The Media Spot

Over the past few years, when I return to consult with schools in the fall, I notice that administrators and teachers, and the educational community in general, are a little more tuned-in to the role that schools must play in preparing students for the world full of flowing info and non-stop media messages they're heading into.The influence of the Internet and visual media on our society is undeniable, especially in this election year.

The struggle to acquire and manage new technology is becoming routine for city schools, allowing more attention to be paid to curriculum development that utilizes new resources. Most school staffs have a few members integrating new media successfully to point to. The ITSE National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) are showing up on administrators' radar. Even the most self-proclaimed luddite of teachers are feeling it -- if nowhere else, through their own kids' experiences. All this makes our conversations about how to integrate media literacy concepts and productions into the classroom a little easier, and has us thinking big.

Of course, we will continue helping teachers develop productions that adapt student writing and research into digital forms to provide student practice with new media and approach subject matter from new perspectives. But to further tap into the accumulating awareness and openness of school staffs to transforming their schools into 21st Century learning environments, we are now incorporating our consulting work in the planning of standard curriculum units and school-wide planning as well.Instead of treating our work as an add-on to the standard curriculum, we are helping teachers adapt their existing objectives to include 21st Century skills and tools for gathering information and communicating.

Media literacy concepts are essential and natural extensions of traditional school objectives -- the creation of critically thinking citizens with the skills to become life-long learners. Our goal this year is to integrate the key concepts of media literacy, and the NETS basics, into curriculum maps and other existing resources -- rubrics, reflection templates, etc. -- pointing to the work we've archived on their websites, and on themediaspot.org, for successful models and support resources.We'll be documenting all of our progress on the Online Learning Networks at Brooklyn's PS 124 and PS 130, and we'll continue to share the most exciting stuff here as it comes through the year. We're expecting a lot!