Media and Technology Literacy

     Media and technology play a major role in today's society and are becoming a bigger and bigger part of it everyday. Long gone are the days where you would come home from school and run around outside with your friends until dark, it is becoming more and more prevalent to see sedentary children using technology and looking at the media. Nielsen (2016) debunked many myths associated with social media that they are "ruining brains", phones and technology have simply made it easier for students to interact so why would we care about this? why would we need to teach them these literacies if they are already fluent on technology? The short answer is that we need to address the negatives that come along with these advancements, as well as to develop higher order thinking skills such as problem solving and evaluation in our students.

Retrieved from: http://monstermg.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Social-Media.jpg

The Downsides of Media? 
     With the media being everywhere and social media consuming young people's lives it is important to make sure that they are using it safely. Students are constantly shown images of skinny models and buff men in the media and are lead to believe that those pictures are the norm. This can lead to issues such as unhealthy weight loss, eating disorders, unhealthy workout practices and steroid use not to mention decreased self efficacy, self worth, self esteem and lowered body images. The negatives related to the media are both physical and psychological, in order to make our students understand that they are who they are and no one is as perfect as shown in the media we need to teach them how to be critical of these messages and how to go about safely loosing or gaining weight if it is something that they are intrinsically motivated to do.

How to Make our Students Media Literate? 
     In a physical education setting it is relatively easy to teach media literacy throughout the course of the semester, the main way being through health. One way that I plan to implement media literacy into my health class is through class discussions, after getting the students to bring a media image to class we can begin to talk about how the images make them feel, why the company produces that type of image as well as the ulterior motives that they may have behind it. Once students begin to critically analyze the media and why they portray images the way that they do they can begin to develop their own ideas on the media and will be able to generate their own thoughts on it, not just have thoughts put into their head. By being critical students can begin to pick and choose what they wish to believe, begin to make better choices and begin to feel more positively about themselves.

    Another way to teach media literacy in physical education is to use the media revolving around unhealthy and healthy foods. For example the commercials for fast food companies versus commercials for healthy foods, why do the fast food commercials look so much better? Why are there limited commercials on healthy foods? What messages are each commercial trying to get across? By playing various commercials and allowing the students to view them while thinking about the questions stated above, they can once again analyze and uncover for themselves why commercials might be made out this way and they can also come to the conclusion for themselves which option is best for them.

     Some people may be opposed to teaching media literacy because they believe that we are changing student's opinions on various ideas but we as teachers are simple giving them the tools and ability to think critically for themselves and create their own informed opinion on the media and the advertisements that are being brought to them on a constant basis. A struggle of implementing this media literacy in my physical education room is that being a high school teacher the students have already had 15-18 years viewing these media sources with no critical thought. They may have notions that they already believe to be correct but as a teacher I will give them the tools and questions needed to analyze the media and hopefully they will discover answers for themselves.

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The Downsides of Technology 
     Technology has also become a staple in the twenty-first century and has made human lives much easier with the ability to do just about anything imaginable from your computer screen. With technology comes inherent risks, some of which apply to adults (theft, viruses) as well as some that apply to students (mainly cyber bullying). Cyber bullying cannot easily be caught by teachers as it can be done from anywhere at anytime, it no longer has to take place on student grounds. Cyber bullying is a major issue and is one of the reasons that we have to teach our students how to become technology literate.

How to Make our Students Technology Literate 
     Technology can also be implemented into the physical education classroom to teach our students technology literacy. Students can be asked what is your favourite sport and who is the best athlete in that sport of all time? There is no simple answer to this question, students will have to do research and gather points on why they believe this to be so. Through researching on the computer and creating spreadsheets with stats of players to show why they are the best at their respective sport, students are learning how to use technology in real world applicable ways as well as how to interpret information that they are viewing online. They develop critical thinking skills based on which stats they believe to be important and why as well as analyzing and evaluating all of the information in front of them. This is a great way to implement technology into a physical education setting while still keeping it sports related and teaching them how to be technology literate.

References 

Nielsen, L. (2016. March, 30). Everybody Panic! The 5 Ways Social Media is Changing our Brains. The innovative educator. Retrieved from: http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.ca/2016/03/everybody-panic-5-ways-social-media-is.html