def

56_CMLEdlPhilosophy.pdf

Since 1984, Educational Video Center (EVC) in New York has trained and assisted hundreds of young people in producing award-winning broadcast quality video documentaries. But to EVC Founder Steve Goodman, the goal is not external rewards but internal transformation. In this excerpt from an interview conducted in 1993 by Kathleen Tyner for Strategies newsletter, he explains the importance to media literacy of young people creating and producing their own video documentaries. In addition to publishing several excellent handbooks for video production, Goodman published in 2003 a major new work: Teaching Youth Media: A Critical Guide to Literacy, Video Production and Social Change.

SML: What's the EVC philosophy of education?

Steve Goodman: Our philosophy is based on having kids start with their own lived experiences and then looking at other experiences and problems. They inquire about issues in their own communities and deepen that inquiry through research and through a continuous dialogue with other students and with the teacher. It's turning issues into problems that the students also then have an opportunity to try and resolve.

SML: Why did you decide on video?

S.G.: Because the effect of media is so profound. It's also accessible to them. It's the immediacy of video, too; the ability to manipulate video and then present it back to their fellow students and to the community.

SML: Could you recommend some books that influenced your work?

S.G.: Paulo Friere's Pedagogy of the Oppressed and John Dewey's Experience in Education and Democracy. Henry Giroux's work is really important. And the work of Michelle Fine. She's written some articles on the question of silencing. Young people, particularly teenagers who are low-income, working class, who tend to be more marginalized in our society, don't have a voice. Putting the media in their hands is a way of helping them find a voice. Very often kids are silenced by the institutions of our society, in the classroom or in the home. Video gives them an opportunity to talk back.

SML: Schools can be so resistant to new things! How does EVC fit in?

S.G.: I think that media education is really tied to the efforts of school restructuring and reform, like the Coalition of Essential Schools and Foxfire. I feel that we have principles and practices in common with the restructuring people. Schools don't have to be about silencing and marginalizing kids. If school is a place that is learner-centered where the kids are determining the direction of their learning based on their own lived experiences, the school can be extremely liberating.

SML: How do you teach media education?

S.G.: There is no way to prescribe "this is how to do it," but I think there are some general principles that make up what I think is sound education. Some of these practices have become buzz words, but the point is really to make them work. The goal is to help them be more critical thinkers and self-reflective as lifelong learners. Our society is about specialization and putting things into different compartments. Part of what we do at EVC is to break down the boundaries between schools and communities, between artist and audience.

SML: Are your students aware of the audience?

S.G.: The kids are very much in touch with who their audience is and have the opportunity to get feedback from the viewers who see their tapes. There's closeness between the producer and the viewer in our work. In a philosophical was, it breaks the boundaries between thought and practice.

SML: Have you found a connection between video making and reading and writing?

S.G.: Most of the students that we work with have learned to have a strong aversion to reading and writing and so making videos is really exciting to them. We insist that writing is a part of it. We want them to learn reasons for writing other than punitive or what they've learned to do as an assignment from someone else. We look at writing as a way to deepen their thinking and develop ideas. The writing is also a product that is open for discussion. There are other ways that we have them do writing. Portfolio assessments, for example. We have them do letters, not as an assignment, but because they need to get someone to agree to an interview. They have to learn to communicate. It's an outcome, not necessarily graded by the teacher, but a skill that is essential for them to develop what they have to say and how they're going to say it and then get a result.

SML: Why the focus on the documentary?

S.G.: Because I think that it is a wonderful way for them to bear witness to the conditions in their own lives and to document the problems that they may see and the solutions that they might feel are effective. They use the community as a subject of inquiry. They produce the documentary. They synthesize what they've found and then they give back what they've found and open it up for discussion, in order to galvanize people's thought and move them toward action. There is the understanding that they can participate in the culture and history of their community. In documentary, it's a more sustained exploration into something and it gives them the opportunity to grow and develop over the course of a 20-week term.

SML: How do you balance process over product?

S.G. There is a constant tension. It's a project-based way of learning, but you have to be sure that the process is not lost or sacrificed because you're trying to finish a project. At EVC, everyone has to contribute to all the different aspects of the project.

SML: What's the role of the teacher in this?

