IC News

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit an already fragmented media landscape during a presidential election year, people were sent scrambling to digest rolling rapids of complex and contradictory media messages. Too often, those audiences, including millions of children, were overwhelmed and under prepared. 

Although US children ages 8-12 spend an average of four to six hours a day watching or using media with teens nearly doubling that amount, too few are formally taught to think critically about media messages. To combat that, Ithaca College’s media literacy program Project Look Sharp used a two-year, $270,000 grant from the Booth-Ferris Foundation to train two groups of 10 librarians from across New York State to work with teachers across grades and subjects to integrate media analysis into their curriculum. The goal is to create an ongoing statewide media literacy program, and the timing is opportune. 

The current political climate and media landscapes have converged to create what Chris Sperry, director of curriculum and staff development for Project Look Sharp, calls a “crisis of truth that has helped the general public, but even more specifically, educators and administrators, to recognize the central importance of critical thinking about media messages, so it has really helped propel media literacy forward in many ways.” 

Regardless of education or ideologies, audiences are embracing media messages that confirm their own beliefs while dismissing those that are contradictory. In questioning their own biases, students learn not just about the world but about themselves. But first they have to be taught that skill, and teachers have to be taught how to teach it.  

“The most exciting thing about our program was how inspired and inspiring these librarians are to take on the mission of teaching teachers how to teach their students to think critically and reflectively about media messages,” said Sperry, who founded Project Look Sharp with IC’s Professor Cyndy Scheibe in 1996.  

“The librarians now see themselves as leaders, instructional coaches, and support people who can take a central role in their schools to create a media literate, critical thinking, self-reflective generation of young people. The fact that they were not only up for the task but were inspired to take on that charge, and ultimately create a model to work together with all librarians across the state was very exciting.” 

One of the primary tools the librarians can use is the archive of 540 media analysis lessons that Project Look Sharp has developed over the last 20 years and makes available free for all educators worldwide. The librarians will get those lessons out to the teachers and help weave them into their existing lesson plans, regardless of grade level or subject area. 

“Instead of the teachers teaching media literacy, they're teaching about endocrine disruptors in high school, or about nutrition in first grade, or about the Civil War in seventh grade, but they're using the critical analysis of media messages to teach in a way that is question-based and develops habits of critical questioning,” Sperry said. “So students get used to asking, ‘Who produced this?  For what purpose? Is this a credible source? How do I interpret this differently? What are my own biases that influence how I understand these messages? What are the sources of information?’ and all of those kinds of important media literacy questions that students need to have built into their habits of reasoning around all information.”