Gamify Media Literacy

Imagine this…

  • A set of biodegradable building bricks for sustainable building designs.
  • An ecology doll with its own binoculars, kayak, nature journal, and packet of native plant seeds.
  • A board game in which you advance ahead not by acquiring the most money or property, but instead by performing actions that help the environment.

Are these the latest educational toys in your local store? No, at least, not yet.
These are just some of the imaginative toys and games envisioned by sixth graders during a media literacy project. As a culminating activity in a Literacy Skills class, students used design techniques to create their own marketing ad for a proposed educational game or toy.

Students began the project by looking closely at Media Messages to evaluate how media uses a special language (special techniques) to persuade an audience.
Iconic ads such as
Wolverine “Got Milk” and
McDonald’s “You So Want One”
provided discussions of camera angles,
text placement,  slogans, color choices,
as well as use of celebrities.

Subliminal messages (underlying messages) were examined in the video commercials for Door Dash “The Neighborhood” and Sodastream. Door Dash’s message suggested that they keep neighborhood businesses thriving while Sodastream’s message projected that their customers would save the Earth’s environment.

Students also examined Barbie and Lego marketing campaigns; in a webquest they compared and contrasted how each company was targeting a particular audience. Barbie ads sought to empower young girls to explore careers with the “You Can Be Anything” campaign, and their “Fashionistas” line of dolls widened their appeal to diverse individuals as well as different body types. Lego marketing ads promoted imagination and creativity and suggested that building with Legos encouraged problem solving and resiliency, preparing youth for careers in engineering and science. After viewing these examples of marketing ads and evaluating how these ads target audiences, students were challenged to create their own marketing ad to be pitched to a professional client.

The G.R.A.S.P.S. Performance Task Assessment tool was used to set up the Marketing Ad design challenge. (G.R.A.S.P.S. was recommended in a Jay McTighe workshop that I had previously attended–McTighe is known for collaboration with Grant Wiggins on “Backward Design.”)

G–Goal: Create a persuasive marketing ad to promote an educational toy or game

R–Role: Marketing Ad Designer

A–Target Audience:
Choice A: Individuals interested in ecology or caring for the environment
Choice B: Individuals interested in Creative Writing

S–Situation:
Choice A:
In a marketing ad presentation (through Zoom) you need to convince an Ecologist that your toy/game will promote a career in ecology or heighten interest in caring for the environment. (I arranged for Ecologist Suzanne Simpson, Director of the Bayou Land Conservancy in Houston to Zoom with students to be our expert Ecologist client.)

Choice B:
In a marketing ad presentation (through Zoom) you need to convince a published poet your toy/game will promote a career in writing or heighten an interest in poetry. (I arranged for poet Allan Wolf to Zoom with students to be our expert Poet client.)

P–Performance and purpose:
Use media language techniques to create a marketing ad to persuade an expert that your educational toy/game will promote career interest or heighten interest in the topic of the toy/game.

S–Standards and Criteria for success:
Marketing ad effectively uses images, color design, layout design, slogan, and additional text, celebrity, or media to make a persuasive ad. The design should feature a front box design with image and slogan and the design should also show a back of the box design that discusses the educational goal of the game or toy.

Oral presentation through Zoom to a professional expert. The presentation should clearly present the merits of your envisioned toy/game and its educational goal.

Creating a prototype of the toy/game is an option (but not required). The marketing ad and the oral presentation should clearly present the vision of the product.

The Market Ad designs showed a wide range of creative ideas.
Here is a comparison of two doll ad designs, one for an ecology client and one for a poet client:

Feedback from Clients
Ecologist Suzanne Simpson gave the following observation as she viewed students’ ecology games and toys:

“I never wanted to play with dolls when I was young. I was interested in nature. I wish I had these ecology-themed games and toys when I was growing up to encourage me in the career of being an ecologist.”

Poet Allan Wolf was impressed by the choice of Amanda Gorman as a featured doll and the theme of “dreaming big” to achieve her goal to be a poet. These students envisioned a line of Dream Dolls that were “imperfectly perfect.” He also enjoyed other students’ ideas for a creative writing poetry kit and a poetry trivia game–students even stumped poet Allan Wolf on one of the poetry trivia questions.

