Capstone Press Media Literacy Series

Link: Capstone Press Media Literacy Series.

Capstone Press Publishes New Media Literacy Series for Youth Dear educators, I am pleased that Capstone Press has just released a new, 6 book set, about media literacy, designed for students in grades 3-5. Download this two page flyer with additional details and ordering instructions. Description of series: Give young readers the tools they need to evaluate the barrage of media messages that reach them every day. Value assumptions, product placements, and cues to act are embedded in each media message. This fun series embraces media as entertaining and useful but also empowers readers as they learn a systematic way to question pop culture and to recognize how influential media messages are.

media literacy

Conference to discuss impact of mass media

- March 19, 2007


“The Mass Media, Children, and Values: A Conference Promoting Media Literacy in Young People Today” is the topic of a day-long conference on Friday, March 30. It will take place at the Bishop Center, from 8:45 a.m. to 5:10 p.m.

The conference, sponsored by the Neag School of Education, the Alliance for a Media Literate America, and the Action Coalition for Media Education, is designed for teachers, health care professionals, counselors and prevention specialists, media leaders, parents, and others interested in exploring the huge, and often negative, impact of today’s mass media on children and youth.

During this fifth annual Northeast Media Literacy Conference, presenters and participants will discuss practical ways to incorporate media literacy concepts, methods, and materials into school, health, and community programs.

Keynote speakers include Sharon Lamb, and Jackson Katz. Lamb’s keynote address is titled “Packaging Girlhood – The Media Effects on Girls’ Identity and Values.”

She is a well-known clinical psychologist, author of The Secret Lives of Girls, and co-author of a new book, Packaging Girlhood.

Lamb is an expert on girls and sexuality, aggression, and the media, and conducts research on abuse and victimization.

Katz’s keynote address is titled “Mixed Messages About Manhood: The Impact of Today’s Media Culture on Boys and Their Values.”

Katz is a leading anti-sexist male activist, gender violence prevention educator, author, and filmmaker.

His new book is The Macho Paradox, and he is well known for his timely films including Tough Guise: Violence, Media, and the Crisis in Masculinity and Wrestling with Manhood.

In addition to the keynote speakers, the conference program comprises 18 workshops.

Topics includes: Media Images of Females and Males; Media Literacy Research; Popular Culture as Reflected in Music, Art, and Theater; Helping Students Understand Their Pop Culture Choices through the Mass Media; The Depiction of Bullying and the Mass Media; Media Representations of Alcoholism and Tobacco Use; Violence and Sex in Television, Video Games, and Films; Media Literacy and Developing Critical Thinking Skills; and Integrating Media Literacy in Teacher Education Programs.

Please call 800-622-9905 or 860-486-3231 for a brochure and registration information, or at http://www.education.uconn.edu/conferences/medialit/

Media plays key role: professor

Published: Wednesday, 14 March, 2007, 08:29 AM Doha Time

Hobbs... highlights the role of the media
Staff Reporter

THE concept of literacy has undergone changes all over the world including in the Middle East region, feels Renee Hobbs, a professor at the Philadelphia-based Temple University School of Communications and Theatre.

“Being literate doesn’t any longer mean one’s ability to just read and write, but also in a great way his capabilities to understand and react, if necessary, to what others say,” said Hobbs.

The professor was speaking yesterday at a session on “Media literacy” at the Unesco conference on “Literary challenges in the Arab region: building partnerships and promoting innovative approaches”.

The academic, who is also the author of the book Reading the Media High School English, said only those initiatives for spreading literacy among the illiterates backed by media have been successful in reaching their targets. Terming media literacy as a bold experiment as well as an innovation, Hobbs said the volunteers involved in such campaigns have a responsibility to expose their target audiences to all forms of media.

“This is to ensure that those sections covered by such campaigns should be aware of what is happening around them because of such initiatives,” she said.

She said the extensive involvement of the media in literacy campaigns has come in for praise from many quarters, and the media has a responsibility to spell out the right priorities of every section, covered by such programmes.
“The approaches used in a developed country should not have anything in common with the approaches used in a developing nation,” she said.

Speaking about the role of teachers involved in such campaigns, Hobbs said they should incorporate elements of film and journalism along with their own teaching methods to make it easier, appealing and entertaining for the participants.
Hobbs said she had actively associated with campaigners to integrate media literacy into classroom, print, video and online curriculum materials.

