Topic 4 : Media Literacy

Media Literacy is the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and produce communication and information in a variety of forms and means.
www.unesco.org/education/educprog/lwf/doc/portfolio/definitions.htm

"Media literacy" is the expected outcome from work in either media education or media study. The more you learn about or through the media, the more media literacy you have. Media literacy is the skill of experiencing, interpreting/analyzing and making media products.

Source: Chris Worsnop, from Screening Images: Ideas for Media Education, Wright Communications. Mississauga, ON. Canada, 1994.

The traditional definition of literacy, when print was the supreme media format, was the ability to decode, understand and communicate in print. But the world has evolved, and print is no longer the dominant media format—that role has been usurped by the electronic media. To be literate today, people must be able to:

• decode, understand, evaluate and write through, and with, all forms of media
  
  
• read, evaluate and create text, images and sounds, or any combination of these elements.

In other words literate individuals must possess media literacy as well as print literacy, numeral literacy and technological literacy.

Source: Maureen Baron, Multimedia Administrator, The English Montreal School Board.