Understand the Influence of Social Media
In today’s world where so many people get their news through the internet, the news one sees on a daily basis can easily be filtered through clicks on a social feed. “What role do you think our mechanisms for news retrieval have played in the political polarizations of this country?” asked Luhtala.
“Social media can have a really corrosive effect,” said Greg. It has the ability to narrow perspective to only the things people want to see, which does not provide an accurate perspective of what is going on in the world. Greg suggested, “If you watch MSNBC all the time, spend an hour a week watching Fox, and vice versa, to see the world through that different lens.”
About the Presenters
Michelle Luhtala is the Library Department Chair at New Canaan High School in Connecticut and was one of five school librarians named as a “Mover and Shaker” by Library Journal in 2015. She is the winner of the 2011 “I Love My Librarian” Award and the Library Association’s 2010 Outstanding Librarian Award. The New Canaan High School Library won AASL’s National School Library Program of the year in 2010. Follow her on Twitter @mluhtala.
Greg Toppo is the national education and demographics reporter for USA Today. He came to USA Today in 2002 and in 2005 broke the Armstrong Williams “pay for punditry” story that launched a widespread look at government propaganda. Toppo co-led the USA Today team that in 2011 looked at educator-led cheating on standardized tests. The paper’s series prompted the Washington, D.C., inspector general to investigate high erasure rates in D.C. schools. Toppo was a 2010 Spencer fellow at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and is the author of the book The Game Believes In You: How Digital Play Can Make Our Kids Smarter (April 2015). His first job was with the Santa Fe New Mexican, a 50,000-circulation daily. He worked for four years as a wire service reporter with the Associated Press, first in Baltimore and then in Washington, D.C., where he became the AP’s national K-12 education writer. A graduate of St. John’s College in Santa Fe, NM, he taught in both public and private schools for eight years before moving into journalism. Follow him on Twitter @gtoppo.
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The recording of the webinar can be viewed by anyone at: http://home.edweb.net/webinar/media-literacy-crash-course-60-minutes/
[Editor’s note: This piece is original content produced by edWeb.net. View more edWeb.net events here.]
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