Media literacy: television meets the internet: we wanted to emphasize that each medium has particular capabilities and advantages, and that the person who understands what each medium can do (that is, the person who is media literate) will be able to fully use the tools of information technology for his or her own benefit. Karen Zill.

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2002 Information Today, Inc.

In a small conference room, staff members at WETA-TV, Washington, D.C.'s public television station, review raw videotape for a very special project. The video--shot by students from four area high schools--is part of the station's "Voices of the Community" effort.

The project is the second in a series developed for MediaSmart, WETA's multi-year media literacy program. "Voices of the Community" has been designed to teach the basics of documentary production and techniques for shooting video for the Web.

At this stage, WETA staffers are looking at production style, quality, and content. Becoming familiar with the raw material is a necessary part of their role as guides and mentors in what is essentially a student-centered project. Ultimately, the students are producing two types of video "packages": streaming interviews to "air" on the station's Web site and a 5-minute mini-documentary on the concept of community.

ON THE ROAD TO MEDIA LITERACY

We launched the MediaSmart program at WETA in 1999 with funding from the Park Foundation and support from the Washington, D.C., chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS).

Our project has two goals:

* to help students understand the power and influence of the media

* to help students become informed, discriminating, and literate media consumers

To achieve these goals, we recognized that students need to know about choosing and shaping content, as well as how to use the nuts and bolts of technology to create an effective message. The MediaSmart strategy has three components: a teacher workshop, classroom instruction, and an optional student project.

Teacher Workshop

The first step at the launch was to teach teachers the principles of media literacy and give them the techniques and resources needed to insert media literacy into the curriculum. Approximately 70 teachers attended our kick-off media literacy workshop in October 1999.

In 4 hours, we covered advertising, news, storytelling, and the Internet. As we demonstrated and discussed each of these topics, we made comparisons between different media to underscore the variety of techniques available for conveying a message and the unique characteristics of each medium.

We wanted to emphasize that each medium has particular capabilities and advantages, and that the person who understands what each medium can do (that is, the person who is media literate) will be able to fully use the tools of information technology for his or her own benefit.

Classroom Instruction

To support the introduction of media literacy concepts into the classroom, we provided each workshop participant with a binder full of resources, including the "Creating Critical Viewers" media literacy curriculum developed by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS).

We also created a MediaSmart Web site [http://www. weta.org/mediasmart] with an expanded outline of the media literacy workshop and other resources for teaching about media literacy.

All of the classroom materials (workbooks, lesson plans, and companion videotapes) were provided to the teachers at no cost by WETA-TV and NATAS.

Student Project

In year one, we challenged teachers to work with their students to produce a 60-second video on a specific aspect of media literacy. The prize: air time on WETA. We planned to choose a limited number of student videos and air them as public service announcements during our late-afternoon children's programming block.

To participate in the student project, a school had to have video production equipment and a teacher who was familiar with using it. This allowed our limited staff the time and flexibility to function as guides and advisers to all of the participants, which we did with both e-mail and face-to-face sessions.

The students had from October 1999 until January 2000 to develop and submit a one-page treatment and a storyboard of their media-literacy spot. We received 43 submissions and chose eight of these for production, each with strong potential for further development. These had coherent story lines that clearly presented a media-literacy message, creative ideas for combining sound and pictures, and relatively uncomplicated shooting requirements. The selected projects came from four middle schools and four high schools, representing a variety of populations in the metropolitan Washington area.

INPUT FROM ALL

As the productions got underway, WETA staff held two Saturday meetings with the students and their teachers. To maintain a good comfort level for the students and to avoid unfair comparisons, we met separately with the middle school and high school groups.

The first meeting, which took place in February 2000, was a storyboard review, After each school group presented their plan, we had an open discussion in which students, teachers, and WETA staff offered critiques and suggestions. WETA staffers did not necessarily have the dominant voice at these sessions, unless specific technical matters were addressed.

The second meeting took place in early April, when we reviewed the students' rough cuts. Again, we followed the same procedure as the storyboard review. Students left the meeting with ideas for polishing their videos; 3 weeks later they submitted the finished media-literacy spots.

WETA "packaged" the spots for broadcast with a standard open and close and each school's credits. The media-literacy spots ran on the air from late spring through summer 2000.

After the projects were completed, we invited the students back to the station to discuss their experiences in making their spots. Although most of them had come to the program with an understanding of media literacy, all of the students said the project had brought a new awareness of the enormous extent of decision-making involved for television.

OUTCOME--MORE THAN EXPECTED

Going into MediaSmart, WETA hoped for a positive response from teachers and at least two or three video spots that could be broadcast. What came out of the project was a lot more than we had expected.

First, there were the concrete products: eight well-produced media-literacy videos, acceptable for broadcast between professionally produced, polished television programs.

Next, there were gains in technical skills, for both the students and their teachers.

At the start, the teachers had varying skill levels in television production and the use of their schools' production equipment--from school librarians with no television production background but a passion for helping their students acquire new skills to veteran television producers in their first year as full-time classroom teachers.

