How do you know when literacy is happening? What should forms of assessment and intervention look like with digital media?
In the last two posts about digital media literacy, we discussed the importance for it within education as a subject to be investigated and practiced on its own and as a means and tool within other subjects or in other parts of the school day for youth to expand engagement. We also discussed the ways this form of education and curriculum can help shape dispositions around how media works in the world, and equip learners with skills that boost their confidence as internet users and as global citizens. But how do you know that these learnings and lessons are getting heard or, better yet, used in the regular daily routines of youth?
We know that there are meanings to be had, and "aha" moments to be shared by users who cross the bridge towards developing deep understanding of how digital media can sometimes come embedded with things like bias, misinformation, or omissions. Getting across that bridge of skill-building and understanding isn't a binary, like entering or leaving an elevator. Though used in a variety of contexts, the act of "decoding" has particular meaning with regard to digital media literacy. It involves analyzing and deconstructing complex messages (or webs of them) in the form of text, images, movement, sound, and interaction. "The use of the term decoding is slightly different in media literacy than in traditional print literacy. In traditional literacy, decoding generally refers to letter recognition and the ability to sound out letter combinations and syllables" (Scheibe & Rogow, 2011, p64). So if learning literacy and developing confidence with use of digital media is a spectrum, how can we as educators or adults tell if the youth around us are internalizing the risks, powers, and dimensions, and support them along the way at each of these parts of the bridge?
One way to determine if literacy is happening, is to frame the decoding of internet artifacts and news in a similar way to that of language arts and aspects of writing, grammar, and psychological tactics like persuasive tone. According to a recent study from Stanford University, we now know that most students can't discern when news is fake and that often teenagers and children absorb notions of events and happenings from social media without considering the source. Instead, the level of detail contained within an article - or a tweet - or whether or not the information includes a photo were cited as more common things young people searched for to assess credibility (Shellenbarger, 2016). Guides and other resources exist online for internet users to access as needed, but the ability to actively analyze and draw upon discernible evidence to support an argument are still necessary when navigating the real, virtual world, ironic as that phrase might seem.
Benjamin Bloom developed a taxonomy for verbs and actions, or behaviors, that demonstrate progressive forms of critical thinking in 1956 that could provide a useful foundation for an assessment on literacy well-suited for the future. Starting with the column labeled knowledge, it follows a trajectory of reading, learning, synthesis, and finally evaluation with words that also act as useful prompts for students to respond to as they navigate the web and news sources. As learners begin to build their repertoire of experiences demonstrating these kinds of thinking and engagement, their ability to situate information in a larger context and through multiple filters allows them to both consume and produce media more safely.
What might this look like?
A teen reads an article about a union protesting. The design of the website is minimal and simple, with some ads. They can find the name of the author and links to other articles by this same author or the publisher. They could make their way back to this webpage if needed in the future. They can relay back to you what happened - or what was reported to have happened - as well as where and when, and possibly who was involved. They can maybe recall hearing about this same event elsewhere. They recognize the event itself is composed of motivations and background influences as well as outcomes and byproducts, and can describe some of their relatedness. Later, they gather that another event, similar in many ways, has occurred perhaps from another author or publisher, or the same one. They can construct a larger timeline of these events and their relationship and participants including information from across multiple articles or news sources. They can differentiate the ways that certain news sources or authors speak about the event differently from other authors or sources. Sometimes, these things go together. They continue to utilize a variety of sources for information, and can integrate them into a more meta understanding of how they are each involved in these events. They can describe for you what pieces of information from an article are skewed or biased, or vaguely reported, are inaccurate, or omitted. At moments that are safe and helpful, they engage in discussion online about the events, and are able to wade through sensationalism or bias and help advance conversation about the events.
The above paragraph is a generalized profile of a learner progressing in their critical thinking skills, with their ability to decode online media and news also advancing simultaneously and interrelatedly. The timeline of the narrative in the paragraph is condensed to showcase the kinds of dispositions and tactics that an educator or adult could see being employed as literacy grows. Though Bloom wasn't writing with the intent to shape media literacy, especially given that the internet did not exist in 1956, his framework still provides a useful way to engage youth with their powers of evaluation in this digital age. It is a framework that invites discussion and collaboration, but is a much richer form of teaching literacy than simply relaying the dangers that lie on the vastness of the internet.
Food for Thought
In your mind, what demonstrates critical thinking and literacy of the internet? What suggests that a person is a beginner?
What is an experience you had online that taught you a critical lesson you think others should know?
Bloom, B. S. (1956). "Taxonomy of educational objectives, handbook I: The cognitive domain." New York: David McKay Co Inc.
Scheibe, C. & Rogow, F. (2012). The teacher’s guide to media literacy: Critical thinking in a multimedia world. Corwin.
Shellenbarger, S. (2016, November 21). Most Students Don’t Know When News Is Fake, Stanford Study Finds. WSJ; Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/articles/most-students-dont-know-when-news-is-fake-stanford-study-finds-1479752576
University of Washington. (2017). Library Guides: Savvy Info Consumers: Detecting Bias in the News. Uw.edu. https://guides.lib.uw.edu/research/evaluate/bias
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