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| Image source: www.planetpinkngreen.com |
Before taking this course, evaluating media was simply a gut feeling. Does it connect with my objective? Do I like it? That’s it. However, taking this course has changed the way I have looked at media to use in my classroom, taking a more critical look at potential resources. It has even resulted in taking a more critical look at technology usage in general.
Through the work in this course, I have come to realize the disconnect between how media is currently used in the classroom, and how it could be used. While I believe most teachers do innately evaluate print media before using it, looking a little more in depth than just content and readability, I think most teachers dramatically lower their expectations when it comes to any form of multimedia.
An example of this lowered expectation comes directly from my own classroom. My school district participates in Project Charlie, a non-profit organization tasked with teaching drug and alcohol prevention to 3rd and 5th grade students. The volunteer brought in a video about a cow that all of the other farm animals made fun of due to the fact that she was big, slow, and ugly. In the end, the farm animals needed the cow’s help. The message in the video itself may have been effective. However, the animation and music was straight from the early 80s, and super cheesy. Even if the video had been evaluated, the content may have been deemed appropriate enough to be worthy of showing. But the video was highly ineffective (and slightly inappropriate) in my particular classroom context. The name of the cow happened to be the same name as one of the shyest girls in my classroom. A media evaluation instrument would have forced the volunteer (who is not a teacher) to consider the classroom context and specific audience viewing the video.
It’s important to evaluate media using an evaluation instrument to consider all affordances and constraints of any piece of media rather than just using a piece of media because it fits with your lesson.
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