PLS and Hobbs

Renee Hobbs and the six principles of media literacy have many ideas and concepts in common which is very interesting. The one main goal that both Hobbs and the media literacy have in common is getting new technology into the English classroom. By doing this, students could be able to improve their writing and critical thinking skills, and they would be introduced to new ideas and concepts from other student around the world. This can then open their eyes and ideas to different cultures, some they would never know about without media (such as blogging). One of my favorite excerpts from Hobbs is,

"Scholes urges English educators to incorporate a wide range of texts including films, television, advertising, the Internet, music, and popular culture. With an ever-increasing range of media messages in so many forms, students need to understand the process by which authors convey meaning about socially constructed experience. The use of digital media and popular culture texts not only stimulates young people's engagement, motivation, and interest in learning, but enables them to build a richer, more nuanced understanding of how texts of all kinds work within a culture."

Think of how our students would love to engage in music and television and movies! Many kids do not like English class, they find it boring and they feel they don't really learn everything. As an upcoming English teacher is discourages me because out of all the classes you take during your high school career English is the most important because for the rest of your like you will be reading and writing and need the skills you learn in high school to do both of those. My junior year English teacher taught a poetry lesson for a crazy amount of time. We all moaned and groaned and wanted nothing to do with it. She actually made it really fun for us. One part of the project we had to re-write the poem we chose in our own words any way we wanted to. Also, I feel the best part of the project was he had to find a song, any song, that directly related to our poem. Granted yes it was hard to find a song, but it was different then doing the ordinary. By making us using different media and different types of thinking it really made us enjoy what we were doing.

I feel there is a direct connection between Hobbes and PLS. As teachers this is a great way to expand our students thinking. They can learn so much through the Internet, movies, music and so on. We really can start our kids off young. In kindergarten we can get student to learn how to get onto a computer and bring up educational games. Come fourth grade, maybe get them on the Internet doing you basic research for a project. Middle school some more advanced research and possibly a blog??? High school, we can get our kids podcasting about various subjects and possibly all the kids interested in music, get then writing their own song, recording them and downloading them onto iTunes. This of the endless possibilities. It is a great feeling knowing there is only improvement for our classes here on out. Scary?? Absolutely.