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Free learning platform targets improved media literacy

KQED Teach [1], which launched on July 11, provides a series of free, self-paced courses to help K-12 educators develop the media skills necessary to bring media production and communication to their learning environments.

These courses will take place in an online platform developed by KQED Education that tracks user progress and encourages sharing and feedback through an integrated social community.

KQED Teach participants will have access to a wide range of social media and digital media tools allowing them to construct and remix media in multiple formats and across a variety of platforms while addressing many writing, reading, speaking and listening skills required by both the Common Core State Standards and Next Generation Science Standards.

“Increasingly, educators have demands placed on them to integrate media and media production into their curriculum, but a large percentage of them lack the 21st-century literacy skills necessary to make this transition,” explains KQED’s Vice President, Digital Media and Education, Tim Olson. “KQED Teach will improve educator media literacy and help busy teachers leverage media in their classrooms.”

KQED Education’s Lead Instructional Designer and project lead Randy Depew adds, “We want to give educators the opportunity to roll up their sleeves and start making media themselves, as well as with their students.” KQED Teach will also encourage educators to share their classroom media-making experiences with the KQED Teach community. Select stories will be published on KQED’s In the Classroom blog. Another feature of the platform currently in development will allow educators to earn open badges for achievement.

Examples of courses available at launch:
• Media Essentials reframes traditional media literacy concepts from an audience perspective to a producer perspective.
• Taking Charge of Social Media helps educators understand the ins and outs of social media tools and explore their applications for professional learning.
• Video Storytelling Essentials helps participants develop the specific knowledge and skills to begin telling great stories with video.

Through consistent, purposeful engagement with the social and digital media tools on KQED Teach, educators and their students can become active digital citizens who can gather, comprehend, evaluate, synthesize and report on information and ideas.