Not all student groups were able to present to the professional clients; however, all groups presented their marketing ads to their fellow classmates. The follow-up questions and suggestions from their peers provided thoughtful discussions on how the prototype ideas could be improved. This project was a fascinating opportunity for students to use their media literacy skills to design a persuasive Marketing Ad. The presentations to a targeted audience honed their communication skills and encouraged students to be receptive to feedback on their designs. Looking closely and evaluating media messages is a valuable 21st century skill, and this Marketing Ad project provided a challenging way to explore these goals.

Image Bibliography:
Amanda Gorman photo from
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from Washington D.C, United States, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Building Perspectives

“They didn’t see a child. They saw change, and what they thought was being taken from them. They never saw a child.” (Ruby Bridges Interview. Many Rivers to Cross. PBS.org. 8 Jun 2020.)

The New Orleans’ schoolyard often echoed with the joyful laughter of children, but on the morning of November 14, 1960, angry shouts punctuated the air; parents yelled as six-year-old Ruby Bridges, flanked by U.S. Marshals, walked up the steps and entered the doors of the all-white school. Years later, Ruby reflected on those parents’ faces, twisted with rage, and said, “They didn’t see a child.” Sixty years later, our society still struggles with injustice. Many factors could be considered in making a more just society, but, taking a cue from Ruby Bridges, this article will consider how opening up our vision, building perspectives, promotes empathy and engages students in discussions about social change. 

Recently I participated in a Smithsonian webinar: How to Discover, Create, and Share in the Smithsonian Learning Lab, and I used this tool to curate artwork, children’s books, Visible Thinking strategies, and videos to create a multimodal classroom guide: Building Perspectives. In using this learning module, educators can immerse students in close looking and in evaluating how art and stories powerfully present viewpoints on race and social justice. Explore the Building Perspectives learning module on the Smithsonian Learning Lab website.

Following is a brief overview of Building Perspectives:

Building Perspectives encourages students to evaluate ways that artists and authors help us to “see the person,”  expanding our viewpoints by developing empathy and understanding. Students will explore the following individuals and their contributions to the Civil Rights movement:

  • Ruby Bridges
  • Rosa Parks
  • John Lewis

Objectives: After completing this lesson, students will be better able to

  • Examine how artists and photographers reveal their own viewpoints about iconic people and historic events and how artists and photographers influence the viewer’s understanding of those events.
  • Look closely at children’s books and explore how both text and image challenge the reader to empathize and expand their viewpoints on race and social justice.
  • Implement Visible Thinking strategies to slow down looking and deepen
    thinking.
  • Use the Smithsonian Museum’s collection as a gateway to investigating and exploring perspectives of race and social justice.

The resources assembled on this Building Perspectives learning module can be used to promote classroom conversations about tolerance and social justice. In an April 27 NCTE discussion of the book Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, authors Jason Reynolds and Dr. Ibram X. Kendi stressed the importance of holding conversations about race in classrooms.  Jason Reynolds stated his goal as promoting “racial literacy,” and  Dr. Ibram X. Kendi commended teachers in their vocation: “We need to embrace teachers in the same way we are embracing health care providers–teachers are building constructs to aid the intellectual health of our young.  It is not impossible for white teachers to have conversations about race.” This recommended reading list, though not comprehensive, may be a beginning as educators consider books that can aid conversations about race in the classroom.

As recent events show, the struggle for social justice has not ended. However, the opportunity for a more just world lies before us as we look more closely at those who have inspired the fight for social justice, both in past history and in recent events. By examining perspectives with eyes of understanding and empathy, we can enter into conversations about race that will open hearts and minds.

Creating Presentations That Resonate

A Closeup of Handblown Glass. Photograph. Encyclopædia Britannica ImageQuest. Web. 19 May 2016.

A Closeup of Handblown Glass. Photograph. Encyclopædia Britannica ImageQuest. Web. 19 May 2016.

Are you zombified by student PowerPoint presentations and a bit dizzy after viewing spinning Prezis? This year I have been rethinking the librarian’s role as literacy expert.  Whether you use the term media literacy, digital literacy, data literacy, or New Literacies—all of these concepts have in common an emerging need:  librarians guiding students to grapple with meaning, communicate their insights in multi-modal formats, and, potentially, share and publish their work digitally.