The MediaSmart project required the teachers to master a broader range of the technical capabilities at their disposal, including sound, lighting, and editing. Because they were involved in a professional-level production, their standards had to be more exacting than they might have been for an in-school program. The students, too, had to notch up the quality of their work, as they became producers for "real" television.

And finally, there were the intangibles. So much is said about the importance of hands-on learning. It was certainly evident that the students in our project learned by doing. But this learning went far beyond the skills of operating a camera and using editing equipment.

The students also learned about themselves. They learned that a television production involves real teamwork and requires a strong leader. As one high school junior told us, "We saw that someone had to be in charge and tell people what to do, so I kind of took that on." Another student explained, "You have to work on your people skills. I learned about compromise."

The students reorganized that each person on the team has to meet his or her responsibility or the production doesn't come together as it should. A member of one team told us, "We found out who the leaders are and who will stay after to do the work."

During the course of the project, two of the production teams lost a number of members. We were impressed by their continued dedication and the fact that their projects were completed, even though at critical times only one student was available to do the work.

Perhaps broadcaster and educator John Merrow best sums up what our student-producers experienced: "When they become producers of television programming, children tap into their creative energy and desire to learn--and gain a greater sense of self." Both teachers and students echoed this statement many times in different ways.

One high school teacher told us, "This project gave the students something to shoot for. WETA's sponsorship was really important. The work reached a higher level because the students knew it would appear on the air. I'm really glad they had the opportunity to be challenged in this way."

A high school student observed, "People took us seriously because of this project."And, in a similar vein, another student said, "It helps the school realize we're doing something important."

THE EFFORT CONTINUED

Due to some resource limitations, we scaled back our plans for the 2000-2001 school year. As a result, "Voices of the Community" was created as a pilot project that would give us the opportunity to experiment a little while making more plans for the future.

The four high schools that had produced media-literacy spots the previous year agreed to work with us again. We started in November 2000, once again with a tutorial session for the students and their teachers. At this meeting, we explained the project and its two products: a 5-minute documentary about the subject of "community" and a certain number of videotaped statements about community that could appear on the MediaSmart/WETA Web site. The statements on community were to be used in some way in the creation of the documentaries, possibly to set a scene or as voice-over narration.

In the introductory workshop, we discussed the characteristics of documentaries and ways to get people to talk on camera. We emphasized that the shooting requirements for the Web were different than those for television. Because of the low resolution on computer screens, backgrounds needed to be simple, as did the camera work. We gave each group backdrop material (black duvetyne fabric and interconnecting PVS piping on which to hang it) so that the online look would be relatively uniform.

EASY TO SHOOT, HARD TO EXECUTE

The students found their subjects in a variety of venues: the City Hall in Rockville, Maryland (just outside of Washington, D.C.); a Border's book store; a homeless shelter; a retirement residence; a community center; and, in one case, their own school.

With a special "Voices of the Community" sign that helped explain that this was a WETA-sponsored project, the students had no problem getting people to talk to them on camera about community. WETA staff had given the students pointers on interview techniques and a short list of leading questions to use as prompts.

The difficulty for the students was in finding the story in the large group of videotaped statements that they collected. Their raw tape contained humor, poignancy, personal anecdotes and memories, and a range of emotions from a range of people of all ages.

Three of the four student groups became tied to the questions they used as prompts and those questions formed the structure of their documentaries. The resulting video products were not documentaries that told a story, but were instead a series of interesting statements strung together, generally in an artful way.

Only one group started out with a plan that guided their videotaping and defined the message of their documentary. This showed us that the students had needed more instruction about "point of view" and more time to develop their approach to the topic of "community." In short, we felt that the students needed stronger guidance in developing a plan, writing it down, and then identifying the main idea of their proposed documentary.

LEARNING ALL AROUND

Everyone involved in "Voices of the Community" learned something from their participation in the project. For students familiar with video, both as viewers and producers, the project dispelled any notion that video production is "easy." One high school senior said it all: "There's so much detail involved in doing a [video] project!"

One of the teachers commented that the project helped her students learn to solve problems: "There was a lot of experimentation. They were willing to take chances."

And, finally, WETA staff learned that adolescents need to be walked through the steps of a process, even if they indicate that they already know what to do.

"Voices of the Community" culminated with a teacher workshop on Media Literacy Day, March 21, 2001. The students were invited to present their documentaries and discuss the process of their creation. The attending teachers eagerly questioned the students, taking in the information to use in working at their own schools with their students.

Overall, the students said that "Voices of the Community" provided them with the opportunity to look at the world around them in new ways. This included identifying new concepts of "community" and learning how to explain these concepts on camera, both as a videotaped documentary and a streaming Webcast sound bite.

