Here are Bill Densmore’s running notes on the post World Cafe breakout discussion.
*What is the role of libraries?
*Literacy is not just about understanding something, it is also about communicating something.
*Steve Fox — The media literacy discussions tended to be print centric. Most youth are absorbing from non-print sources. How do you develop critical thinking skills when people are absorbing from Jon Stewart, viral videos, not necessarily in a one-to-one experience. Multimedia critical thinking.
*Having students in the room has shifted the conversation. There are moments in high school where your desire to create is squelched. We are not giving them an opportunity early enough to engage in those habits of critical inquiry.
*Steve Wilmarth — News total is global. Who owns the news? There’s the idea — what are the economic drivers, or are they economic at all, because is the business model for journalism going to continue in the 21st century as it did in the 20th century? Is there a model for good journalism standards? Given the global importance, how do we make sure we maintain the integrity of good journalistic standards when the economic model is so up in the air.
*Student — The adults weren’t intimidating at all. Going to the school where we do a whole lot of research, we are really exposed to media and what does it mean to have access to fine sources. Coming to this workshop is really helpful to us. The Stony Brook presentation helped us. This is a first step where we are getting to the point where we are looking for real news and not just opinions. I was really glad to be in the room today.
* Student — We choose difference sources, they have the same story, but our opinions end up different.
* Student — We’re invited to a lot of things. A lot of kids, when they came to our school, went to horrible public schools in the area and weren’t that educated in that schools. It’s really the environment. Our school accepts kids pretty much based on their desire to learn. Any kid put in the right environment can learn the habits of inquiry and interpreting media. It shows that it is not as difficult as it might seem. I believe a majority of kids to do this if they are put in the right environment. If we fixed our education system, a lot of this would be done for us. I think if people learned how to research and question authority, a lot of the media problems would go away.
Q: What is the key to the environment?
A: I think a lot of teachers go into the teaching field and a lot are not accepted by the administration. I think a lot of people are discouraged from teaching because of how our government portrays education.
*Teacher from the Philadelphia school discusses in detail the way Internet tools are used to manage a conversation.
*Student: The home environment of a student is critical. “What comes from family, friends, and what you choose to do is what plays out in the school.”
*Q: How do you get teachers to be more media literate?
*A: Wilmarth — Teaching universities aren’t doing this yet.
*A: Schneider — They one’s he’s familiar with are not doing media literacy.
*A: Frank Baker — Curriculum frameworks have media literacy as a standard. “I am fortunate because I can walk into a distance learning facility and broadcast to every K-12 school in South Carolina. There are so many educators who are doing it, but nobody knows about it. We have to be P.T. Barnum’s, we have to let people know about it.”
*How does method match our goal of civic engagement?
*With the method is tied the goal of individual vs. shared responsiblity — news providers vs. citizens.