9/14/15 Critical Media Literacy Post #1

This will be my first post on my research on Critical Media Literacy.  According to Cummins (1980), criticial literacy is divided into four dimensions which include disrupting the commonplace, interrogating multilple viewpoints, focusing on socio-political issues, and taking action and promoting social justice.  All themes of critical literacy revolve around the understanding how to teach to transform and get the community to be more responsive to issues that need to be addressed.  Media literacy is becoming more critical to the messages in the media conveyed outside the classrooms.  Sue Lockwood Summers points out the importance of the learner to "question, analyze, interpret, and evaluate messages of mass media conveyed outside the classroom walls (Summers, 1997:154).  The concept of critical media literacy first came to me through a colleague of mine named Evelyn Obamos.  Her research stressed the importance of critical praxis (Freire, 1970) and using media to deconstruct the digital divide.  The development of social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, has opened the world to media and that has impacted our society in negative and postive ways.  Bullying and terrorism has been more damaging as of late due to social media.  As an instructional designer, digital media must be harnessed in a way to promote critical awareness and community responsiveness.  My research topic is on critical medial literacy and whether it helps students in Denman Middle School develop critical thinking skills in order to make positive changes within their schools and their community.  Constructivism, culturally relevant pedagogy, and community responsive pedagogy are some of the methods that I will use to test the effectiveness of critical media literacy!