Creating Media for Learning

Student-Centered Projects Across the Curriculum

Sam Gliksman

• Publisher: Corwin
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781483385457
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Technology

Place Your Students At The Forefront of 21st Century Media Production All education hinges on effective communication. This book shows how student mastery of media literacy and creation is the key to demonstrating learning in the 21st Century. The strategies and tactics these pages offer equip educators to make their students enthusiastic experts at producing dynamic media projects. Content includes:

• The how, why, and when of prompting students to create their own media across content areas.
• The benefits of media sharing, and how to do it responsibly.
• The innovative use of Augmented Reality, so readers can activate a video on the book’s printed pages with their mobile devices.

Chapter 1 The Evolution of Communication

“If you look at the history of communication, new technologies like the phone and e-mail didn’t just let people do things faster; it fundamentally changed the scope of the kinds of projects people dared to take on.”

—Justin Rosenstein

Outcomes

• Recognizing the importance of clear communication in education
• Recognizing that technology has always shaped mediums used for communicating
• Understanding the impact that new technologies are having on the ways we communicate
• Understanding that student media creation can enable more fluent, articulate, and differentiated expressions of knowledge and opinion

A school principal called me recently, just a few weeks after I’d visited her school to give a staff workshop on student-centered media projects. Teachers had learned different techniques for using video projects with students, and she was genuinely excited about the progress students were making. There was also one specific student she wanted to discuss. This student—let’s call him Alex—had been having serious learning difficulties at school and his mounting frustration was leading to anger and even bouts of occasional violence. After the workshop, one teacher assigned some projects that required students to communicate their understanding by creating video screencasts. The level of student engagement in class improved dramatically and Alex in particular was suddenly enthused and learning. He was flourishing with this new media-based communication and his videos displayed genuine creativity and eloquence. Within a couple of weeks, he’d even started creating educational animations. The difference in Alex’s behavior and learning was dramatic. He had been struggling within more traditional modes of expression, and media offered Alex a means to learn and communicate more fluently. He’d finally found a language he could speak.

We live in an era of incredible change, where today’s shiny new gadget quickly becomes tomorrow’s dinosaur. New technologies are offering an ever expanding array of methods and mediums for communicating with others—everywhere except the classroom, where we largely remain loyal to communication practices that have been used for generations.

Allowing students the opportunity to express themselves by creating media can result in greater engagement, more effective communications, and deeper learning. Additionally, students that express themselves fluently tend to be more successful at schooling, and frankly, it’s a fundamental skill that’s a critical component of success throughout life.

Communication Technology

If you were researching the history of schooling, you’d probably conclude that the methodology of communication has not changed substantially over time. The majority of classrooms still feature a teacher standing at the front of a room talking to students while additional content is delivered via textbooks. Students are also required to express their knowledge almost exclusively through the medium of text. That’s been a constant throughout the history of institutionalized education. However, it’s clearly not the case once you step outside the school grounds.

Technology and communication have crossed paths throughout history, and the means by which people express themselves has constantly evolved. Communication has always been shaped by technological developments. Early Egyptians developed the ability to create sheets out of papyrus that could absorb ink. The Chinese invented a process for creating a pulp that could be pressed into paper products and then the process for creating paper was continually refined as it spread across the continents. That being said, the vast majority of people still couldn’t read or write by the middle ages. Traditions and knowledge were largely transferred orally. Most people didn’t have access to written materials nor was there any real need for them. Despite being considered the largest library in Europe, the Sorbonne Library in Paris only had 1,338 books in the early 14th century. Historically, the use of text-based communication was largely confined to academic and religious groups. That changed suddenly and dramatically with the arrival of an invention in the 15th century that changed the course of human history. The Gutenberg printing press acted as an agent of change, enabling wide circulation of information and ideas across the world (Eisenstein, 1979). The availability of information in the form of printed text had a huge impact on literacy and learning. The technology of the printing press caused text to become the primary method for recording and communicating information. Today, however, new technologies are again transforming the essence of communication in transformative ways.

