In her presentation media education expert Nicoleta Fotiade (ActiveWatch, Romania) who is an introduced various media education schemes and critical thinking methods in training settings that could help teachers open their students' minds towards their critical interaction and use of information media. Nicoleta presented this presentation during the MEDEAnet webinar 'The Case for Media Education in the Classroom' on 18 October 2012. Find out more on http://www.medeanet.eu/event/webinar-media-education-in-classroom.

1. A Case For Media
Education in the
Classroom
Nicoleta Fotiade
ActiveWatch, Romania
nicoleta@mma.ro

2. What is this?
• A glimpse into one model of media
education practice
• With illustration of several media
education activities to use in the
classroom (interdisciplinary approach,
secondary education)
• Also a brief reflection on what media
education is

3. Our preoccupation
• We are interested in active aware
citizens
• Information media
• We do: teachers’ training and
assistance, support materials,
students’ workshops, advocacy for
media education in schools.

4. ActiveWatch & Media
Education
• We understand media education as the
process through which
• children and adults achieve knowledge
and skills that help them
• (1) understand media and their social,
cultural and economic implications in
everyday life and
• (2) use various media in a critical and
creative way for their own benefit.

5. Why MedEd?
• Our belief: MedEd should be part of
the core school curriculum.
• MedEd contributes to the children and
young people’s media literacy in an
increasingly mediated society
• It adds value to the teaching &
learning activity

6. How?
• Introducing media knowledge and media-
based teaching strategies within various
subjects (social and humanistic sciences
and languages)
• Extracurricular activities
• Media as object of study (education about
media)
• Questioning/Dialogue between teacher and
students

7. I am going to briefly
illustrate….
• … with 3 examples taken out of our
own experience with teachers.

8. (1) How to Find Credible and Useful Resources Online?

9. (1) How to Find Credible and Useful
Resources Online?
• Imagine tasks that suppose a certain amount of
documentation and ask your students to identify
their sources of information
&
• Initiate a class debate to discuss the reasons why
they chose certain sources and not others.
Aim: To stimulate your students’ critical thinking
during search of information.


10. Value of information on
Internet
• Who posted the information? Identify the
author/speaker’ background, the funding body,
ownership, the distributor etc.
• Why?
• Where?
• How do we verify information?
• Is the piece of information trustworthy?


11. TIPS to verify information
• Use specialized search engines! More chances to
find articles from trustworthy sources.
• QUESTIONING: Look up the information from at
least 3 sources and answer questions: Was there
any information omitted? / Any significant
contradictions in the article?
• BIAS: author’s value judgments / phrases that
could minimize or increase the importance of an
event / a person.
• Identification of SOURCES & QUOTATION give
credibility to information.

12. (2) Judge an image to its
context!
1. Present a press image to your students!
2. Ask them to write their own caption (without offering
any context related-information).
3. Give them the context (e.g. the article) and then ask
your students to write a new caption!
4. Have a group sharing of the students’ captions!
5. Now compare with the original caption!
6. Discussion: To what extent your students’ own
social and cultural prejudice played a role in their
former interpretation of the image?


13. What do you think this is about?
Photo: Dumitru Liviu Ștefan

14. (3) Media Consumption Diary
Aim:
• to understand how and why we
consume and interact with the certain
media
(social, cultural & economic reasons)
• To become aware of the
circumstances in which we use &
interact with media

15. Media Consumption Diary
1. Encourage your students to record their
personal media consumption diary for at
least three days (in an excel database if
possible).
2. Ask them to write a short analysis based on
the recorded data.
3. Organize a classroom or an online forum
debate on the basis of their findings.


16. Media Consumption
Diary(excel)
• Date
• Time/hour
• Place
• Type of media content
• Context/Reason for consumption
• General observations


17. Short analysis
questions to answer:
1. What time of the day you access various
media? And where?
2. What type of media channels?
3. What type of content? Why?
4. What exactly determined you to read or use
certain media?
5. Role of the media content you access in your
daily life.

18. A Variation of the USDA’s
Food Pyramid by Steven Leckart (Balance Your
Media Diet)

19. Questions
• How feasible do you find this sort of
activities for classroom practice?
• What are the limitations of the critical
approach in media education?
• Any other considerations?

20. Proposals of a Romanian
language teacher
For lower secondary school students (13-14 y)
• Short exercises to critically analyze advertising
& news items, music video clips.
• Online search. Comparative study on literary
topics - the basis of a critical discussion.
• Production of short films on topics of interest for
the students’ age; presentation and discussion.
• Short exercises to understand the meanings
they give to images; the study of image.

21. “How to teach…” Resources
Online
OnAir Course Media&Learning
Resource Database

23. Thank You!
Nicoleta Fotiade
Program Manager
ActiveWatch
Romania
nicoleta@mma.ro
www.activewatch.ro