Critical Media Literacy and Living SchoolBook Projects

The Living SchoolBook (LSB) Community works together to bring wide-bandwidth high-speed technologies to selected New York State K-12 schools. In a collaborative effort, LSB teachers and staff attempt to create multimedia project-based learning activities which are meaningful to teachers and students. Projects are created, initiated, and developed by K-12 teachers and students, Syracuse University faculty and students, Northeast Parallel Architecture Center (NPAC) computer scientists and technologists, as well as community agencies (such as libraries, historic sites, and zoos).

Learning to work with text, images, sound, and video on the Internet is a very new experience for many teachers and students. Traditionally, K-12 educators and students utilize textbooks, videos, and prepared computer software packages throughout the school day. Many educators have voiced concerns about being limited by these pre-established texts and seek more flexible and localized curricular materials. With the Living SchoolBook, teachers and students are able to create projects which focus on enhancing research skills, editing techniques, and individual and group responsibilities - all of which contribute to the educational process.

Current school curricula and New York State Educational Standards can be combined with critical media literacy ideas. Think about some of the bulleted suggestions and questions then, check out LSB projects keeping some of these in mind:

• New York State Historical Art
  • Consider visual acuity defined as: being able to explore a picture/painting in depth by raising questions such as, how many people are presented, what clothes are they wearing, what expressions are on their faces, what time period is represented?
  • Think about the historical and spatial context of the piece of artwork.
  • How are communities represented in artwork?
  • Did the artist decide what the final product would look like?
  • Did the artist choose the medium?
• CyberZoo
  • What roles do animals play in our society?
  • How are animals represented in the media? At the zoo?
• Unique Resources
  • This site was created with Adobe Photoshop. Think about how using Adobe Photoshop influences the construction and manipulation of images on the web, in advertisements, and other places.
• Storytelling
  • Is there more than one way to tell a story?
  • Try using a variety of media to tell stories.
  • Whose stories are told in history books?
• Gender Issues
  • Think about constructed representations of women and men, girls and boys.
  • Compare gender representations of various races, ethnicities, and countries.
• Herkimer House
  • Can history be re-constructed?
  • Compare past to present day by examining various lifestyles, homes, clothing, transportation vehicles, work and leisure time over history.

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