A Plan of Action: 10 Recommendations
A Plan of Action: 10 Recommendations
To support the development of digital and media literacy competencies for all Americans, we need a comprehensive community education movement. Local, regional, state and national initiatives are essential. It will take time to build the infrastructure capacity and human resources necessary to bring digital and media literacy education to all citizens.
There are some key audiences and locations where this work must occur, including children and youth, new immigrants, special education students, juvenile offenders, and senior citizens, in K–12 schools, universities and colleges, libraries, youth media and local access centers. To achieve the buy-in necessary for success, initiatives must capitalize on existing local programs and resources and enroll new stakeholders, including educational leaders, members of the business community, and members of professional associations who are motivated to develop and sustain programs.
Community Initiatives
1. Map existing community resources in digital and media literacy and offer small grants to promote community partnerships to integrate digital and media literacy competencies into existing programs.
City and community leaders often have little awareness of programs and services in digital and media literacy education. Increased awareness and better coordination would help develop leadership, promote partnerships, and build organizational capacity to support the expansion of work in the community. Community-focused foundations, media or technology companies should support the work of community leadership panels to map existing community resources in digital and media literacy. For example, the Comcast Foundation, through its partnership with Digital Connectors, could support digital and media literacy mapping projects in the communities where Comcast provides service.
In each participating community, the sponsoring entity would charge an experienced local group with mapping a community’s existing programs in digital and media literacy. Mapping resources, training and services along the essential dimensions of digital and media literacy education will make it possible to identify the assets that already exist in the community as well as the core values and priorities each program offers. It can also identify underserved populations. This will help identify gaps in programs and services.
The foundation or corporate sponsor could offer small annual grants of between $25,000 and $75,000, targeted to develop pilot programs to bring digital and media literacy education to specific populations with greatest need in the community. The foundation and its partners could host an annual community event to showcase programs and projects and promote networking and leadership development at the community level.
One example of a local group with the capacity to map a community’s digital and media literacy resources is the Gateway Media Literacy Partners. GMLP is a confederation of community leaders with experience in developing media literacy programs in St. Louis, Missouri. This group is established as a regional caucus of the National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE).
Community Partnerships: The Digital Connectors ProgramThe Digital Connectors Program was launched by One Economy in 2001 in Washington, D.C. The program identifies young people from diverse backgrounds between the ages of 14 to 21 and immerses them in certified technology training. The training helps these young digital connectors build leadership skills and prepares them to enter the 21st century workplace. Participants give back to their community by training family members and residents on how to use technology effectively. In addition to hands-on learning, digital connectors also learn about career opportunities through site visits to technology companies, job shadowing experiences, and campus tours. Many participating youth receive stipends through their City’s employment program or new computers as compensation for their efforts. Programs are run in housing developments, community centers, libraries and schools. To date, more than 3,500 young people from diverse, low-income backgrounds have been trained as digital connectors. These young people have contributed more than 77,000 hours of service to their communities spreading digital literacy. In late 2010, with federal funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and corporate matches, One Economy and the Broadband Opportunity Coalition, leading civil rights organizations, will expand Digital Connectors programs substantially. The expanded program will train 2,500-3,000 youth through the launch of 167 Digital Connector programs in 19 major cities throughout the country. |
2. Support a national network of summer learning programs to integrate digital and media literacy into public charter schools.
Schools should leverage their in-school summer programs to fully realize the transformative potential of digital and media literacy education, especially for children in low-income communities. More than 75 percent of American children receive no summer learning experience during the months of summer vacation. Much of the achievement gap between lower- and higher-income youth can be explained by the summer learning loss that disproportionately affects low-income children (Finn, 2010). Taking advantage of the ability to blend fun and education, and keeping kids involved in learning activities during the summer, a national network of summer learning programs in digital and media literacy for urban youth should be formed. One example of such a program is Powerful Voices for Kids, a university-school program that brings digital and media literacy education to children ages 5 to 15 through a summer learning program. The program is staffed by recent college graduates and includes a professional development program for teachers, in-school and after-school mentoring, and a research and assessment program. It receives support from the Wyncote Foundation, Verizon Foundation, and the Brook J. Lenfest Foundation.