Development of Mass Media

While text- and print-based media continued to flourish, other forms of communication arrived with the development of new technologies in the 20th century. Radio transmissions became popular as a mass communication tool in the 1920s. Broadcasts could reach an enormous amount of people instantly, and radio quickly became a leading source of news and entertainment. As one example, President Franklin Roosevelt used his fireside chat radio broadcasts to speak directly to the American people about national issues during his presidential terms. Imagine the incredible breakthrough it must have been at that time for someone to speak at one location and be heard by people all over the country! Yet it was just an appetizer for other, more visual media forms that would quickly follow.

The developments by the 1930s in camera and film technology were popularizing photography. And it wasn’t only photography that was reaping the benefits of this new technology. Motion picture technology had evolved from silent movies to “talkies” by the 1930s, and the enormous popularity of movies led to an era that many call “The Golden Age of Hollywood” over the ensuing two decades. When national crises such as the Great Depression and World War II were plaguing the nation, many people turned to movies for solace and diversion. Of course, watching a movie meant going out for a night on the town. By the late 1940s, many people were bringing the theater to their living room in a box that was exploding in popularity—the television. Families and friends would huddle around a TV set and watch programs such as The Ed Sullivan Show and Candid Camera. Television and movies were produced in color and then eventually become digital toward the end of the 20th century. They grew to be cornerstones of American culture.

A landmark 2010 study demonstrated that the daily lives of American youth are flooded with media (Rideout, Foehr, & Roberts, 2010). Most have mobile devices in their pockets. Almost all have computers and television sets in their homes and bedrooms. The study revealed that 8–18-year-olds spend around 7.5 hours a day using media, seven days a week. That’s more than any other activity with the exception of sleeping—and well in excess of the time spent in classrooms. Furthermore, given their tendency to multitask and use more than one medium at a time, they pack a total of 10 hours and 45 minutes worth of media content into those daily 7.5 hours. A new area of brain study called neuroplasticity describes how experiences reorganize neural pathways in the brain. Putting that in simpler terms, high levels of exposure to media is having a dramatic impact on the way youth process information and express themselves. These are not the same learners that were sitting in classrooms a generation ago.

From Consumers to Producers

Media communications rose rapidly in the 20th century; however, it was largely produced and controlled by a small number of large corporations. The vast majority of people were consumers of media. That started to change dramatically with the convergence of two trends around the turn of the 21st century:

1. Media distribution: The rapid expansion of social networking enabled anyone to share information with others across the world—instantly.
2. Media production: Smartphones with built-in microphones, cameras, and web connectivity allowed users to create the media that comprises much of the information being produced and shared.

We’ve moved beyond simply consuming media. The huge popularity of mobile devices has enabled us all to become producers of media. It’s also important to note that the population segment leading this change is youth—the very students that are sitting in our classrooms. Seventy percent of teens in the USA were using smartphones in late 2013, according to a Nielsen survey (Nielsen, 2013). Teens are prodigious producers of media and use social networking services such as Facebook and YouTube to share their media with vast amounts of people.

Communicating in the 21st Century

The meteoric growth of YouTube is an interesting case study of how teens are interacting with media. Amazingly, YouTube was only founded around ten years ago. The concept of people uploading and sharing videos seemed more than a little quirky at the time—almost like a massive version of America’s Funniest Home Videos in which we were all able to participate. Within a year, it became one of the fastest growing sites on the Internet, attracting 20 million visitors a month and delivering 100 million videos a day (History of YouTube, n.d.). Google immediately saw the potential of video sharing and purchased YouTube in 2006 for US$1.65 billion in stock. YouTube has continued to flourish and has now become the third most visited site on the web after Google and Facebook (Alexa, n.d.). According to statistics provided by YouTube (YouTube, n.d.), there are over a billion unique visitors to YouTube.com every month and 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube per minute. Every day, people watch hundreds of millions of hours of video on YouTube and generate billions of views.

