Although both content knowledge and information process skills continue to be needed by today’s students to navigate the global village successfully, U.S. educators must make the profound shift from being “a sage on the stage” to being a “guide on the side” in their classrooms. 21st Century demands are creating the need for approaches that reflect 21st Century-type approaches!

This shift is necessitated by the unprecedented access to content available on the internet, as well as by the central role that technology and online environments are playing in executing everyday learning and assignments. Teachers are no longer the main access to quality content knowledge that they impart to students through print resources. Instead, they are advisers who help set goals, assignments and parameters for successful problem solving and projects and who insure, through relevant assessment tools, that students learn the appropriate (and state-mandated) content knowledge and process skills they need for success. 

Professional development, curricula and assessments must all change to accommodate teaching students a process of inquiry and a methodology for critically analyzing media content and global communications systems, so that students are readily able to access, analyze, evaluate, create and participate with media in all its forms on a lifelong basis. This requires an internalization of information process skills that enable the acquisition of content knowledge, and a systematized process of education to support students and teachers alike.

The Center for Media Literacy, using its research-based Basic Framework and Questions/TIPS (Q/TIPS), has pioneered the development of engaging curricular tools, professional development and assessments that help educators meet the demands of today’s classrooms and the needs of today’s students. These new tools provide educators with a readily-available, modular, replicable and scalable methodology for devising curricula that teaches critical thinking and a process of inquiry to address any subject. CML has implemented this system across the country and internationally.

But to teach, educators must first understand and internalize this methodology for themselves and for this purpose, a Professional Development slideshow provides teachers with media literacy basics that are focused on the Five Core Concepts and Five Key Questions of media literacy. Videos illustrating real-life classroom demonstrations complement the package and bring the text alive for deeper understanding.

Media Literacy: A System for Change consists of Four Elements: 1) an e-Book explaining the context for educators adopting the new role of being a “guide on the side,” and how curricular needs have changed, 2) a brief Professional Development Powerpoint providing an approach to essential concepts and a process of inquiry for media literacy; 3) A Toolkit that provides basic tools  for constructing a 10-lesson media literacy curriculum designed to address any subject, in a replicable, scalable and research-based way; and 4) Videoclips that demonstrate how experienced teachers approach teaching media literacy.