Media Literacy

While more and more students are going online for information our schooling system is still stuck with traditional literacy classes. Many current media literacy classes revolve around recognizing propaganda in the media, while most students still do not know how to distinguish reliable search results in a search engine. Traditional literacy skills would include reading comprehension and writing skills. Many teachers believe that teaching media literacy would eliminate or dull the traditional skills. However media literacy skills due improve reading comprehension because students have to distinguish what is true/untrue, bias and so on. While teaching media literacy, a teacher could assign a blog assignment to work on students writing abilities. Many areas in media literacy could easily be taught in a traditional literacy class. Teachers need to take that next step, before they lose their students completely.