Media Lit PSA for Teachers

I created this PSA to reach out to teachers and help them consider why it is worth investing the time into incorporating elements of Media Literacy into the classroom.  For me, the most powerful statistics are from our text and from this Huff Post article which show that people spend MUCH more time with other media than they do with literature or any other book.  This tells me that if teachers are going to model critical thinking for their students, we can’t ignore internet, television, etc.  The facts  and quotes I used in the video were taken directly from our course text, and from Semali’s article because, after doing my research for the PSA, I felt that those were the most powerful and well stated.

I designed this PSA using a comic motif.  Comics and cartoons are something that reaches all ages.  With the current generation of adults, comics movies (The Dark Night Rises, Iron Man 3) and animated television (Family Guy, South Park, American Dad) are among the most popular forms of entertainment.  This is the generation that grew up on The Simpsons, so I knew that a funny comic book format would grab some attention.  I hand drew the images, uploaded them as images to Powerpoint, and put the whole thing together with music from a “chip tunes” band called Anamanaguchi.  I then saved the presentation as Windows Media Video.  Enjoy.