Charter schools in low-income communities are receptive to innovation and ready to implement in-school summer learning programs. Over one million children in 3,500 schools are enrolled in public charter schools (Berends, 2009). In-school summer programs can also help inspire teachers to introduce the instructional practices of digital and media literacy during the academic year. By engaging students in enrichment activities that capitalize on their interests in mass media, popular culture and digital media, the program enables children to build positive relationships with peers and adults, use digital media and technology for learning, and develop critical thinking and communication skills. Recent college graduates and media professionals can serve as program staff for the 4 to 6 week summer learning program, providing a powerful service learning opportunity that builds civic awareness. In coordination with the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, this program could be supported in the same manner as the National Writing Project, with direct federal funding to build, sustain, and expand the national network. Federal investment could be matched one-to-one by university, local, state, and private dollars. Congress should pass the Healthy Media for Youth Act (H.R.4925) as this competitive grant program could also support summer programs that support media literacy programs for children and youth.
3. Support a Digital and Media Literacy (DML) Youth Corps to bring digital and media literacy to underserved communities and special populations via public libraries, museums and other community centers.
There are many American adults who are not using broadband connections and services. They cite factors such as access, relevance, lack of digital literacy skills and cost among the reasons they have not become adopters of high-speed Internet and digital media. They may see media as “just entertainment” and have declared themselves “not computer people.” They may be intimidated by technology and unsure of where to start or how to use it. By opting out, they are missing out on the opportunity to use digital media to enhance daily life. To accommodate often busy lives, adults need flexible, short-term and drop-in programs, catered to their needs, where they can explore and learn, supported by knowledgeable and supportive assistants who offer just-in-time learning strategies. Most people learn new digital skills from a combination of trial-and-error strategies along with an “elbow-to-elbow” friend who offers appropriate help and support when needed.
Congress should dedicate 10 percent of Americorps funding for the development of a Digital and Media Literacy (DML) Youth Corps. The DML Youth Corps would be a service outreach program that offers training and professional development in digital and media literacy to a group of recent college graduates and places them, in teams, to work in public libraries, school libraries and technology centers, local public access centers, and other community non-profit organizations.
Three to five partnership programs from different regions of the U.S. could be tapped to recruit, train and support DML corps members. Existing programs, such as the recently launched Public Media Corps, or a National Digital Literacy Corps as proposed in the National Broadband Plan, could be engaged or serve as models. Corps members would be responsible for offering informal digital media learning programs to adults in coordination with the hosting organization. Participants might be introduced to innovative websites like Finding Dulcinea, which helps Internet users quickly and easily find the best, most credible websites. In coordination with the American Library Association, some members of this team could be responsible for hosting a “Silver Surfers Week” based on the model developed in the U.K., which is a library-based program designed to support the development of digital and media literacy competencies among people ages 55+. Corps members could receive a small stipend for their 12-month service.
Partnerships for Teacher Education
4. Support interdisciplinary bridge building in higher education to integrate core principles of digital and media literacy education into teacher preparation programs.
Digital and media literacy education cannot come into the classroom without teachers who have the knowledge and skills to teach it. At the present time, many K–12 educators are not familiar with the instructional practices of digital and media literacy education, creating a leadership gap in schools. A parallel gap exists at most colleges and universities because the silos between disciplines mean there is little interface between faculty in the schools of education and communication. Most schools of education lag behind in bringing innovative digital and media literacy education to their students because faculty do not make active use of digital media themselves. Most faculty in schools of communication specialize in professional digital media training but have little expertise in developing non-specialist programs that address the needs of children, youth and other underserved populations. Teacher education programs must give their students rich digital and media literacy learning experiences if they hope to inspire them to include this pedagogy in their own teaching.
