Dr Ron Carter on CNN

The former provost of Coker College, Dr. Ron Carter, was on CNN recently discussing some of the critical needs of education. He gave a critical endorsement for something I spend some time with -- Media Literacy, but he also added important thoughts to critical discussion of holistic education. It was interesting listening to this interchange. Dr. Carter, who is president of Johnson C. Smith University, may quickly find himself a spokesperson for those who strongly believe that our education solution starts early and must be fully integrated into the lives of our children. He did not discount potential areas for strengthening but he does put responsibility on parents.

Side Note: Someone a couple of years my senior wanted to know what I find Facebook of value. This is one of those concrete examples. Ashley Grau, a former student, had picked up this link and posted to Facebook -- I had not seen it. Now I have seen it and am able to share it and that shows some of the value of Facebook.

Creating Media about the Coker Experience

One of the courses I teach is called INTRODUCTION TO MASS COMMUNICATION, CULTURE AND MEDIA LITERACY. In the material we cover, media literacy is one of the underlying themes; often a concept the students have not discussed in those terms in their previous talks about media. One assignment that continues to provide surprises is the assignment Coker College where I ask the students to create a piece of media about the Coker experience. This assignment has evolved from using Polaroid cameras to create posters to the developing of complex power points. And, today's class set the bar higher as one of the teams had a student with final cut pro on his personal computer and they skipped the story board idea and went right to video.

The objectives of this project and this section of the class are to help the students get some concrete understanding of Media Literacy Concepts like:

Media are constructions
Media representations construct reality
Media have commercial purposes
Audiences negotiate meaning
Each medium has is own codes and conventions
Media messages contain values and ideology and
Media many have social effects, outcomes and consequences.


This project provided the class with the concrete representation. The teams all had the same assignment. Tell an audience about Coker.
video could take awhile to upload. A group that included several athletes focused on athletics, showing Coker from the Athlete perspective. Another group focused on the learning experience of the round-table classroom while providing background on things at the college. A third group focused on the theme of Coker as your home while another group provided a story of the college from founding to today. And another team used the media player function of the computer to combine power point and video to highlight happenings in this centennial year. While a 50 minute class did not do justice to the explanations, it did provide the students with a good view of how each of the teams constructed a slightly different "reality" using different content for their message. The idea of codes and conventions really took hold when those who had done the power point as assigned felt they were out of the running when they saw the two videos. Each team did understand the commercial aspects because of focus either on prospective students or prospective donors.

From the instructor perspective, it was fun to see the media literacy principles come alive. David Considine of Appalachian State was the first to introduce them to me in one of his Media Literacy courses. One of his media literacy focused books is Visual Images

Getting Ready for the New Semester

Introduction to Mass Communication, Culture and Media Literacy is one of the classes I will be teaching this semester. It is the gateway class for the Communication major at Coker. One of the resources I will be steering my students to will be the media literacy web site run by Frank Baker. Frank has an amazing web site and he provides a crucial service to those of us who teach media by providing daily links and articles from an amazing variety of sources on media topics. Frank has a new book coming out on media literacy and presidential campaigns and I am hoping that I will be able to get him to Coker to speak to the Mass Communication class on this subject.

These days just before classes start are exciting as everyone gears up for this new academic year.