This article suggests books and online resources to more effectively plan and animate presentations, thereby creating messages that will resonate with your audiences.

Nancy Duarte is a persuasive presentation expert who maps the structure of effective communicators (see her TED talk comparing the structure of great speeches by Steve Jobs and Martin Luther King). Duarte presents her strategies in two books Slide:ology and
Resonate.

Duarte, Nancy. Slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations. http://www.duarte.com/book/slideology/.

Duarte, Nancy. Slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations. http://www.duarte.com/book/slideology/.

In Slide:ology, Duarte estimates that an effective  presentation requires 36 or more hours to research; evaluate audience; brainstorm ideas; organize; solicit feedback; storyboard; build slides; and rehearse.  Tips include brain-storming with sticky notes and by sketching diagrams; highlighting data; designing with color and selective choice of text; and crafting a story flow through animations and slide transitions. Though 36 hours may seem unrealistic with demanding class  schedules, sharing tips will aid students in message making.

 

I was able to demonstrate some of these techniques in a serendipitous teaching opportunity; a freshman physics teacher asked me to advise students on incorporating their science experiment data into slides. I rented a Kindle version of Slide:ology and projected on a large screen examples of data graphs and charts, inviting freshmen to evaluate ineffective/effective design and to keep in mind Duarte’s mantra: “Data slides are not really about the data. They are about the meaning of data” (64).  Visually highlighting or emphasizing a part of the data can show an emerging trend or complication–a moment when data results challenge assumptions and cause a rethinking for the student scientists. As students discuss the highlighted data, they begin to show the audience the meaning behind the data.

Duarte, Nancy. Resonate. http://www.duarte.com/book/resonate-legacy/.

Duarte, Nancy. Resonate. http://www.duarte.com/book/resonate-legacy/.

In Resonate, Duarte  explores the power of stories to connect with audiences and to deepen under-standing.  I adapted a suggestion from the book, “amplify the signal, minimize the noise,” to aid freshmen in reading and assessing a quote by Adolph Hitler on the power of persuasive media messages (170).  In the slide example below, the quote was first read and then a series of animated graphics appeared in an equation format to distill meaning of Hitler’s message:

(All images from Britannica Image Quest.)

(All images from Britannica Image Quest.)

If you desire to share an example of how we perceive images based on entry into a slide (scene), show this movie clip from Hitchcock’s thriller, Strangers on a Train. Notice which direction the “good” character enters the scene versus the “bad” character’s entrance.  Since Westerners’ eyes are use to a left to right movement, entries from the right are viewed as disconcerting.  Students can consider this as they animate visuals or text appearances on their slides (left to right and top to bottom are more familiar ways of reading messages).

Hitchcock, Alfred. Strangers on a Train. 1951. Photography. Encyclopedia Britannica ImageQuest. Web. 19 May 2016.

Hitchcock, Alfred. Strangers on a Train. 1951. Photography. Encyclopedia Britannica ImageQuest. Web. 19 May 2016.

Explore more ideas on storytelling and making meaning from data in this archived webinar, “Storytelling with Infographics,” presented by Debbie Abilock and Connie Williams.  Abilock and Williams will also be presenters in an upcoming conference:
Virtual Conference on Data Literacy: Creating Data Literate Students hosted by the University of Michigan School of Information and University Library (see website for free registration to this virtual conference).

And for something totally different, listen to NPR’s interview with artist/rocker David Byrne as his explains his use of PowerPoint as Art.  Wising you a summer filled with stimulating reading and rethinking the tools we use to communicate meaning.

Messages in the Media

Eager for a collaborative project that engages students? A “Messages in the Media” unit holds great potential because it targets critical thinking and engages students in real-world contexts:  evaluating how media shapes decisions such as cultural values, consumerism, personal health, and self-perception.  It also provides an opportunity for students to be media creators, communicating their own knowledge in a variety of ways.  Several years ago I partnered with our Freshman Health classes, creating a media literacy unit to evaluate health claims of sports and energy drinks. This project meets goals of both National Health Education Standards (NHES) and American Association of School Librarians (AASL), such as

NHES
Standard 2:   Analyze the influence of family, peers, culture, media technology,
and other factors on health behaviors.