S.G.: It's a group process and the instructor is a member, the most mature, experienced member, of that group. The instructor has the responsibility to ensure that all the members are growing and learning and experiencing. That also speaks to breaking stereotypes. It's not fair for the boys to be using the equipment while the girls only do the phone work or are on camera. If it's truly collaborative and student-centered, the students and the teacher will talk about that, but it's still something that the teacher has to think about. The instructor has to judge a lot of things and be conscious that there is a product that we want to get out and there is an audience out there with certain expectations. So there's the process, we want to make it fair, we also want to make sure that there's a profound kind of learning that's going on. And then when things are going too smoothly, it's time to shake things up.

SML: Everybody wants to be EVC. How can we make this unique process available to others?

S.G. It can't be franchised and efforts at mass producing EVC demean it. It's false. It should be something that's home grown to the particular conditions of an area. It isn't something that just works with urban young people. But it is a way of learning that, as Foxfire has demonstrated, can be taught across the country. It's a matter of exposing people to particular principles and then seeing how they can make them their own. It's getting teachers to talk to each other more about how this kind of method works and sharing tapes and getting students and young people who've done it to talk to other young people. It's about empowering people.

Any specialized form of discourse has its own unique language and media literacy is no exception. Even experienced media teachers are often bewildered by the seemingly interchangeable terminology used by writers and speakers in the field. Do note that many of these terms have much wider meanings than are suggested here. We are only attempting to define these terms as they related to the field of media literacy education.

Access: The ability of media consumers to produce their own texts and to have those texts acknowledged by the agenda setting media. Also, the ability of media consumers to respond to the dominant media.

Agenda-setting: The ability of the media to tell people what and whom to talk and think about. Also refers to those media that have more credibility than their competition.

Analog: Media software which has a physical quality and presence.

Audience: The group of consumers for whom the media text was constructed as well as anyone else who is exposed to the text.

Branding: The process by which a commodity in the marketplace is known primarily for the image it projects rather than any actual quality.

Censorship: The practice of suppressing a text or part of a text that is considered objectionable according to certain standards.

Connote/Connotation: A description of value, meaning or ideology associated with a media text that is added to the text by the audience.

Construct or Construction: The process by which a media text is shaped and given meaning through a process that is subject to a variety of decisions and is designed to keep the audience interested in the text.

Consumers: The audience for whom a commercial media text is constructed and who responds to the text with commercial activity.

Convergence: The merging of previously separate communication industries such as publishing, computers, film, music and broadcasting, made possible by advances in technology.

Critical: A reflective position on the meaning, biases or value messages of a text.

Critical Autonomy: The process by which a member of the audience is able to read a media text in a way other than the preferred reading. Also used to describe the ability of media literacy students to deconstruct texts outside the classroom.

Critical Viewing: The ability to use critical thinking skills to view, question, analyze and understand issues presented overtly and covertly in
movies, videos, television and other visual media.

Cut: An edited transition between two images in which one image is immediately replaced by another.

Deconstruction: The process by which the audience identifies the elements that make up the construction of meaning within a text.

Demographics: Measurable characteristics of media consumers such as age, gender, race, education and income level.

Denote/Denotation: A description of a media text indicating its common sense, obvious meaning.

Digital: The storage and transmission of information by reducing it to digits and then reassembling it for an exact reproduction.

Docudrama: A filmed dramatization based on fact that combines documentary and fictional elements. In the production process, "based on" allows the creators of the text wide creative latitude and a docudrama is, at best, a skillful representation of a real person or event.

Dominant: When a text is read by the audience in a way that is intended by the creators of the text.

Flak: An organized attempt to influence media content, which can take the form of letters, phone calls, petitions, lawsuits and legislation.

Genre: A category of media texts characterized by a particular style, form or content.

Hardware: The physical equipment used to produce, distribute and exhibit media texts.

Hegemony/hegemonic: When dominant groups persuade subordinate groups that the dominant ideology is in their own best interests. The media's function in this process is to encourage maintenance of the status quo.

Homophobia: The fear of homosexuality as expressed by demeaning images in media texts.

HTML (Hypertext Markup Language): is a computer programming language that allows people to create links on the world wide web from one source of information to another in any order.

Ideology/Ideological: How we as individuals understand the world in which we live. This understanding involves an interaction between our individual psychologies and the social structures that surround us. Mediating between these are the individual processes of communication as well as the technological processes of the mass media. These ideas are usually related to the distribution of power.

