When students have the freedom to use digital media to create, communicate and disseminate messages, transgression occurs. In this paper, I situate in-school youth production in the context of pedagogical theories of participatory culture, art education, and digital and media literacy education. Using interviews with four experienced high school…

Although we live in a global society, educators face many challenges in finding meaningful ways to connect students to people of other cultures. This paper offers a case study of a collaboration between teachers in the US and Turkey, where 7th grade students interacted with each other via online social media as a means to promote cultural…

Today's students tweet, text, and navigate apps up to 12 hours each day, but they may not know how to effectively analyze a TV show or website. Award-winning author Renee Hobbs demonstrates how to incorporate media literacy into the secondary classroom, providing the tools teachers need to: (1) Effectively foster students' critical thinking,…

The city provides a rich array of learning opportunities for young children. However, in many urban schools, often it can be logistically difficult to get young children out of the building. But when elementary children are encouraged to view the city as a classroom and use digital media to explore and represent their neighborhoods, they can be…

Describes a classroom activity where students compare an episode of "The Simpsons" to speeches and essays of Mark Twain. Suggests it invites students to consider the categorization of texts into "high" and "low" culture, and helps students build media literacy skills by applying tools of textual analysis first to a…

Argues that media literacy activities in the English language arts classroom can promote the strategies of reflective thinking, self-monitoring, close observation, and visualization. Shows how one seventh-grade teacher develops students' understanding of character development by using a film excerpt, a graphic organizer for developing…