The Association for Media Literacy

Resources

April 26, 2011 Writing for Radio - The Basics

April 26, 2011 Performance Tips for Budding Podcasters

April 26, 2011 The Radio Interview: Some Tips and Techniques

April 26, 2011 Easy Sound Art Exercises

April 26, 2011 Documentary Exercise Worksheet

December 1, 2010 New AML Youtube Channel

Tune into AML's new Youtube channel currently featuring 13 presenters from our 2010 conference: Spotlight on Media Education: Enhance Your Teaching Toolkit for 21st Century Learning.

January 12, 2010 Fairy Tales with a Modern Twist

Fairy tales can take on a modern twist with this Children's Media project from Sharon Tsang. Here are great possibilities for critical literacy!

January 12, 2010 Me TV: How We Want the World to See US!

This "Me TV" lesson teaches representation in a hands-on, creative way, and students process metacognitively after the project.

January 12, 2010 Understanding Audience, Text, Production through advertising, analysis, and production

Absorbing theory through production work is a fairly new concept in media education pedagogy. Here, Carol Arcus offers a 7-day intensive unit accessible at almost any level.

March 30, 2009 Creating a Space for Critical Literacy in the Classroom

This critical literacy activity for secondary students examines media texts from students' "natural" environment.

March 20, 2009 Campaign Design Project

If you're tired of asking secondary students to design and produce ads, here's a challenging extension activity alternative in the form of focus group research.

February 13, 2009 MEDIA EDUCATION BIBLIOGRAPHY 2009: A SHORT LIST OF ESSENTIAL RESOURCES

Barry Duncan has updated his "short" list of essential resources: this is a goldmine for educators and media professionals.

January 16, 2009 Annotated List of Comics: Selected Texts for Classroom Use

Ian Esquivel is back with a rich, comprehensive annotated, selective list of graphic novels for both Elementary and Secondary levels.

April 25, 2008 Media Studies in the World of NEW Media

As an adjunct to the recent AML event on Social Networking, we present here a sample of classroom lessons.

January 10, 2008 Exploring Payback Time Podcast and Study Guide

Payback Time is a calypso song by Toronto’s King Cosmos that addresses the issue of reparation for the centuries of suffering endured by African-Americans in the United States.

October 16, 2007 Branding, Consumerism, Audience

This lesson covers several key media questions, AND oral and reading skills for Grades 7-10.

October 16, 2007 Recent Books in Media Literacy, September 2007

In the last six months, several books have been published on media literacy, both theoretical and practical. Barry Duncan reviews them here, with a characteristic critical eye.

October 16, 2007 Considerations and Questions when Using Graphic Novels in the Classroom

How do comics use symbolism to create meaning? How can visuals construct a narrative? Here are questions offered by Ian Esquivel, who is once again offering a rich classroom experience through the study of Comics and Graphic Novels.

March 6, 2007 RESPONDING TO POPULAR CULTURE - Material adapted from John Fiske: Understanding Popular Culture and Reading the Popular, (Unwin Hyman, 1989)

Useful as a companion piece to our resource on Ugly Betty.

March 6, 2007 MEDIA EDUCATION BIBLIOGRAPHY 2007

Barry Duncan has applied all his wisdom and expertise in providing us with a bibliography of essential resources for media educators. Great resource!

March 6, 2007 Comics in the Classroom: Look Before You Leap

Ian Esquivel reminds us to look before we leap into the world of comics in the classroom. Look for his lesson/unit plan in our next newsletter.

March 6, 2007 On Ugly Betty: Can She be a Success and Still be Our Betty?

Using Ugly Betty as the foundation, this resource explores ways of using popular culture in the classroom.

November 4, 2006 Websites We Like

Teachers tell us about some good sites for teaching and Learning about Media Literacy.

November 3, 2006 Lesson Plan: Film Adaptation of a Novel: Creating the Movie Poster

Lisa Laviolette of York Region Catholic District School Board in Ontario offers a great lesson to Grade Eight teachers eager to implement the new Media Literacy Strand. Adapt a novel to film, and create a movie poster!

November 2, 2006 Getting Started in Media Studies: The Issue of Knowledge and Control

Cam McPherson soothes the anxieties of anyone uncomfortable with starting up in Media Studies. We understand that what you don’t know is unimportant, but you need to respect the knowledge you have accrued in your professional career. Relax, and let the students guide you.

