New Media Literacy Curriculum Unveiled

An Alaska group, concerned about underage drinking, has released its online, interactive media literacy guide, appropriate for use with both middle and high school students.

Increased Use of Technology by K-12 Teachers Has Positive Effects on Perceived Student Learning, Development of 21st Century Skills

An increased use of technology in the classroom by K-12 teachers yields a perceived positive impact on student learning, engagement and the development of 21st century skills, according to the study Educators, Technology and 21st Century Skills: Dispelling Five Myths. The study was released during the annual ISTE conference.

New Digital Citizenship Curriculum for MS Unveiled

Common Sense Media has launched its digital citizenship curriculum for middle schools, Digital Citizenship in a Connected Culture. The curriculum is based on the digital ethics research of Dr. Howard Gardner and the GoodPlay Project at Harvard Graduate School of Education. It covers topics including privacy, cyberbullying, and self-expression through interactive activities and real-life stories from kids. The first three units of the curriculum are available now, and the full curriculum will be available in late August 2010. Link to Press Release.

Why Media Literacy Should Be Taught

An Atlantic Magazine blogger argues for why media literacy education should be part of American K-12 education.

Internet security is promoted as a career for tech-savvy students

USA Today reports: Efforts are under way nationwide to recruit tech-savvy students to pursue careers in protecting the safety and security of the Internet. College and high-school students are being encouraged to participate in contests that pit the young cyber-experts in virtual battles against hackers, spies and data thieves, while two Maryland school districts are working cybersecurity into the K-12 curriculum with a new career track in "information assurance."

Kids and Online Information Credibility: Latest Findings

Do you want to know how well young people navigate the web? Then read the highlights from the latest findings (Kids and Credibility: An Empirical Examination of Youth, Digital Media Use, and Information Credibility)...you may be surprised.

Media Literacy Documentary

I am always on the lookout for videos which show media literacy at work inside the K-12 classroom. Here is one. It was produced by a media studies graduate student in Portland who is concerned about why media literacy is not taught in American schools.

Social Networking Goes To School

Educators, according to this piece in Ed Week's Digital Directions publication, are integrating Facebook, Ning, and other sites into K-12 life despite concerns about privacy and behavior

Can Google Save the News? It hopes so....

Plummeting newspaper circulation, disappearing classified ads, “unbundling” of content—the list of what’s killing journalism is long. But high on that list, many would say, is Google, the biggest unbundler of them all. Now, having helped break the news business, the company wants to fix it—for commercial as well as civic reasons: if news organizations stop producing great journalism, says one Google executive, the search engine will no longer have interesting content to link to. So some of the smartest minds at the company are thinking about this, and working with publishers, and peering ahead to see what the future of journalism looks like. Guess what? It’s bright.

Can You Own A Sound? (Copyright)

This provocative question is raised in a new resource from Community Classroom: Four lesson plans and film modules for Copyright Criminals, a dynamic documentary from Independent Lens that explores the origins of sampling culture in hip-hop music, copyright, creativity, and technological change.

This curriculum is an invaluable tool for teachers or media organizations seeking to promote media literacy and ethical media production practices among youth.

These resources are FREE to educators and youth-serving organizations and available at: http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/copyright-criminals/classroom.html.

The Future of Reading

THE Journal (June/July: not yet online) features this essay: printed books are losing out to digital resources, bringing not only profound change to school libraries, but also debate over the very act of reading.

The iPad As a Learning Device for Kids

Even though there's not alot of research yet (see the reference to PBS) many publishers are moving ahead with iPad learning applications for the younger set.

New Internet Safety Report Recommends Media Literacy

Youth Safety on a Living Internet (PDF), the final report by the Online Safety Technology Working Group (OSTWG), found that the best way to assure youth safety on the Internet "points to the growing importance of online citizenship and media-literacy education, in addition to what has come to be seen as online safety education, as solutions to youth risk online."

Final Core Standards for ELA Released: But Something Important Was Omitted

Tuesday, the organizations behind the common core national standards released the document for English Language Arts, and what is surprising, if not shocking, is what they left out.

Mobile phones how put children's books in your pocket

Children's book authors and publishers are rushing to transform their paper book stories into digital versions on smart phones, blending their once-upon-a-time plots with elaborate sound effects, animation and 3D effects. Some of the newest versions of these books even allow parents and children to record their own page-by-page narration, making them a personal literacy tool.

Teens Get Creative with Web 2.0 Tools

A Canadian researcher reports on her study and work exploring digital literacy with the idea of examining the potential of using Web 2.0 environments in education.