Industry: The agencies and institutions involved with the production of media texts. The term is also used in a more restrictive sense to describe the commercial production of media texts for the purpose of making a profit.

Intertextuality: When a media text makes reference to another text that, on the surface, appears to be unique and distinct.

Jolts: Moments in a media text that are generated by a broad comedy, a violent act, movement within a frame, a loud noise, rapid editing, a
profanity or a sexually explicit representation, all of which are calculated to engage an audience's excitement.

Marketing: The way in which a product or media text is sold to a target audience.

Mass Media: Mass media refers to those media that are designed to be consumed by large audiences through the agencies of technology.

Media Education: Traditionally, it's the process by which one learns the technical production skills associated with creating media texts. More
recently, it has also included the intellectual processes of critical consumption or deconstruction of texts.

Media Literacy: The process of understanding and using the mass media in an assertive and non-passive way. This includes an informed and critical understanding of the nature of the media, the techniques used by them and the impact of these techniques.

Medium: The singular form of media, the term usually describes individual forms such as radio, television, film, etc.

Media: The plural form of medium; the term has come to mean all the industrial forms of mass communication combined.

Monopoly: Any commercial process in which one seller controls prices and supply of a product.

"Moral Panic": A sudden increase in public perception of the possible threat to societal values and interests because of exposure to media texts.

Narrative: How the plot or story is told. In a media text, narrative is the coherent sequencing of events across time and space.

Negotiate: The process of give and take by which members of the audience interpret, deconstruct and find meaning within a media text.

Oppositional: A critical position that is in opposition to the values and ideology intended by the creators of a media text, usually the dominant
reading of a text.

Prime Time: That part of a radio or television schedule expected to attract the largest audience.

Production: The industrial process of creating media texts as well as the people who are engaged in this process.

Production Values: Describes the quality of a media production proportional to the money and technology expended on the text.

Product Placement: The process by which manufacturers or advertisers pay a fee in order for branded products to be prominently displayed in a movie, TV show or other media production.

Propaganda: Any media text whose primary purpose is to openly persuade an audience of the validity of a particular point of view.

Psychographics: A more sophisticated form of demographics that includes information about the psychological and sociological characteristics of media consumers such as attitudes, values, emotional responses and ideological beliefs.

Representation: The process by which a constructed media text stands for, symbolizes, describes or represents people, places, events or ideas that are real and have an existence outside the text.

Software: The programs written for computers or the media texts that can be played on them.

Stereotypes: A form of media representation by which instantly recognized characteristics are used to label members of social or cultural
groups. While often negative, stereotypes can contain an element of truth and are used by the media to establish an instant rapport with
the audience.

Studio System: The factory-like production system in Hollywood by which movies were made from about 1925 to 1955.

Synergy: The combination of two separate media texts or products that share similar characteristics so that one helps market the other.

Technology: The machinery, tools and materials required to produce a media text. In media literacy terms, technology greatly impacts upon the
construction and connotation of a text.

Text: The individual results of media production: a movie, a TV episode, a book, an issue of a magazine or newspaper, an advertisement, an
album, etc.

Transparency: The quality of a media text by which it appears to be natural rather than constructed.

Vertical Integration: The process by which a media company acquires another elsewhere in the production process.

Virtual: Something which is a representation rather than the real thing. In advertising, the word "virtually" means "almost."

Word-of-mouth: Informal way in which media products become known by audiences.

World Wide Web: The World Wide Web is the network of pages of images, texts and sounds on the Internet which can be viewed using browser software.

The following is a list of ideas to help explore and understand how media literacy is different from other literacies and what are some of the basic elements of a more comprehensive media education.

• Media 'bashing' is NOT media literacy, however media literacy sometimes involves criticizing the media.
• Merely producing media is NOT media literacy, although media literacy should include media production.
• Just teaching with videos or CDRoms or other mediated content is NOT media literacy; one must also teach about media.
• Simply looking for political agendas, stereotypes or misrepresentations is NOT media literacy; there should also be an exploration of the systems making those representations appear "normal."
• Looking at a media message or a mediated experience from just one perspective is NOT media literacy because media should be examined from multiple positions.
• Media Literacy does NOT mean "don't watch;" it means "watch carefully, think critically."

With thanks to Renee Hobbs, Chris Worsnop, Neil Andersen, Jeff Share and Scott Sullivan.