Knight Foundation asked the students, educators and professionals who beta tested our new digital teaching tool, “Searchlights and Sunglasses,” for their favorite lessons from the book. The etext  explores the digital transformation of journalism, and with one click turns into a classroom tool, offering  a learning layer with 1,000 lesson plans and resources for educators. We have been posting our beta testers’ responses on KnightBlog.

Here, Cathy Collins, a high school library media specialist at Sharon High School in Sharon, Mass., offers her top ways to use the book in the classroom. 

“Searchlights and Sunglasses” offers high school teachers interested in teaching digital literacy a plethora of engaging, interactive lessons that are useful far beyond the journalism classroom.  As a project consultant to the teaching layer of activities, I had the opportunity not only to contribute but to test drive several of the lessons included in the e-book, a free resource to teachers at the high school, community college and college levels.

The learning layer helps teachers and students take up the discussion about journalism in the digital age by providing assignments, activities, questions and supplemental reading and research. To access the learning layer of the e-book, teachers simply click on the red buttons scattered throughout the e-pages of the author’s essay content. They can print or email the content as individual elements or as chapter units. The layer is readable on mobile devices and laptops, or can be displayed on a large classroom screen.

Assignments and other activities are organized on three levels: Flashlight, Spotlight and Searchlight. Some may find they coincide with high school, community college and college-level teaching. But others may see them simply as different approaches to the same subject matter. The learning layer, designed in HTML 5, is a joint project of the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

As an educator passionately focused on infusing the theme of global competence across the curriculum, I recommend the following lessons and activities:

1) Explore how social media shapes world events

On March 15, 2013, the award-winning graphic novel, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, was pulled from library shelves and ordered removed from classrooms by the Chicago Public Schools.  A student journalist found Satrapi’s literary agent, who immediately found the author. Satrapi, who now lives in Paris, responded – as did the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom and many outraged local, national and global citizens. In summary: Students used social media to put the word out about Chicago’s policy, and the book was returned to library shelves.

Ironically, the book was written partly in reaction to the censorship of artistic expression in Iran under the fundamentalist Islamic regime that took over power of the country after the 1979 Revolution.      

All three levels of activity in this Chapter 2 learning layer present teachers with the opportunity to focus on the increasingly important role that social media plays in world affairs.

At the Flashlight level, where students are asked how they can verify the above story, users gain valuable practice in verifying facts and cross referencing sources in order to resolve conflicts in information. The activity reinforces critical thinking skills necessary not only to a student journalist but to any citizen concerned with forming unbiased opinions based on factual evidence in order to participate and effectively contribute to civic discourse.

2) Challenge others to learn digital tools

Newton calls upon leaders to make big changes in journalism education. But social, cultural or institutional change doesn’t happen only when leaders reinvent institutions, if people change their own behaviors, it can change a system from the “bottom up.”

Consider the use of digital tools in journalism education. One approach to increase the use of those tools might be to try to change accreditation standards to favor use of current technology. Another way might be to change your own classroom’s habits, and pass along the challenge to another class, until hundreds and thousands of classes are changing.

Here’s a good activity: Take two or three basic new tech tools, like Paper.li, which allows you to create your own newspaper, and assign your students to try them and report back to the class. Then report your findings to another class and challenge them to find two tools, try them and pass along the challenge. Will the next class take you up on the challenge? Have a class discussion of other non-institutional ways to create change in what journalism students learn.

Most teenagers are competitive by nature. I love the idea of having one class challenge another to become agents of change within their school and community. As an added incentive, the chance to win class I-pads or kindles might add momentum.

3) Examine world press freedom measures

The 2012 State of the First Amendment national survey reflects conflicting views on support for free expression and press freedom.

In the Flashlight activity, students are asked: What parts of the survey seem the most noteworthy? Are there important questions the survey did not ask? Why might Americans be so divided?

This section of the e-book, chapter 3, is rich in content that will deepen student understanding about the concept of freedom, First Amendment issues and the varying degrees of freedom accorded to the press across the globe.

4) Learn about censorship and violence against journalists

As follow up to the First Amendment lesson, I recommend the Learning Layer, also in Chapter Three, “Mexico’s Endangered Journalists,” as a research opportunity that allows students to focus on one country’s current human rights/press freedom issues. The questions require students to research the facts and to use higher level thinking skills to draw conclusions based on those facts.

They’ll learn that you don’t have to go to the other side of the globe to find attempts at silencing journalists. According to the Associated Press, 84 journalists have been killed in Mexico since 2000, and 20 have disappeared since 2005.

Mexico ranks seventh on the impunity index compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Here’s one activity: Students find at least three articles (like this one) about the killings and disappearances of journalists in Mexico. Use the research to answer the following questions:

1) Does the increase in violence against journalists coincide with another trend in the country?

2) Has the government of Mexico acknowledged the problem and implemented any programs to address it?

3) Are crimes against journalists investigated in Mexico? How many of these crimes go unpunished?

Similarly, “Google and Asia: Google and Censorship in Different Cultures” gives students the opportunity to compare and contrast the censorship rate in different countries, focusing in particular on China’s restriction of Internet access, and to come up with conclusions about differing cultural values and the ways in which those values determine societal rules. The TED talk offers an engaging look at the role of citizen journalism and the potential impact of social media as a back channel for news and information.

The lessons and activities I’ve highlighted represent my personal favorites. They are not comprehensive but rather offered as a starting point to exploration of this valuable e-book. Many other globally focused digital literacy lessons are incorporated into the e-text. Though the focus is on journalism, it is my strong belief that these lessons have applications far beyond the journalism classroom and can be successfully used across grade levels and curriculum areas.