Platform for Participation = Media Literacy

Michael Wesh’s video ethnography “A Vision of Students Today” has made the rounds in the ed tech circles for some time but an explanation of how it came to fruition is detailed in his 2008 lecture given at the University of Manitoba. If you’re interested in media literacy, student learning, web 2.0, or education, please, please take the time to watch (it’s 66 fascinating minutes).

One of the more poignant moments for those interested in media literacy comes when Wesch comments on the assumption that students “get” web 2.0 technology:

“…they (students) may know all about how to navigate these things (YouTube and Facebook) and to entertain themselves but but they know nothing about how to use these things to learn and for critical thought and, more then anything, they rarely know how to use these things to create something interesting and new…..and because there are no natives here we cannot assume that our students are media literate and know how to navigate this world….we need to create platforms for participation that allow students to realize and leverage the emerging media environment…”.

Wesch goes on to to discuss in detail how he embeds bakes media literacy and web 2.0 into his curriculum. He ends up sharing a link to his media literacy portal located here: http://www.netvibes.com/wesch#Social_Media_Research_Resources

It’s fascinating stuff!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 26th, 2009 at 7:10 pm and is filed under future, information, student learning, teaching. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.