Shake and bake media literacy course

“We read newspapers, watch news on television and listen to news on the radio, but how is it decided what is news? How is it decided what are the important events of the day? What makes news?”

That question animates the syllabus for a media literacy training class developed by Maria Byck and published by KQED, the San Francisco public broadcast station. It was designed as two, 90-minute sessions and was aimed at a GED student. But an imaginative moderator could adapt this outline to other any number of other settings – continuing education students, new U.S. citizens, grassroots or church organizations — any group that wants to understand how the news gets made and perhaps gets more sophisticated about making its own voice heard.

The outline specifies what you’ll need: copies of broadcast and/or print stories to evaluate. There are some print-ready handouts to use in the group exercises — it’s designed to be interactive rather than a lecture. It looks like fun.