My father used to tell me to believe none of what I heard and only half of what I saw. He would have approved of media literacy. If you haven't been bombarded with this concept, you soon will be.

My working definition: Media literacy is the ability to evaluate, analyze, access and produce communication. It's the process of being able to think critically about incoming information.

Thinking critically always has been a big deal, but it's an even bigger deal now because children are getting a large chunk of their information and entertainment from screens: television screens, computer monitors and video games. Kids need the savvy to evaluate the hundreds of messages, both overt and subtle, that they're exposed to every day.

Even very young children can begin learning what's true and what's false. One kindergarten teacher taught her students fantasy versus reality by using advertisements for Froot Loops and Tang. She helped them understand that these products are more sugar than fruit and that advertising is not necessarily factual. The teacher's goal was to make the students see themselves as active participants of the media (Instructor Magazine, November).

A third-grade teacher taught truth in images by showing slides of Africa that included sophisticated urban scenes, as well as jungle photographs. The students were amazed to learn that Africa had cities, because their only exposure to African landscape was through "The Lion King" and "Tarzan." Students also can take their own pictures, showing the same person in different poses, to convince them that photographs can be manipulated to send the message desired by the photographer (Instructor Magazine, November).

A friend e-mailed me a digital photo of my face on a milk carton. I have it posted in the library, where kids exclaim over it while getting the message that they have to be able to differentiate between tricks and the truth. The availability of image-altering software makes it imperative for all of us to develop these skills.

Life used to be so simple. The old, print-based world required very different, far less stringent, critical-thinking skills than those required in our current electronic world. In general, whatever our age and place, we need to learn how to deconstruct media, figuring out the where, when, what, who and how of information to determine whether it is trustworthy and authentic.

There's lots of help out there help that can be trusted. The Sheridan Libraries at Johns Hopkins University sponsor a site called "Evaluating Information Found on the Internet" that can be found at www.library.jhu.edu/ researchhelp/general/evaluating.

FOR YOUNGER CHILDREN:

-- "The Berenstain Bears' Media Madness" by Stan and Jan Berenstain.

-- "The Bionic Bunny Show" by Marc Brown.

FOR AGES 10 AND UP:

-- "Media Madness -- An Insider's Guide to the Media" by Dominic Ali.

FOR TEENAGERS:

-- "Teens and the Media" by Roger E. Hernandez.

-- "Caution! This May Be an Advertisement -- A Teen Guide to Advertising" by Kathlyn Gay.

 

"Media literacy is not just important, it's absolutely critical. It's going to make the difference between whether kids are a tool of the mass media or whether the mass media is a tool for kids to use" (Access Learning, March).