in the classroom. For
example, one can easily apply the model to a provocative short film, a
television documentary, or an excerpt from a feature-film video that reveals a
powerful moral dilemma. Through an intense shared experience that raises a
whole range of issues, students are enabled to see the value of a structured
framework for facilitating focused research and critical thinking.
2. Values Education
The mass media are an ideal resource for the discussion of moral
dilemmas, the development of moral reasoning, and the use of techniques
such as values clarification. Dialogical reasoning, which has been described
as an important part of critical thinking, can play a significant role in
discussions of topics such as the pros and cons of the mass media,
government control of media, censorship, advertising, and the moral values
identified in popular television and films.

3. Media from the perspective of subject disciplines

In relation to media-literacy analysis in a subject context, it is important to
stress that teachers will need to move beyond conceiving of media simply as
audio-visual aids. Ideas that teachers can use to incorporate media literacy
 Republic of the Philippines
City of Taguig

Taguig City University

Gen. Santos Avenue, Central Bicutan, Taguig City

into their classes include: English, Social Sciences, History, Geography,

Family Studies, Visual Arts and etc.
4. Cross-media studies and interdisciplinary strategies
The issues, trends, and special events of our time are simultaneously
reflected in all or several of the mass media. Hence, whether the topic is the
arms race, the promotion of a rock star, an advertising campaign, or
sexuality and violence in the media, a cross-media analysis is required. The
effective application of the key concepts of media depends on the integration
of several media. A discussion of violence in the media, for example, might
combine knowledge from history, literature, sociology, psychology,
communications theory, and linguistics.
5. Creative Experiences
As well as being able to "decode" the symbols that dominate their society,
students should be able to "encode" them. Just as we must integrate writing
with the development of reading skills, we should integrate formal media
analysis with media production. Thus, creative or production activities should
be an essential component of media studies in the classroom. These
creative activities can range from something as short and simple as
sequencing a series of photographs to a project as complex as the
production of a rock video. Many students will grasp the analytic material
only if they have undergone production experiences.
6. Reading the media environment
Each medium of communication has its own biases and ideology. When
we interact with a medium of communication, we are influenced as much by
the form of the medium as by its message. To explore this notion further, we
should ask the following question about each communication medium: What
would life be like without this medium? Finding answers to the following
questions might also help us to understand better the effects of our
interactions with our media of communication.
7. Alternative points of view
As a counter to the mass media, which are generally, conservative and
constitute a major industry in which the profit motive is paramount, teachers,
depending on the level of the class, can show films and videos that present
an alternative vision or a different kind of perception and experience to that
of the mainstream media. These should be a supplement to, and not take the
place of, the study of popular models.
8. Full-credit courses in media literacy
These courses, offered at the secondary school level, will probably be
presented as one of the optional courses in English or the visual arts and will
reflect a great diversity of approaches.