Media Literacy

There’s an irony in the recent court victory of the anti-plagiarism site Turnitin. I believe that Turnitin protects the jobs of the laziest group of teachers across the nation—people who assign the same general assignment year after year. Worse, Turnitin depends on a romantic and wrong idea of creativity (individual originality as the highest value), and it forms part of the copyright mis-education of American students by associating all copying and collaborating with cheating.Read more...

American University professors 3 and Peter Jaszi, experts on Fair Use of copyrighted material, have received a $600,000 grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to tackle one of the thorniest issues in their professions: how can educators teach students how to analyze mass media without the threat of lawsuits and massive rights clearance costs every time an image, audio or video clip is used in class?Read more...

By Pat Aufderheide Read more...

By Pat Aufderheide Read more...

It was a thrill to participate in the workshop on media literacy and Fair Use at the Beyond Broadcast conference [beyondbroadcast.net] last weekend. Henry Jenkins (MIT), Bryan Baker (Temple U) and I brainstormed with about 25 creative media literacy teachers and makers--media arts center managers, profs, after-school programs leaders, filmmakers, bloggers and more. Bryan is part of a team led by Renee Hobbs [renee.hobbs@temple.edu] at Temple's Media Education Lab. They are exploring just what creative problems media literacy teachers and makers face, given what they understand of the law. Read more...