According to Media Literacy by W. James Potter, he explains that media literacy is a set of perspectives that we actively use to expose ourselves to the media to interpret the meaning of the messages we encounter. As a college student, I feel that media literacy is a necessity for future generations.
Not only are we educated in standard classrooms with standard textbooks, but we are now becoming educated online as well. People need to be media literate if they want to understand how they are being educated and what they are learning. Even though there are so many forms of media, the future holds even more. It will be crucial for students of all ages, especially college students, to be able to understand and interpret the media.
In the article, A Plea for Media Literacy in our Nation's Schools, David Shaw states, “We live in increasingly complex times, and unless we teach our children how to read about, watch, interpret, understand and analyze the day's events, we risk raising a generation of civic illiterates, political ignoramuses and uncritical consumers, vulnerable not only to crackpot ideas, faulty reasoning and putative despots but fraudulent sales pitches and misleading advertising claims.”
As young adults in college, the media is how we gain most of our information. We should be informed as to what is going on in the news both worldwide and in our community. We need to understand what types of media are reliable and which are not. College involves a lot of media and until we learn what is right from wrong, we will never be able to survive the plethora of media that currently surrounds us.
In the article, Why Do U.S. Students Need Media Literacy?, Naomi Rockler-Gladen states, “Media literacy classes provide students with skills, tools, insights, and a vocabulary to understand the important role the media play in shaping, reflecting, and sometimes subverting our social realities. They often contain a production component so that students can understand firsthand the role of technology and production in shaping media messages.” This quote holds a lot of truth because students need media literacy for all of these reasons.
If we cannot filter out the unnecessary media, then we cannot function as responsible college students. People will just end up doing whatever the media suggests. We will lose our sense of control and decision making. An example of this is when college students are asked about politics. Students not only know next to nothing about the election and issues of the presidential candidates, but they think they know everything. Because the war in Iraq was and still is posted all over the news, people of all ages are exposed to it. The catch is that none of us are over in Iraq, but we think we know exactly what is going on because that is what reporters make us believe. Issues on the news are one sided and only half reported, causing us to believe we are on top of things.
Overall, media literacy is important for the future in education. It provides an outlet for students to gain a different perspective and to learn in a different manner than what they are accustomed to in the traditional classroom. This is really important in the current trends of education especially differentiated instruction as well as other techniques teachers are utilizing in their instruction.
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