Media Literacy is Elementary

Jeff Share earned his PhD in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) where he currently works as a Faculty Advisor in the Teacher Education Program. His research focuses on theoretical frameworks and practical applications for teaching critical media literacy.

«Not teaching critical media literacy to your first graders? Why not?! With television and Internet content shaping how children see their world and themselves, Jeff Share argues ‘the earlier the better.’ This book makes a compelling case for helping our youngest students analyze and create media. Taking up the tools – cameras, computers, pens, and pencils – in their own hands, children begin to participate in the discourse of democracy. Most importantly, they learn that they belong.» (Carol Jago, President of the National Council of Teachers of English; Director of the California Reading and Literature Project at UCLA)«Media literacy needs to be understood as a fundamental component of any well-rounded educational curriculum in the twenty-first century. In this groundbreaking work, Jeff Share argues persuasively that it is never too early to help young children learn the skills they need to make sense of the media culture in which they’re already immersed. Quite simply, this book should be required reading for all elementary educators, administrators, educational policy makers, and parents too.»(Jackson Katz, Creator of the educational video Tough Guise: Violence, Media and the Crisis in Masculinity)

• Contents: Teaching the Media: Competing Approaches, Media – Activism, and Core Concepts of Critical Media Literacy – Critical Media Literacy Is Not an Option: Overview of Media Education in the U.S. and Abroad – Voices from the Trenches: Elementary School Teachers Speak about Implementing Media Literacy – The Earlier the Better: Expanding and Deepening – Literacy with Young Children Photography as Pedagogy with Praxis – Teacher Education: A Launching Pad for Critical Media Literacy – Thinking Critically in a Converging World: Forces of Change in the Information Age.