Talk:News Literacy
Instructor comments on your draft lessons -- Jz833665 15:23, 28 November 2011 (EST)
I'm very pleased to see your draft unit created. It is overall in a good shape. I like the way you engage students in discussions of specific examples to come up with deep understanding of news. A few suggestions:
- Course level objectives: you need to elaborate on the objectives using full sentences, such as for "identify bias."
- Your lesson 1 objectives: You may consolidate the following two as they point to the same learning outcome: "...develop an understanding of what is and is not news" and "define the term "news."
- I notice you specified time limit for some of the activities. Are you going to use this mini-course in a f2f class? If not, such time limit may not be necessary/appropriate.
--Fiona Grady 16:54, 28 November 2011 (EST)
Thanks Dr. Zhang. I was still making adjustments as I was putting the information on the site and didn't have a chance to update all the information. I will work on that tonight.
Reply/Questions
I thought that this could be used either f2f or online, with the time limits being unnecessary for online use. Should I remove the reference to the times? The main reason that I included them was because I wanted to keep the length realistic and wanted to make sure I could fit everything in in under an hour while still giving the students enough time for discussion.
One concern that I had while working on this lesson, and it applies to all the lessons, was striking the balance between letting the students drive the lesson and providing enough structure/support for the students. I had initially planned on providing basic definitions for each information neighborhood to get the ball rolling but then thought that the students could work that out on their own. I still feel a little uncomfortable about that decision. So resistant to change...
Another concern I have is a pragmatic one. While I am totally behind the concepts and can see how they create metalearning experiences for the students, I still don't know how I am going to incorporate this type of instruction in my one-time, 50 minute class sessions. Do you have any advice?