On the role of non-government organisations in literacy campaigns in a system where all powers are centralised, Hobbs said under such circumstances, the NGOs should focus on empowering the parents before passing on the gains to the children. “If the parents remain indifferent and inattentive, a potential child learner is unlikely to gain anything much from such campaigns,” she said.

She lauded the efforts of some television channels in the Middle East in bringing innovations in their functioning, saying they had proved that anything was possible if there was a will to perform.

“The channels have recognised the real voice of the powerless and some of them are attempting to bring in a great deal of transformation in the society,” she said.

Hobbs felt that no campaign should be called successful unless it reached the man on the street. “Benefits should reach the man on the street than those calling for changes in a system,” said Hobbs.

Media focus on sex a worry

Planned Parenthood Forum will talk about how parents can counter widespread sexual images

By RICK CLEMENSON, Staff writer
Click byline for more stories by writer.
First published: Friday, March 16, 2007
ALBANY -- Amanda Stahl is on the front lines of Upper Hudson Planned Parenthood's sex education effort, so she's used to handling delicate issues.

But the health counselor was taken aback when a 13-year-old girl in her Teen Choices class said of the media's conflicting messages on sex, "They expect me to eat McDonald's during the day and look like Beyonce at night."

Those types of questions prompted Stahl to participate in UHPP's inaugural Media Literacy Forum on May 7 for parents, teachers and youth serving professionals. Call 434-5678, Ext. 137 for the location of the event, which has not been decided.
Kathleen Crowley, a psychology professor at The College of Saint Rose, and Mark Avnet, assistant professor of communications at Sage Colleges, are expert panelists.

Stahl is a Planned Parenthood soldier in the information war being waged by mass media and an underrepresented army of parents and sex educators.

Advertisers tell girls -- and boys, too, these days -- they can dress, act and smell sexier with their products, said Crowley, who teaches child psychology, gender development and parenting courses at St. Rose and is the mother of two boys Sam Long, 17 and Jake Long, 10.

"There is no doubt there is more sex in the media. More now than ever," she said.
Panelists believe a sexed up media and lack of proper sexual education in schools are party to blame for high teen pregnancy rates, sexually transmitted diseases and abortions. They are also concerned about what they see as an increase in violent messages toward women.

"The media is establishing what the norm is and what's acceptable behavior," said Blue Carreker, a UHPP spokeswoman who helped organize the forum and various workshops on topics like fashion and image and youth surfing the Internet. "I hate this passive absorbing of messages."

Panelists want parents to temper the racier culture with good, sound advice given in small doses beginning at an early age and continuing into adulthood.

One way parents can do that, they said, is by learning ways to talk to their children about the messages they see in the media. Rob Curry, UHPP senior vice president, encourages parents to explore the Internet with their children.

Children are increasingly turning to the Internet to supplement the sex education they receive in school and at home, Curry said. He believes while the Internet can be a great resource it can also open children up to society's underbelly.

The largest group of Internet porn viewers in 2005 were children ages 12-17, according to Family Safe Media, a company that helps parents filter Internet content.

Many parents might think talking to their six- or seven-year-old about sex is premature. Not so, Crowley said. She noted one high profile clothing retailer with a store at Crossgates Mall is selling thongs for 5-year-old girls with the word "sexy" on the tag.

Stahl said as many as 30 percent of sixth-grade girls in her Teen Choices classes are on a diet.
Girls are learning to dress sexier at an earlier age and boys are coming to expect that of them, Crowley said.
"Kids now have been absorbing these messages their whole life, so you can't start talking to them about sex when their 15," she said. "By then it's too late."

Carreker added, "You're not going to deliver a lecture and hope to change things overnight."

Stahl is the coordinator of Teen Choices, a self-esteem pregnancy prevention program she leads in four Albany middle schools. All 30 of her students said they wished their parents would talk to them about sex more often.
More than a third of students in one of Crowley's college classes never had "The Talk" with their parents.
Although sexually provocative images abound -- on TV, in magazines, on the Internet, at the movies, on the side of buses, etc. -- many parents are still hesitant to talk about sex.

Get over it, panelists said.

The mass media isn't going to relinquish their clutches on the hearts and minds of America's youth anytime soon, so it's up to parents to help their children separate fact from fiction, the women said.

Parents can try to block their children from going on to explicit Web sites or watching certain TV shows and movies, but the panelists believe parents play a key in using media as a useful sex education tool. "Talk to your kids even if they don't seem to accept it," Crowley said. "Tell them to think, then choose."

Clemenson can be reached at 454-5030 or by e-mail at rclemenson@timesunion.com.