I was excited for this week’s prompt about teaching digital literacy in our specific grade/subject area. I am a middle years arts education teacher, so my students are deep into the Snapchat bullying, TikTok news and mindless gaming websites instead of doing their schoolwork.

I struggle with finding the middle ground of integrating technology into my classroom.  I find Arts Education to be such a lovely reprieve from screens and a valuable time for connecting as people in a drum circle, or getting out of our comfort zone through dance and drama.  I am always hesitant to introduce technology because it can often remove that piece of connectedness that I try to cultivate. I do like to have the kids explore programs like Soundtrap (linked here) or Chrome Music Lab (linked here)

I really enjoyed reading the Oatmeal comic about facts, and how some truths cause us to react more strongly, based on our personal belief systems.  It made me start thinking about lessons that could revolve around Identity in grade 6 and Social issues in Grade 8. Students could create similar comics to reflect on issues of importance to them (CP8.10. 8.11) or incorporate this comic into a reflection on how artists use their art to express different world views (CR8.3).  It would be a great comic to look at as a class before looking at different and various perspectives that may cause feathers to ruffle. Students in grade 6 could start thinking about what sort of facts and belief systems they have that might run against these fact examples in the comics, and maybe even make art projects reflecting those feelings.

It could be interesting to look at the fake news component from a historical perspective (CR6.3, 7.3, maybe CP8.5) by looking at The War of The Worlds radio drama, and how that affected the general population.

I would even have the students hunt down popular media examples (songs, movies, etc) about fake news or that perpetuate misinformation and see what we can find.  We could have some discussions about whether or not people react more strongly to misinformation in different media settings, and get into bias and perspective in art.  It would take a little more time to flesh out but those are some jumping off points that I’ve been thinking of.

These ideas would complement some of the NCTE ideas of:

• Explore and engage critically, thoughtfully, and across a wide variety of inclusive texts and tools/modalities
• Examine the rights, responsibilities, and ethical implications of the use and creation of information
• Determine how and to what extent texts and tools amplify one’s own and others’ narratives as well as counter unproductive narratives

I think these are really big questions, and really big ideas to tackle, especially in a setting where I only see students once a week. In an Arts Ed setting, I think it’s good to do a sprinkle of these ideas in conjuction with the classroom teacher’s process of teaching about digital literacy.