Future teachers could be well served if colleges and universities invested in the building of interdisciplinary bridges that bring faculty and students together for co-learning opportunities. Programs at the University of Minnesota, the University of New York at Buffalo and Stony Brook, the University of Southern California, Temple University, Syracuse University, Webster University in St. Louis, Sacred Heart University in Connecticut and other schools have begun such initiatives, bringing together faculty in schools of communication and education for community-based learning initiatives.
State departments of education should make available a competitive pool of monies exclusively for university and college partnerships to support cross-disciplinary teacher education programs in digital and media literacy education that enable intensive collaboration between faculty and students in education and communication/media studies programs to support community-based digital and media literacy learning. These colleges and universities should develop certification programs in digital and media literacy so that school districts can hire teachers with this specific set of knowledge and skills.
5. Create district-level initiatives that support digital and media literacy across K–12 via community and media partnerships.
To integrate digital and media literacy education into the curriculum, teachers already in service must receive meaningful staff development. The average American teacher is 50 years old and will be working for another 10 to 15 years (Ingersoll, 2009). School districts should dedicate funding to support a fast-track, 12-month coordinated staff development program in digital and media literacy at the district level. This could be staffed by teams that include technology specialists, library/media educators, education and communication faculty and community partners, including those from professional media organizations. Training should make use of the instructional practices of digital and media literacy education. School districts could offer opportunities to “catalyst teachers” who would participate in 10 full days of professional development in partnership with a college or university over the course of an academic year. Some of this training can be offered online. Upon completion of the program, educators will receive a certificate that enables them to offer professional development to others in their district. A rigorous evaluation component should assess program impact on both teachers’ classroom practices and their students’ knowledge and skills. States should make available matching funds for school districts that invest in teacher education programs in digital and media literacy. Foundations should support research on district-level initiatives to help develop a base of scholarship to support the field.
6. Partner with media and technology companies to bring local and national news media more fully into education programs in ways that promote civic engagement.
News media resources can be powerful tools to support citizenship education and strengthen digital and media literacy competencies. Whereas in the past, access to print news required a subscription and TV news content was available only by viewing at a specific time, now it is at our fingertips on a 24/7 basis. New services are emerging online to help people use, analyze and share news content. As the Knight Commission report noted, technology companies can make an enormous contribution to the public interest by volunteering their expertise and resources.
There are a host of innovative online news tools already on the market that could better enable teachers and students to use and analyze print, online and television news as part of general education. For example, the Know the News project from Link TV enables students to remix broadcast news, discovering how choices in language, image and editing shape the meaning-making process. The New York Times Learning Network has over 3,000 lesson plans and activities that help teachers and students easily and meaningfully connect current events to perennial classroom topics and enable students to comment on the news. Video news aggregation services like Red Lasso (www.redlasso.com) make it possible for people to select, edit and circulate excerpts of local TV news content for private or public purposes, selecting and embedding clips of local news from more than 150 media markets. News Trust (www.newstrust.com) uses a news ratings system to enable people to see how others evaluate the quality of informational content of print news media reports. NBC Learn has launched I-Cue (www.icue.com), a social networking website where NBC video clips and related news stories are fashioned into virtual trading cards.
At the present time, however, few educators are taking advantage of these new tools. To help develop a cadre of teacher leaders to spread the word about the value of using existing online news tools, modest grants from media and technology companies could be used to support partnerships between the developers of these new tools and key educational groups. School districts, community colleges, museums, libraries, colleges and universities could be invited to apply for these funds, which would support teacher education and outreach activities. This would empower educators and their students to discover fresh ways to engage with local news using new online resources. Well-publicized examples of effective instructional strategies for using these tools, generated by educators and students themselves, could also support the growth of digital and media literacy education across the disciplines and content areas.
Research and Assessment
7. Develop online measures of media and digital literacy to assess learning progression and develop online video documentation of digital and media literacy instructional strategies to build expertise in teacher education.