The fact that YouTube attracts such immense viewership is only part of the story. There’s a dramatic shift in how people are interacting with the content on YouTube. The new millennial generation is often referred to as Generation C because they are defined by their connected behavior. It’s Generation C that’s driving the growth of YouTube. Gunnard Johnson, the Advertising Research Director of Google, characterizes the behavior of Generation C on YouTube according to “4Cs” kern (Johnson, 2013):

• Connection: Gen C watches YouTube on all screens, constantly switching between devices. It’s on-demand viewing that’s available all the time. They’re increasingly watching YouTube on mobile devices as a complementary activity to their lives. For example, 41% tune in to YouTube on their smartphone while waiting for something or someone, 18% while commuting from work or school, and 15% while commercials are running on TV.
• Creation: Gen C has become prodigious creators of content. They are deeply engaged with online video and are watching, creating, and uploading videos on YouTube.
• Community: Gen C thrives on connection to community, defining what’s popular on YouTube by sharing videos with friends and family.
• Curation: Gen C is made up of expert curators who care about finding content that matters to them.

And the phenomenon of communicating with visual media is not unique to YouTube by any means. Facebook reported a 550% spike in video content views in the 12 months from March 2013 to 2014 (O’Neil, 2014). Snapchat, the photo and video sharing service, reached 100 million users within two years (Ballve, 2014). Sharing of Snapchat stories—user-generated messages that combine photos and video—increased 100% in just two months. Vine created a new trend of six-second video loops and built a user base of 40 million people within two years (Fiegerman, 2013). Instagram has topped the 200 million user mark after four years of operation (Instagram News, 2014). There’s simply no question that Gen C is deeply engaged with digital media—watching, creating, and distributing media on networked websites they have turned into the most popular destinations on the web.

Using Text and Media

Media, the plural of medium, is defined by the Oxford Dictionaries as “a means by which something is communicated or expressed” (Medium, n.d.). Each form of media aims to communicate information using its own unique language and syntax. Traditional education places a heavy priority on the medium of text. There are clear historical reasons for the use of text and why skills such as reading and writing remain important. However, if we recognize the value of communication in education, then any medium that leads to more fluent expression and understanding should play a pivotal role in learning activities. It’s also extremely important to note that using media doesn’t replace learning traditional literacy skills. Media use can and should complement text-based learning activities. Movies require a written screenplay. Audio recordings and narrated slideshows require a written narration. All media projects also utilize important executive functioning skills such as planning and organization.

Chapter 2 Becoming Media Literate

“Media study does not replace text. It broadens and deepens our understanding of texts.”

—Philip M. Anderson

Outcomes

• Recognizing that literacy requirements evolve and reflect skills required at different points in time
• Understanding that media literacy is a vital skill in today’s culture
• Understanding that media literacy encompasses both the interpretation of media messages and the creation of media products
• Realizing that media literate students will produce more fluent and effective media messages

People have long recognized media’s power in delivering complex messages and forming opinion. September 7th, 1964. Thirty million Americans sit in front of their television sets watching the weekly prime-time movie when an ad appears featuring a young girl standing in a field on a peaceful summer’s day, counting petals as she plucks them from a daisy. The scene continues for 30 seconds until her voice fades and is replaced with the chilling sound of a military-like countdown. Using a technique borrowed from the movies, the director freezes the image then slowly zooms into a close-up of the child’s eye. The countdown reaches zero and the frame fills with the terrifying sight of a nuclear bomb exploding into an enormous mushroom cloud. As the cloud expands, the distinctive voice of President Lyndon Johnson can be heard saying, “These are the stakes. To make a world in which all of God’s children can live, or to go into the dark. We must either love each other, or we must die.”

The “Daisy ad,” as it famously became known, was produced by a prominent New York advertising agency on behalf of the Democratic National Committee campaign to elect Lyndon B. Johnson as president (see Figure 2.1). His opponent, Barry Goldwater, wasn’t mentioned by name nor was there any reference to his controversial comments regarding the use of nuclear weaponry. Lloyd Wright, the Democratic National Committee’s media coordinator, was in the room when Johnson screened the ad at the White House in advance of its airing. Wright recalled that “everyb...