WEEK 12 MEDIA AND INFORMATION LITERACY

Name: Jessie Livingston

Media and Information Literacy (MIL) is about understanding how information appears
on our screens, and analyzing these messages for biases, misinformation, agendas, or
stereotypes. First, we are going to practice some of these skills ourselves, and then
reflect on what it means for your teaching.

1. Who created this message? NBC either created this message, or chose to use
this message in particular for its image.
2. What creative techniques are used to attract my attention? The bar graph is
clearly purposefully created to look like Not At All is the category with the
highest percentage, but if you take a closer look at the percentages; the height of
the bar does not accurately represent the percentage.
3. How might different people understand this message differently than me? If
people chose to look at just the height of the bars, they will assume that Not At
All is leading opinion in how concerned people are about the Zika Virus. But, if
people pay closer attention to the percentages, they will realize that Not At All is
actually the lowest opinion and Very is the category most people felt.
4. What values, lifestyles and points of view are represented in, or omitted
from, this message? This message is clearly omitting the actual viewpoint that
people stand on the Zika Virus. The makers of this graph are trying to disguise
the actual findings with eye-tricks therefore omitting the true points of view taken
on this subject.
5. Why is this message being sent? Clearly the makers of this graph want the
viewers to believe that most people are not worried about the Zika Virus but it is
clearly not the case. They draw the viewers eye the height of the bar and hope
that people will just assume that because the bar is higher, that corresponds
correctly with the percentage, which again is not the case.

From your own point of view, why do you think your students should be mediainformation literate? Media-information literacy is extremely important in todays world
especially with so much technology at our fingertips, students need to be able to not only
understand it, but also use it to their advantage.
What role do you think you play, as a teacher, in teaching MIL skills? Especially
now that MIL skills are incorporated in the Common Core Standard, I think teachers play
a vital role in carrying out the learning of MIL. I think if students arent exposed to
technology at home, at school is where students will have the most exposure and most
capable to learn.
Were you surprised that educational organizations included MIL-related
competencies in their standards? Is that a sentiment echoed in your teacher
preparation? I wasnt surprised that MIL has been incorporated in many educational
standards, but besides this class, I havent had to do that yet in my teacher preparation.
But I imagine that will be happening shortly.
How does learning about educational organizations including MIL standards
change your intentions to teach MIL in your future classroom? I have incorporated
certain Common Core Standards into my lesson planning already, so I will continue to do
so, especially when I come across a standard with MIL. I have always had intentions to
incorporate MIL in my classroom, and now that they are in standards, it only makes
sense to officially start doing so.