“TV, Internet Causing Kids Harm” the Washington Post Headline reads. It refers to a review of 173 studies over the last 30 years of which 80 percent “concluded that higher amounts of television and other media exposure were associated with negative health effects in children and adolescents.”
No real surprise there. We’ve heard the claims before, but the negative tone contradicts the enthusiasm of the annual convention of the National Council of Teachers of English I attended a week and a half ago in San Antonio. The theme, “Because Shift Happens: Teaching in the 21st Century,” extolled the use of media and technology in teaching and engaging students in the skills and higher level thinking needed as our world continues to change.
- Marc Prensky, (Don’t Bother Me Mom, I’m Learning) contrasted digital immigrants (those who didn’t grow up with technology) with digital natives (those who have).
- Gary Knell, CEO of Sesame Street Workshop, spoke of the 1969 study that sparked the development of Sesame Street by showing the potential of television to bridge the vocabulary gap of children in low-income neighborhoods. (Cooney, 1967) He then showed how that same belief has fueled the development of Sesame Street around the world, not the same program that we know, but ones base on the cultures of the audiences.
- Kyleen Beers, conference chair, (Adolescent Literacy: Turning Promise into Practice) posed the question, “What does it mean to educate students for this flat world?”
- Presenters in break out sessions demonstrated the use of blogs, wikis, and podcasting in the classroom.
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Sessions on classics or rhetoric included YouTube clips and websites.
Teachers gathered around technology-on-the-go stations to stretch themselves and gather new ideas for engaging their students in learning.
- Participants are still connecting in on-going conversations and resource sharing through a ning (a social networking site), so that the learning continues.
Now, I am aware that the study in the Washington Post is talking about health which is quite different from the theme of the convention. But all too often we will take research such as this and take an all or nothing approach. Television is all bad. The Internet is dangerous for kids. Then, we advocate the never-going-going-to-happen action of getting rid of television, or we over-restrict student access to the Internet.
We need, instead, to teach students to be literate for our 21st Century by using television and Internet as texts to be decoded, analyzed, and evaluated. Just avoiding them is burying our head in the sand. As Marshall McLuhan said, “the medium is the message.” Teach kids how to read and produce media and you engage them in their learning in ways that give them tools for life. Those tools, by the way, will get them moving, active, and healthy.
To learn more visit the National Association for Media Literacy Education and check out the NCTE 21st Century Skill Map.
Molly Berger is a guest blogger and teacher in Yakima.
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