It is important to make a case for the importance of digital and media literacy—and offering compelling evidence of need is a vital first step. Many people who have well-developed digital and media literacy competencies wrongly assume that others have the same levels of knowledge and skills they possess. 
Those who lack these skills may be unaware of the utility or value of these competencies. Compelling test results are essential to help establish the importance of—and need for—digital and media literacy education.
Two key action items are proposed here that reflect the need for both top-down and bottom-up assessment strategies: (a) online measures of students’ learning progression and (b) video documentation of instructional practices to support best practices research that will enhance teacher education.
Online Measures to Assess Students’ Learning Progression – Measures of digital and media literacy are desperately needed to measure learning progression. There are so many dimensions of media and digital literacy that it will take many years to develop truly comprehensive measures that support the needs of students, educators, policymakers and other stakeholders. Although “technological literacy” will be part of the 2012 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), this framework will not include digital and media literacy competencies (Cavanaugh, 2009). Therefore, an online test dedicated to digital and media literacy is needed. First, three to five benchmarks for assessment need to be developed, targeted to children and young people ages 9, 14 and 19. This could be used to both establish the need for new programs and to measure program effectiveness. The Department of Education should initiate funding to support a simple online test requiring no more than 30 minutes to complete that could measure the ability to (a) use digital tools including basic and more advanced skills, (b) analyze and evaluate the author’s purpose and point of view, (c) identify ethical issues in message production and reception, (d) make judgments of the credibility of information sources and (e) compose messages using language, image and sound.
Video Documentation of Instructional Practices – Like most professionals, teachers learn new skills best when they have the opportunity to observe and analyze the practices of their peers and colleagues. An online database of video excerpts of digital and media literacy learning is needed as a resource for teacher education programs locally, district and statewide, nationally and around the world. These video excerpts should be accompanied with teacher-created lesson plans, samples of student work and other materials, including opportunities for users to comment, review and critique. Such a resource should also be used to develop research evidence to identify “best practices” by determining which approaches to digital and media literacy education are most effective. It could also be used as the basis upon which to develop a meaningful test for new teachers to measure their ability to implement digital and media literacy instructional practices into the curriculum. At the present, few states require new teachers to demonstrate competence in digital and media literacy education. The state of Texas does include measures of digital and media literacy education competencies as 15 percent of the test for new English teachers in grades 8–12 (Texas Education Agency, 2006), but the methodology of brief written vignettes with multiple choice options limits its effectiveness. The online video documentation tool should be coordinated by the National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE). Members should be able to upload clips of their own teaching practices and download clips for use in teacher education. Such a database should be supported by a major philanthropy or charitable foundation in order to dramatically improve our knowledge of effective practices in teacher education for digital and media literacy education.
Parent Outreach, National Visibility, and Stakeholder Engagement
8. Engage the entertainment industry’s creative community in an entertainment-education initiative to raise visibility and create shared social norms regarding ethical behaviors in using online and social media.
As participation in digital culture spreads, we are seeing the development of social norms for how people interact with technology. Right now, there are few culturally normative practices that truly support the growth of digital and media literacy. For example, most people do not know exactly what it means to “ask critical questions” about mass media, digital media, or popular culture. Parents may not be aware of the importance of sitting with their children and learning along with them about online social media. Others may think of the television and the computer as devices for diversion or entertainment only. To strengthen people’s capacity for engaging with information, it is important to envision what digital and media literacy practices actually look like in the context of ordinary life in the family, workplace and community.
To raise the level of visibility of the concept of digital and media literacy in the home, an education-entertainment initiative, similar to the one developed for the “designated driver” campaign, is needed. In the classic case, Jay Winsten of the Harvard School of Public Health met with Hollywood producers and writers to explore possibilities for integrating the topic of the designated driver into popular television programs. Since “entertainment not only mirrors social reality, but also helps shape it by depicting what constitutes popular opinion,” the program was effective because it used short messages, embedded within dialogue, that were casually presented by characters who serve as role models within a dramatic context (Winsten, 2010). With support from the Writers Guild of America West, over a four-year period, more than 160 prime-time programs incorporated sub-plots, scenes, and dialogue on the subject, including frequent references to the use of designated drivers. Most importantly, alcohol-related traffic fatalities declined by 30 percent over this time period.