Standard 3:   Demonstrate the ability to access valid information,
products, and services to enhance health.

AASL
Standard 1:        Inquire, think critically, and gain knowledge.

Standard 3.3.3  Use knowledge to engage in public conversation and
debate around issues of common concern; 3.3.4 Create products
that apply to authentic, real-world contexts.

In this six-meeting, sports drinks unit, we evaluate advertising using a five-statement media literacy checklist developed by Elizabeth Thoman and Center for Media Literacy.

1.     All media messages are constructed

2.     Media messages are constructed using a media language with its own rules.

3.     Different people experience the same media message differently.

4.     Media have embedded values and points of view.

5.     Most media messages are organized to gain profit and/or power.

Screen Shot 2015-03-19 at 7.49.57 PM

Students view a Hugh Jackman (Wolverine) “Got Milk” ad to analyze the construction of media language such as the signature milk moustache, dramatic lighting and shadows (to enhance Wolverine’s bulging biceps), and angles of the claws that bring the viewer’s eye to the slogan “Got Milk.”  Students also discuss the embedded message—milk will get you pumped—and the embedded point of view—guys need to be muscular.  Contrast this embedded message with a Japanese commercial featuring the pop group AKB48 and the unusual girl member, Eguchi Aimi (computer generated from each of the “most perfect” features of the other group members).  See this funny sendup by Kaleb Nation as he argues why a “virtually perfected” pop star is a disturbing idea.

Armed with an understanding of media techniques, student groups explore samples of drink products—from Gatorade to Muscle Milk to Vitamin Water to Energy Drinks– developing a checklist of health claims from ingredient labels and packaging design and then suggesting health topics (such as caffeine or sugar content in these drinks) that will be researched using library databases and PubMed.  A Gatorade website evaluation also provides a critical look at marketing and health claims—this is a sophisticated website with many health research articles published by the GSSI (Gatorade Sports Science Institute).  Discussion follows on purpose and possible bias in this site and research articles.

A challenging aspect of this project is finding a dynamic way to communicate new knowledge and research findings with an audience.  Over the years, students have shared their research in Glogsters and PowerPoints with embedded media ads, but this year I set up a LibGuide to showcase excerpts of student Analysis Essays and Infomercial Videos.  One student, Anthony, created a “counter ad” spoofing Red Bull energy drinks and the slogan “Red Bull Gives you Wings” (see the ad on tab 2 of the LibGuide). His ad shows a cherubic angel guzzling a can of Red Bull with the slogan, “Get Your Wings Early.”  Anthony described his design techniques:  “(I used) rays of sunshine shining on the angel which moves your eyes to the angel (rather than) the warning labels on the bottom of the ad.”

New directions for next year?  If more class time can be provided for the project, students might create their own webpages using GoogleDocs or Weebly, and Videonot.es could be used to look closely at video commercials prior to writing analysis essays.  Here is a sample Lucozade Videonot.es I created to evaluate sports drink health claims (you will need to add the videonot.es app to your GoogleDrive to view).

Looking forward to reading your comments on how you are engaging students in media literacy.

 Recommended Research on Media Literacy

Pechmann, Cornelia and Susan J. Knight.  “An Experimental Investigation of the Joint Effects of Advertising and Peers on Adolescents’ Beliefs and Intentions about Cigarette Consumption.” Journal of Consumer Research 29.1 (June 2002): 5019.
JSTOR.  Web. 17 Mar. 2015. < http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/339918>.

Siegel, Michael. “Mass Media Antismoking Campaigns: A Powerful Tool for Health Promotion.”  Annals of Internal Medicine 129.2 (July 1998): 128-132. Web. 17 Mar. 2015. <http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/
download?doi=10.1.1.457.7829&rep=rep1&type=pdf>.

Thoman, Elizabeth and Tessa Jolls. “Media Literacy Education: Lessons from the Center for Media Literacy.”  Media Literacy: Transforming Curriculum and Teaching.  Ed. Gretchen Schwarz and Pamela Brown. Malden: Blackwell, 205. Print.