May 5, 2006 New Media and New Media Literacy: The horizon has become the landscape--new media are here

What are New Media? How do we make sense of a constantly changing environment that youth in particular puts on as easily as their clothes? In New Media and New Literacy, Neil Andersen attempts to assuage our concerns about the onslaught of New Media by carefully defining and contextualizing these forms: read about “the dazzle factor” and “synchronicity”, as well as tips for helping children respond to their multimedia environments.

May 5, 2006 Exploring Values and Meaning in Advertising: A 3-Week Unit for Grade 9 (Academic)

Here is a three week Media Studies unit for the ENG1D course (Grade Nine English, Academic). This experience allows students to go beyond simple deconstruction to social action – a goal many of us would like to accomplish but sometimes do not have the time to devise. Content is easily substituted, and all the pertinent questions are provided here.

April 6, 2006 The Cartoon Universe - Atomic Ian Reporting for Duty

One teacher’s quest for the perfect media classroom: the combination of a guilty pleasure (cartoons) and the opportunity to teach it. Ian Esquivel confesses his obsession with this genre and his sometimes rocky, but always fascinating, experiences with its classroom applications. He explores notions of intertextuality, ideology, gender, genre, sexuality, and more. This is an exhaustive, detailed examination of several popular cartoons, and smartly includes a practical list of suggestions and information at the end.

March 6, 2006 CNN ad with Anderson Cooper

The ad, featuring CNN's Anderson Cooper, lends itself to several avenues of investigation, starting with obvious methods of basic deconstruction, to larger issues of cultural representation.

2006 Global Studies and Media Education: Survival Skills for the New Millennium

It seems that more than ever, we need the resources of global education and the insights of media literacy to help our young people gain the knowledge and develop the values, attitudes and skills to be effective participants in a world rapidly becoming more interdependent and interconnected. What does this mean for educators today? In this article, the authors outline several media and cultural challenges that educators can address with their students, including deconstructing the advertising and PR techniques of transnational corporations.

A Media Literacy Menu : Ingredients for Successful Media Studies

The following observations are designed to serve as probes and provocations to uncover the essence of some important ideas about media education and media studies. Based largely on the experience of The Association for Media Literacy during the last ten years, Barry Duncan hopes these ideas and resources will stimulate discussion and debate.

Parody Ads - Advertising

Lisa Laviolette helps students explore the different ways that corporations advertise half truths. Students examine parodies as well, to contextualize the often invisible messages.

Parody Ad Campaign

When you spoof an ad, you take elements of the ad that give it power, turn the message around, and show that it is ridiculous or even untrue.

Canadian Teen Magazines FUEL and VERVEGIRL: an Exercise in Representation

Most high schools in Canada receive free copies of the teen magazines FUEL (for boys) and VERVEGIRL. What they offer is a great opportunity for media students to deconstruct material which is pitched to them.

Putting Audience Theory to Work

Depending on one's life experience and temperament, as well as various factors such as religion, gender, economic class, or race, an individual will read and use media messages differently. A classroom of thirty 17-year-olds discussing The OC, Green Day, Marilyn Manson, or Christina Aguilera, will yield thirty different meanings, for at least as many reasons.

A Lesson in Bias

Analyzing bias in media using an article on 9/11 by Lewis Lapham.

Media Exams

Stuck for a media exam question for your media class? Here are some suggestions.

Where are the Super Heroes of Colour?

A lesson on racial representation for junior to intermediate elementary students. Teacher Leasa Adams believes that students benefit by discussing and acting on ideas around dominant representations on their favorite action heroes. This is a perfect way of using those action figures and trading cards. Students have an opportunity to deconstruct in detail, and also extend their learning into production and even social actions such as letter-writing.

Long Shot, Medium Shot, Close-Up: Camera-Subject Distance

Students will identify three important visual codes (long shot, medium shot, close-up) used on television and in movies and begin to recognize that these codes affect meaning.

Film Education Activity

A Media Education activity to help students understand the concept of "genre", from Chris Worsnop, retired English and Media Consultant, and education writer and consultant.

Fish Out of Water: Deconstructing Branding

This is experiential learning in the truest sense. Tell students they are going shopping, and then get them to ask hard questions about the ways in which their favorite brands are enticing them to drop a few bucks. In this field trip, students must make detailed notes on all aspects of the constructed commercial environments of the big name stores: GAP, Roots, Starbucks, NIKE, to name a few. Later, they connect their field notes to answer big questions about identity, community, and branding.

What do we do about Eminem?

The elusive persona of Marshall Mathers, aka Slim Shady, aka Eminem, the trickster of white hip hop culture, deserves at least a mention in today’s pop culture classroom. However, bringing Eminem into the classroom is risky at best...