We propose targeting a specific dimension of digital and media literacy, perhaps an ethically problematic but common online behavior (like spying, harassment, intolerance, cyber bullying or sexting). A website that archives and offers examples of this programming could help parents and educators use these TV clips to extend learning and discussion opportunities in both the home and the classroom.
Working with the Writer’s Guild of America West, the Creative Coalition, and potentially other partners, including Viacom, Comcast, Time Warner and Disney, entertainment programs for children, teens and adults could address the problem and identify appropriate solutions, helping to establish and reinforce social norms about responsibilities and behavior in online communication. With a modest investment in an entertainment-education campaign, social norms and ethical practices regarding the use of online social media could become part of our cultural vocabulary.
9. Host a statewide youth-produced PSA competition to increase visibility for digital and media literacy education.
Youth-media programs involve students in video, print, and online media production. There are a number of youth media initiatives across the United States despite the extremely limited funding opportunities available to them. The optimistic spirit of “youth voice” is inspiring to those who work in cities and communities. Now the field is well-developed enough to support a journal, Youth Media Reporter, which offers a place for youth media advocates and professionals to share ideas about what works and why. A community education movement for digital and media literacy must include a prominent role for youth media advocates. Local or national celebrities also have a role to play in bringing attention to the talents of young people who are working to develop critical thinking, social responsibility and communication skills using language, image, sound, music and interactivity.
Statewide competitions should be developed to motivate youth-media organizations to make digital and media literacy a focus topic for community advocacy. Working collaboratively, youth media organizations, high school video production programs, and local access centers, working with cable providers in coordination with Channel One schools should host an annual statewide PSA competition, inviting video, audio or script/storyboard submissions from youth media organizations, public access centers, and individuals. The contest might involve telling a story in 30 seconds about the benefits that come from thinking critically and being socially responsible about digital media, mass media and popular culture, using the tag line “Get Media Smart.” Winning entries should be produced, hosted by a prominent celebrity, and distributed via local access and public television stations across the state.
Local libraries and public media organizations should host community screenings featuring the local producers who contributed to the project. A social media website could showcase all entries and offer “one-stop shopping” style information about digital and media literacy concepts that can be effective in the home and community. A group of young leaders should be recognized at a special event sponsored by the White House.
10. Support an annual conference and educator showcase competition in Washington, D.C. to increase national leadership in digital and media literacy education.
To build a community education movement for digital and media literacy, visibility is needed among media professionals, members of Congress, federal and state officials, and business, trade and civic membership associations. It is important to nurture the development of professional associations for digital and media literacy education, enabling educators to share experiences about “what works,” showing how digital and media literacy education is relevant to a wide range of stakeholders. At present, the National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE) hosts a national conference every two years, with the next event scheduled for July 2011 in Philadelphia. An annual conference based in Washington, D.C. would support the increased visibility of digital and media literacy education among leaders in K–12 education at both the state and national levels. Because of rapid growth in this field, an annual conference is needed.
A national leadership conference with an educator showcase competition will substantially raise the visibility of digital and media literacy among policymakers, federal officials, and leading non-profit and charitable organizations. It could help bring new leaders into the field and enable the membership organization to sustain a full-time executive director. This organization could easily triple its membership within one year with an annual national leadership conference, especially if coordinated with a larger association like the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), the American Library Association (ALA) or the International Society for Technology Education (ISTE). This should be combined with a visibility campaign targeted to reach college and university faculty, K–12 educators, media professionals, youth media advocates, and other stakeholders with interests and experience in digital and media literacy. A major philanthropy or charitable foundation should support NAMLE over a three-year period in order for it to position itself as a unifying force for digital and media literacy as a national and community education movement.
