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.

This is brilliant - Music and Life, a production by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, was created using recordings from libertarian Alan Watts.
If we apply the metaphor to education, this short film encapsulates how we undermine the joys (the singing and dancing) of learning with our obsession with the finishing point (high stakes test results) and getting there in the fastest and most “efficient” way. Maybe it’s an age thing but I had only vaguely heard of Alan Watts (very famous in the 1950s and 1960s) prior to seeing this – it really made me think about realigning my priorities to make time for a bit more singing and dancing…