In the past, media literacy was about “getting consumers to think critically about what they were watching”. Now with huge numbers of people producing and publishing media, the need for media literacy has more relevance than ever.

This includes developing:

• judgement about the information available online,
• effective communication skills in different fora
• how to appropriate information and remix it in meaningful ways
• skills that evolve freedom of expression and citizenship
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Students in my Year 9 History class have produced quality videos that express their understanding of genocide in the 20th century, from case studies of the Holocaust, the Killing Fields, Rwanda and Sudan. These are samples of how students can use primary and secondary visual sources to construct multimedia texts that express their understanding of, and responses to, complex world events and issues.

Is “Never Again” little more than a catchphrase?

Having been teaching for only a few years, I am often taken by surprise that students know little or nothing about international events or historical personalities. For example, most students have no idea who Bill Clinton is; they have never heard of Yugolslavia; when I mention Lenin, they only know John Lennon; and recently, when I referred the Holocaust, most students had a vague idea (at best) of what I was talking about.

Learning about genocide is an important lesson in how prejudice and bigotry can destroy democratic societies and result in the deaths of millions of people. The UN Genocide Convention, passed in 1948, was based on the sentiment of “Never Again”. Never again, it was supposed, would the world remain silent and allow systemic racial hatred to fester into genocide. However, 50 years on, we now know that we have been doomed to witness history repeat itself in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and today in the Sudan. According to the Genocide Education Project, genocides and other forms of mass murder killed 170 million people, more than all the international wars of the 20th century combined. At a time when we talk more and more about globalisation, an awareness of tolerance, human rights, ethics, personal responsibility, and the consequences of their absence, is vital.

The World is Witness, a new “geoblog” from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Genocide Prevention Mapping Initiative, in partnership with Google Earth, documents and maps genocide and related crimes against humanity. The blog has first hand accounts of the effects of genocide and war. The blog also hosts, the Voices on Genocide Prevention, a bi-weekly audio series and podcast service, hosted by Committee on Conscience Project Director Bridget Conley-Zilkic, with insights from human rights defenders, experts, advocates, and government officials.

Via its mapping initiative, USHMM has been using Google Earth and animated maps for a few years now to help people better understand Holocaust history and to raise awareness of the current threats of genocide across the globe.

“The Holocaust took place across the entire European continent, and for all of Europe’s Jews, as well as other victims of Nazism, geography played a major role in determining their fate. The Mapping Initiative shows key Holocaust sites and historic content from the Museum’s collections. The initiative also includes information on potential genocides allowing citizens, governments, and institutions to access information on atrocities in their nascent stages and respond.”

The Cambodian Genocide Project has compiled and published 22,000 biographic and bibliographic records, and over 6,000 photographs, along with documents, translations, maps, and an extensive list of books and research papers on the genocide, as well as the interactive Cambodian Geographic Database, CGEO, which includes data on: Cambodia’s 13,000 villages; the 115,000 sites targeted in 231,00 U.S. bombing sorties flown over Cambodia in 1965-75, dropping 2.75 million tons of munitions; 158 prisons run by Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime during 1975-1979, and 309 mass-grave sites with an estimated total of 19,000 grave pits; and 76 sites of post-1979 memorials to victims of the Khmer Rouge.

Genocide Intervention Network empowers individuals and communities with the tools to prevent and stop genocide. Its “members envision a world in which the global community is willing and able to protect civilians from genocide and mass atrocities. As part of the anti-genocide movement, we raise both money and political will for civilian protection initiatives around the world.”

Other Resources:

Interested in History? Keen to explore the past?

Based on the BAFTA award-winning TV series, Timelines.tv is a free, new and exciting on-line history resource.
“It offers a wealth of quality TV documentary, arranged on interactive historical timelines that put you in control of your journey through the past. Timelines.tv spans the centuries. It’s rich in detail, full of great stories and fascinating flavour. But more than that: it shows how those details ‘connect’.”

I love finding a new history resource, and with a keen interest in British history, I think this site is fantastic. Beginning with the Norman Conquest, 1066 and ending with the Death of Industry, 1984, Timelines.tv has a wide range of video material from the Medieval Manor, Magna Carta, the first parliaments, The Black Death, the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, Shakespeare’s World, The East India Company, The Rights of Man, the Peterloo Massacre, The Tolpuddle Martyrs, The Dawn of Democracy, The Rise of Labour, A Golden Age 1900-1914 and more.

