Double Entry Journal #5

The Relationship between Media Literacy and Traditional Literacy Skills:

 

“Don’t always believe everything you read,” a seemingly meaningless mantra recited amongst literary minds for as long as literature has been a focused study. History is always told by the winners, media focuses on the negative to market a key demographic, and propaganda spreads the ideals of one point of view. However this wise old saying has increased in validity over the years of advanced technology.  The relationship between media literacy and traditional literacy is that there is no distinction between the two anymore. Today media literacy is the traditional literacy. The only person that seems to separate them is that of the educator, in terms of how they used to teach, to now what they find better reaches their students. Like an invisible line drawn in the dirt, teachers have reveled in the compromise moving that line back an inch or so with each advance in technology. Now the line is non-existent and teachers are coming to grips that literacy is literacy and whether you label it traditional or media comprehension remains the same. Focus on whose writing it, why, and what do they hope to accomplish. Now it’s just a broader range of criteria.

 

Quote:

 

"Can students learn to recognize bias, track down sources, and cross-check information?"

 

Response:

 

I chose the above quote out of the article because it poses a very valid question in terms of literacy education. Obviously the article seeks to answer that question, but in the simplest terms I would like to share what I know on the subject. A good to way to look up information is to look at the URL, if it has a .com than it is a company website and is more than likely going to be biased to benefit that company. The best sites would have a .edu in the URL meaning that the website is educational, or a .gov meaning a government website (although government websites can also be biased depending the nature of your research). A good search engine to go by is google scholar which is just like regular google except it filters the result to strictly educational sources. And like I mentioned in the last journal entry Wikipedia is a great starting point for research on the internet, its references provide credible sites to better cross-check information. These things I feel should be taught and practiced in the classroom to better help navigate and protect kids on the web.

 

Source:

http://www.domainregister.com/comorg.html

 

The above is a page that explains URL domain names and the distinctions between them, this would better filter source information for students to follow.