Lesson: My Media (6-8)

Introduce

If students completed the Got Media Smarts? Quiz Student Handout with their parents from the Digital Life 101 lesson, briefly REVIEW answers with them and ask about the items that they and their parents agreed and disagreed about  most. You may review vocabulary from the Digital Life 101 lesson’s Digital Life Glossary Student Handout as well.

DIVIDE students into groups of four or five and GUIDE them on a mental journey. Ask students to close their eyes and put their heads on their desks. Tell them you are going to take them on a mental journey through a day in their media lives. For the exercise, tell them to think about their average day using digital media and to respond silently to the questions you are asking. LEAD students through a typical day. Prompt them to imagine what digital media they use, if any, when they first get out of bed. Do they check to see if they have text messages? Do they watch TV or listen to MP3s in the morning? What do they do with digital media as they are going to school? During the school day, do they use digital media for class or for entertainment? How so? Now ask them to picture what they do after school. Do they use digital media for their homework, to socialize with others, or to gather information? Do they multitask, using two or more forms of digital media at the same time?

Students SHARE what they discovered about their media habits based on the mental journeys.

Teach 1: Discuss Logs

REVIEW student media logs. Students should have completed their My Media Log Student Handout before coming to class, or during the first part of class if the class is an extended period. In their groups of four or five, ask students to refer to their own logs to discuss any or all of the following questions (one at time) with their group. Have students report to the entire class on key questions.

ASK:

• Was anyone surprised by how much media they use? How so?
• Was anyone surprised by how little media they use? How so?
• What are some of the common activities that people in your group do with digital media?
• What are some of the activities that only one person in your group does with digital media?
• Do you do more things with digital media in or out of school?
• Do you do more things with digital media alone or with other people?
• Do you consume (watch, listen, read) more digital media or create more?

REMIND students that each has different media habits and different media lives, and this is okay because every student and every family is different. Take a show of hands about how many students have rules about how much media they can participate in, and what are some of these rules.

Teach 2: Make Media Bar Graphs

Still in small groups, students fill out their My Media Bar Graph Student Handout. Note: You might have older students make pie charts. They can eyeball their “pie” slices, or make accurate pie charts at WikiHow, or they can make an online pie chart at the National Center for Educational Statistics.

After students are done making their bar graphs, have them study the logs and bar graphs of all members in their group and then discuss each other’s media habits.

ASK: Who in the group appears to spend the most time with digital media overall?

ASK: What forms of digital media do group members seem to use least?

ASK: Are there aspects of your classmates’ media lives that you found particularly interesting?

Wrap Up & Assess

ASK: In comparison to others in the class, would you characterize your media intake as low, high, or somewhere in between?

ASK: What were some of the most common activities that students do with digital media?

ASK: Based on the logs and pie charts that you made, is there anything you would change about your media lives?

You can use students’ responses about their logs and pie charts to assess their understanding of the lesson objectives.

Extension

EXTENSION ACTIVITY
Students make a photo story of their digital lives. Have students take, draw, download, or cut out several pictures that illustrate their lives with digital media. Ask each to select five of these pictures that represent their digital life: their favorite digital media (Internet, cell phones, mobile media, etc.), how they use them, when they use them, what they do with them, and why. Have students arrange these five photos in a PowerPoint presentation. Below each slide they should write a sentence describing each picture. The sentence can explain what they are doing, when, and why. Remind students to make sure pictures and sentences fit together to tell a story. Students can share their PowerPoint presentations with the class, or post them on the class wikispace. Students or classrooms without PowerPoint can download the open source version, which is part of the Open Office suite free online at www.openoffice.org.