Gateway Media Literacy Partners

By Samantha Shanker On the second day of high school I saw the school’s televised announcements. Two upper classmen sat behind a desk and told the events of the day. As soon as they were done, I turned to my friend and told her that I wanted to do that. I knew I could do [...]

By Dave Senay As a preface to what I’m about to say here, I must stipulate that I accept the concept of “truth” as a subjective pursuit.  That is, in part, what makes truth so elusive.  Facts, on the other hand, surely should be more accessible.  And if we all find the same “facts” as [...]

By David C. Oughton, Ph.D. Marshal McLuhan emphasized how media greatly shapes our self-conception as well as our view of the world.  The same can be said about education and religion.  But both the media and educational institutions have been failing in helping many people become religiously literate.  Print and electronic media have usually either [...]

A Jewish perspective on media literacy By Larry Levin First, the flames of anti-Semitic prejudice, persecution, violence and genocide have been fanned so often by those in positions of major influence with access to widespread dissemination tools. As a result, there’s a relentless need to set the record straight, whether about old saws like Jews [...]

by Rev. Dr. Martin Rafanan Media literacy is a required tool in the efforts to make our community a better place.  We need to learn how to analyze and interpret the messages that we hear, see, and experience in the media while at the same time learning to create messages that promote democratic principles, inclusion, [...]

Those who are ‘media literate’ have developed a taste for what makes an information source worthy of their trust. by Kurt Greenbaum A few months ago, my son started to come to the dinner table filled with amazing facts to stun and amaze his parents and his older sister. For example, he informed us that [...]

By Sandra Diamond “Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.” Thomas Jefferson People always ask me where I get my love and passion for the news, voting, and politics.  The answer is quite simple—from my family and my teachers. Both helped instill this love and passion that has [...]

By Steven L. Brawley, When President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, it took days and weeks for the news to reach the farthest corners of the nation. In 2011, it took just seconds for news of Cassie Anthony’s not guilty verdict to reach millions. The talking heads were on airwaves immediately discussing the verdict, [...]

By Magi Henderson Of all of the definitions that I found out there in the ether world, I like this one best.  It comes from Jane Tallim, Education Specialist, The Provincial Centre of Excellence for Child and Youth Mental Health Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario. “Media literacy is the ability to sift through and analyze the [...]

by Bea Dageforde I never realized how important media literacy was until I met someone who is media illiterate. In this day and age, a person like that is hard to find. Luckily, I have my mother to help me appreciate my advanced knowledge of media. For years, I texted, emailed attachments and links, and [...]

Raising Media Savvy Kids by Mary Pat Gallagher, M.A. “On a typical day, 8- to 18-year-olds in this country spend more than 71⁄2 hours (7:38) using media—almost the equivalent of a full work day, except that they are using media seven days a week instead of five. Moreover, since young people spend so much of [...]

By Don Corrigan What is media literacy? Why is media literacy especially important as we enter the new age of digital technology? And 100 years after his birth, what would Marshall McLuhan have to say about media literacy? Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia of the Internet, defines media literacy as “a repertoire of competences” that enable [...]

By Suzanne Corbett I’m here for the food. Nope, not looking for a free lunch. I’m craving food news, food edutainment and those tasty tidbits of tweeted food gossip. Call it an obsession but I’m not alone and the media has taken note along with politicians, environmentalists and countless marketers. Each have a long history [...]

By Dan Hellinger We might start with the question of why and how literacy became crucial in a world largely limited to print media, then how the meaning and importance of literacy changed with the advent of electronic media, and then how it literacy changed again with the advent of the Internet. There have always [...]

By Suzanne Carter Jenkins “There are few, if any, useful ideas in economics that cannot be expressed in clear English. Obscurity rarely, if ever, denotes complexity of subject matter; it never denotes superior scholarship.  It usually signifies either inability to write understandable prose or – and more commonly – muddled or incomplete thought.”  – Renowned [...]

By Jan Zuke As recently as twenty years ago, the greatest problem facing the researcher was that of finding enough information.  Today, the problem is reversed.  We go on the Internet, type a word, and are deluged with information of every kind related to that term.  Our problem now is not to find enough information, [...]

by Liz de Laparouse All of us have our favorite media sources – the newspapers that we read daily and the websites on our bookmarks bar that we surf to every time we log onto the Internet.  When we consume content from these sources, the information often reinforces or challenges our personal beliefs and life [...]

By Nancy Kranzberg Change is scary but inevitable, but whether it scares you or not, Marshall McCluhan was right on the mark.  He of course is known for coining the expressions “the medium is the message” and “the global village” and predicted the world wide web years before we knew from www.com. Shirley Baker,Vice Chancellor for [...]