Media Literacy

One of my favorite units to teach is the media literacy unit.  In this unit we focus on media bias and propaganda techniques.  I use You Tube all the time to get current commercials for the propaganda terms.  The above commercial is used to teach testimonial.  We used the "Swagger Wagon" commercial to show an example of plain folks technique.

Sometimes we go back to view older commercials to see that the times may have change but the actual techniques to sell have not.

My 1st Photo Stories

Several years ago was my first attempt using Photo Story with my students.  We had just finished reading some short stories by Gary Paulsen and his training of sled dogs.  That particular year Paulsen was racing in the Iditarod.  As we followed along his race, my students researched various aspects of the Iditarod and presented Photo Stories of what they learned. They turned in a works cited pages to document where their pictures and information came from.

Since then we have used Photo Story for presidential commercials and other types of advertisments.