Washington-based television newscasters also attended the workshop, to provide an additional perspective on newsgathering and documentaries. Clay Anderson of Washington's NBC station, WRC, brought his own documentary on his days as part of the weather staff assigned to Air Force One, the President's plane. Ray Suarez of The News Hour with Jim Lehrer (PBS) spoke to the group about the decisions involved in broadcasting the news and presented a passionate view of the importance of media literacy.

In its 2 years of existence, the MediaSmart program has provided teachers in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area with a way to extend learning beyond the classroom. Combining the expertise of media professionals and the guidance of classroom teachers, this endeavor is helping both students and teachers appreciate the educational value of a very familiar medium--video.

A Media-Literacy Classroom Activity

The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS) has designated Wednesday, March 20, 2002, as National Media Literacy Day. You can join the effort to focus on media literacy by covering the issue in your classroom that day, sometime during that week--or at any time during the school year. To start you off, we've included a media-literacy activity that was developed for the MediaSmart project.

Additional lesson plans are available from NATAS. The organization has 18 chapters nationwide; look for information on your nearest chapter in the list on page 27. If you are not near a NATAS chapter, contact the organization's national headquarters in New York at 212/586-8424 or natashq@aol.com. Ask for the Creating Critical Viewers media-literacy curriculum materials.

Choosing the News: A Classroom Activity

Hundreds of stories come into a newsroom each day, and there is a limited amount of time and space to report them. Someone--a news director or an editorial committee--has to decide what will be reported on any given day. Which stories get reported and which ones don't? How are these decisions made?

Ask for an hour's worth of wire service stories from a local television or radio station or newspaper. At the television or radio station, contact the news director. At the newspaper, contact the national news assignment editor.

Divide the class into the following groups: "local news," "network news," USA Today, Washington Post or other major newspaper, "commercial radio," and "Internet." Give each group a copy of the wire service stories.

Ask each group to decide on the lead story; the order of stories (for TV and radio) or the placement of stories (for the newspaper); and what will be left out. Have each group report and explain their decisions.

The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences

The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) has 18 chapters located throughout the U.S. Each chapter has fine-tuned its media-literacy effort to its community; the Academy sponsors a variety of media-literacy projects nationwide. The Academy's national home page [http://www.emmyonline.org/] lists chapter phone numbers and provides links to chapter e-mail and Web sites. Chapter locations include:

* Atlanta

* Boston/New England

* Chicago/Midwest

* Cleveland

* Colorado/Heartland

* Michigan

* Minneapolis/St. Paul

* Nashville/Midsouth

* New York

* Ohio Valley

* Philadelphia

* Rocky Mountain/Southwest

* St. Louis/Mid-America

* San Diego

* San Francisco/Northern California

* Seattle/Northwest

* Suncoast (Florida)

* Washington, D.C.

More Media Literacy Information on the Web

Center for Media Literacy http://www.medialit.org

The Center develops and distributes educational materials including books, videos, CD-ROMs, and curriculum programs. Posts updates on courses for teachers.

Just Think Foundation http://www.justthink.org

This Web site offers curriculum guides and lesson plans.

KQED Public Broadcasting for Northern California http://www.kqed.org/ednet/mediaed/lessonplans

This site offers a Resource Guide for Video Production in the Classroom, which includes books, magazines, and videos. It also details the basic equipment needed for classroom video production.

Media Awareness Network http://www.media-awareness.ca

This Canadian site contains a catalog of 100 videos for teacher training and classroom use. The site serves as a clearinghouse of ideas from educators and provides a forum for students to debate current media issues.

Media Education Foundation http://www.mediaed.org/front.html

This site offers a video catalog with detailed descriptions of programs that have served as effective tools in teaching students to analyze media literacy. Resource and discussion guides are also available.

Media Literacy Clearinghouse http://www.med.sc.edu:1081/

The site is conveniently divided into media topic areas, including television, newspapers, magazines, tobacco advertising, gender issues, propaganda, motion pictures, advertising, the Internet, commercialism, and health. Each segment contains lesson plans and numerous articles and background information. A section lists media literacy resources and details media literacy educational tips.

The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences http://www.emmyonline.org/

Link from here to the Academy's 18 chapters across the U.S. and their media literacy projects. The members of the Academy are television professionals representing a wide array of on-the-job TV experience.

Newseum http://www.newseum.org

Web site of the museum of news. The virtual classroom has online tours, Education Center information, and materials for teachers.

Public Broadcasting Service http://www.pbs.org/teachersource

A key word search for "media literacy" provides scores of lesson plans and teaching guides on the topic.

WETA Washington, D.C. http://www.weta.org/mediasmart

Resource center for MediaSmart, the WETA media literacy project. Contains workshop outline, sample teaching activities, an expanded resource section, project guidelines, and Webcasts of the 60-second spots that aired on WETA and the student-produced interviews on the concept of community.

Communications to the author should be addressed to Karen Zill, Manager, Educational Services and Outreach, WETA, 2775 S. Quincy St., Arlington, VA 22206; phone: 703/998-2459; e-mail: kzill@weta.com.