This is a history lovers’ treasure trove.

Via Doug Belshaw

Maps of War is a really useful resource with interactive maps that cover a wide range of conflicts from the Western Front of WWI, WWII, Iraq, Darfur, failed states index and global migration.

I am getting ready to take my Modern History class on an excursion to Vietnam in three days. I’ve been planning this trip for ages so it’s kind of hard to believe that it is finally here. We are going to visit a whole range of cultural and historical places and sites and I’m hoping that it will be a wonderful experience for all of us. We are going to create a travel log while we are in Vietnam and the students are responsible for recording our experiences digitally and parents will be able to see what we are doing along the way. In pairs, students have picked two days that they will document in a written post, podcast or video. We have a media pack with a digital video and still camera, ipod and recorder and an iBook so I’m keen for them to have some fun documenting the trip. We have chosen to study Ho Chi Minh for the “personality of the 20th century” section of our HSC Modern History Course, so it will be cool for student to visit museums in Hue and Hanoi and most significantly talk to Vietnamese people about how they perceive “Uncle Ho”.

I was reminded of this when I was reading Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach’s post on Creativity is a global crisis, in which she summarises a video, “Teaching HOW TO learn”,  with mind-map creator Tony Buzan:

• World is getting less and less creative on average. Education today is structured so that it destroys creativity and crushes dreams.
• In China, Mexico, Japan and US it is normal for creativity scores to decline throughout a child’s education.
• We teach kids what to learn.. not how to learn. We teach curriculum rather than how to learn.
• Scientific Journal feels that brilliance can be unleashed through nurturing creative thinking in children.
• Intellectual capital is fueled by creativity. There is a new creative age dawning and we must address it. 60% of all jobs and professions within the next 10 years will be based on creative thinking.
• Child are born with intellectual potential- brain is soil with endless seeds. When child is stimulated creatively then brain cells engage and grow. When they are not stimulated cells disengage. Nurturing creativity allows synapse to form more connections. When we routinize, when we linearize, when we dull a child we actually physically disengage their brains.
• It is not one or the other:curriculum or creativity. Creativity is the thread that should be woven in each area of the curriculum.

Sheryl argues that: “Back to basics is returning to way we all learn naturally through wonderment, questions, and explorations – not through memorization and regurgitation of facts.”

This “creativity crisis” is also explored by Ken Robinson in the TED talk, “Do Schools Kill Creativity” [below], who explores how we’ve been educated to become good workers, rather than creative thinkers. “Students with restless minds and bodies — far from being cultivated for their energy and curiosity — are ignored or even stigmatized, with terrible consequences.”

Another excellent post on this is, “How to Prevent Another Leonardo da Vinci” at Wandering Ink, which details 10 aspects of creative thinking and then goes on to explain how our society quashes them. They include:

1. Intense and insatiable curiosity; constantly learning due to a desire to ask and answer questions

2. Constant testing of knowledge through experience and persistence; accepting of and learning from mistakes

3. Fully noticing and observing things with all senses, but especially sight (seeing things that others miss, seeing the details)

4. An acceptance of ambiguity, paradox, and uncertainty out of a realization that life is not black and white (also an art technique using shadow famous for its use in da Vinci’s paintings)

5. Interest in both the arts and sciences and interdisciplinary work that combines them

6. Keeping one’s body in good shape; attending to nutrition, fitness, and general physical well-being

7. Acceptance and appreciation for the interconnectedness of everything in life; interdisciplinary approaches and thinking

8. Energy and desire to focus intensely on one’s work and interests (often the same thing); merging of work and play

9. Confidence, willingness to take risks, and tolerance of failure – Willing to continue on with creative work despite rejection; ability to sell oneself and one’s talents

10. Independence, introversion (from various studies on creative genius) – Willingness to spend lots of time alone working and honing skills; acceptance of possible isolation

Images: http://www.wishfulthinking.co.uk/blog/2006/10/
http://bedfordcommunityorchestra.files.wordpress.com/2007/03/creativity1.jpg