The Media Spot

Poetry Unit > List Poems > Poetry Videos

This Fall, fifth graders at PS 124 created "List" or "Catalog" poetry while learning to blog, and currently one of the classes is producing video representations of poems generated through this project.

Our media literacy program at PS 124 in Brooklyn is off to a great start. The program will make use of a network of blogs, hosted at wordpress.com, that will be used by teachers and students for media eduction work in the classroom, and also by PS 124 staff for administrative purposes.

We're thrilled to launch the new TMS web site at themediaspot.org. The new site is built using the Drupal content management platform, which provides an incredibly powerful set of tools for us to manage TMS online.

In September we will launch a two-year project-based media literacy program at Public School 124 in Brooklyn, NY. I will lead teachers in the 3rd-5th grades in conducting technology-based projects that support existing literacy, English language arts, and social studies curricula in accordance with New York State and national learning standards, while emphasizing the key concepts of media literacy.

Starting in September TMS will be collaborating with students from Liberty High School in Manhattan, and teaching artist Alison Fleminger, to produce an original multimedia theater piece at the legendary non-profit NYC interdisciplinary cultural center, The Kitchen. Liberty is a Bilingual/English as a Second Language school that meets the special needs of newly-arrived non-English speaking immigrant students.

TMS is currently writing an article on the relationship between personnel, curricula, and hardware setups in schools and the potential for meaningful interdisciplinary use of technology that includes media literacy initiatives. The article, Beyond Access, is based on interviews with school staff, curriculum developers, and media education academics conducted in 2005, and the year-long residency we wrapped up in June 2006 at P.S. 124 in Brooklyn, NY through Teaching Matters, Inc.