How Do We Create and Maintain Successful Media Education Programs Amidst the Current Challenges? A workshop with Renee Hobbs identifies challenges faced by media educators and explore how reflection on teacher motivations can help to identify creative solutions.

1. How Do We
Create and Maintain
Successful Media Education
Programs Amidst the
Current Challenges?
Renee Hobbs
Harrington School of Communication and Media
University of Rhode Island USA
Email: hobbs@uri.edu
Twitter: reneehobbs
Web: http://mediaeducationlab.com
RISCA Give Me Five Teacher Lab
October 10, 2013

3. www. Mediaeducationlab.com

4. Opportunities Challenges
How Do We Create and Maintain Successful Media Education
Programs Amidst the Current Challenges?
Equipment: access, selection, updating, maintenance, circulation,
learning curve, snafus, financial support
Curriculum: design, resources, sequence, integration, assessment,
relevance
Students: engagement, voice, creativity, classroom management,
critical thinking, message focus, follow-through, time
Colleagues and Supervisors: understanding, appreciation, access to
resources, respect, collaboration

5. The only thing we can fully control is ourselves

6. Teachers’ motivations shape how they perceive
classroom challenges
…and how they
address them

7. Powerful Voices for Kids is a
comprehensive curriculum and
professional development
program for K-6 digital and media
literacy education.

8. www.powerfulvoicesforkids.com

9. THE PROFESSIONAL
You have high standards for your students’ work, and you may
be seen as the go-to media professional in your school. You
know how to push your students to understand and emulate
the professional conventions that is important to being taken
seriously in the world of media creation. To help students
enter the real world of media creation, you bring other
authors, professionals, and media-makers into your classroom
to enrich the learning experience.
THE PROFESSOR
You balance your interest in media and technology with a
clear connection to your academic standards. You want to be
sure that media and technology are not used in the classroom
for their own sake, but to advance your lessons, goals, and
learning target. Multimedia presentations, engaging websites,
and educational technology serve the purpose of helping you
deliver the core content and skills students need to master.

10. THE TECHIE
You’re the educator who loves tablets, apps, programs, plug-
ins, widgets, websites, and other types of educational
technology because you have a passionate curiosity about
new tools. You see much potential to engage students with
the technology tools they love and use in their everyday lives.
THE TRENDSETTER
You’re tuned into pop culture and curious about kid culture.
Maybe your own most-loved popular culture isn’t too far
removed from that of your students. You are inquisitive about
the trends and hot topics that make up a crucial component
of the fabric of your students’ everyday lives. You want school
culture to meet kids where they live with the popular culture
they know and love.

11. THE DEMYSTIFIER
As a teacher, you “pull back the curtain” to help students see
how various forms of information and knowledge are
constructed. You emphasize the practice of critical thinking,
helping students ask good “how” and “why” questions.
THE ACTIVIST
As an educator, you want to make society more just and
equitable by promoting democratic participation. You use
media in the classroom as a catalyst for students to
understand how they might have a voice in improving the
quality of life in their communities and in the world.

12. THE TASTEMAKER
You want to broaden your students’ horizons. You want them
to have exposure to the kinds of media experiences that put
them in touch with historical, aesthetic, and critical
appreciation. You know that a key component of students’
future interactions will require them to draw from a variety of
cultural sources both classical and popular.
THE ALT
You are an inventive, perhaps “DIY,” teacher. You’re always
ready to challenge students with alternative ways of finding,
using, thinking about, and making media in the classroom.
Whether you use open source programs on school computers,
encourage students to start alternative clubs or magazines, or
introduce students to media that’s “off the beaten path” of
mainstream and mass media, you are likely a key proponent
of broadening students’ understanding of the many different
ways that people can communicate in the world.

13. THE MOTIVATOR
You are an inspiration, a catalyst for your students’ creative
energy. Students who have never felt comfortable speaking
up in class, participating in activities, or contributing to class
dialogue find it easier to speak their mind when you’re
leading the classroom. You see your role as helping students
be the best they can be.
THE SPIRIT GUIDE
You are a listener. You have a dedication to the social and
emotional well-being of your students, and want to make sure
that everything you do in the classroom connects to their
immediate needs to understand themselves and their lives.
Students likely find you trustworthy, and may even confide in
you in ways that they do not for other teachers. You know
media is just one facet of student life, and you want to engage
with it to help them through the highs and lows of life in all of
its challenges and opportunities.

14. THE TEACHER 2.0
You understand that participation in digital media and
learning cultures requires flexibility to new formats, modes of
expression, and participation in and out of school. You use
online or interactive versions of classic literature to explore
meaning behind texts. Teacher 2.0 teachers always trying new
things in the classroom and finding new ways to connect
learning to children’s culture.
THE WATCHDOG
You are a natural critical thinker, aware of how economic
systems and institutions influence our everyday lives,
particularly through the media we use. You want your
students and your peers to be more mindful of the ways that
things are bought and sold. Who owns and controls the media
content that we see, hear, read, and play with? You feel
responsible for giving your students a “wake-up call” about
the economic and institutional inner-workings of the
technology and the world that surrounds them.

15. How do your own motivations shape your perception
of “challenges” in the classroom?

21. Reflecting on our motivations for teaching
media can help us handle classroom challenges
in creative and effective ways

22. Understanding our own motivations
contributes to reflective, metacognitive practice

23. HOLD THE DATE!
Rhode Island Digital City Initiative
Wednesday, November 6

24. Renee Hobbs
Harrington School of Communication and Media
University of Rhode Island USA
Email: hobbs@uri.edu
Twitter: reneehobbs
Web: http://mediaeducationlab.com