In today’s digital age, students must be media literate now more than ever. Media literacy involves the ability to access, analyse, evaluate, and create media in a critical and responsible way. This skill can help young people make sense of the vast amount of information they are exposed to daily and protects them from the dangers of the digital world.
Students can gain many benefits from learning media literacy skills. For one, it helps them become more critical consumers of information. IIn today’s world, false or misleading information can easily bombard us. We must identify bias and propaganda and evaluate the credibility of sources as a modern-day necessity.
Media literacy can also enhance students’ creativity. In the digital age, there are many opportunities for students to create their own media. More than 200 million people around the world now identify as ‘influencers’ propelled by the accelerating rise in popularity of content creating across platforms like YouTube, Twitch, Instagram & TikTok.
It’s also an industry and career path that offers financial attractiveness., The creator landscape reached a staggering worth of $100 billion as of March 2022, and there are no signs of that slowing down.
9 in 10 teachers want media literacy to be embedded in the national curriculum, according to a report published by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG). The report also states that less than 50% of teachers currently believe their students are media literate, and 10% of schools do not teach media literacy at all.
However, the overstated point resurfaces in this conversation. Without more support to schools to embed media literacy within the curriculum, hHow can we achieve this? Media literacy is a stand-alone skill that is not to be confused with digital literacy, and with it not being tied to subject specific study programmes, there are limited opportunities for teachers.
What are your thoughts on the importance of media literacy in the classroom, let us know your experiences in the comments section below.
This article was written by the TeacherHaven team, help us support education by contributing to our blog, email us at info@doceoconsulting.co.uk
