Films touch our emotions, ignite our imagination and curiosity, and establish lifelong memories. They transport us to new worlds, help us recognize differing perspectives, and suggest positive change. Films engage students in social and emotional awareness and can open a portal into ways that smart young people can better understand themselves.…

Growing a media department with involved students is not just about enabling them to make their work, but to cultivate critical viewing and passionate film spectatorship by experiencing film in a public setting. A film screening series serves the entire campus by building community, both amongst media students and the larger college populace, but…

The changing nature of communication has accentuated the need to develop multimodal literacy in students. Although the conventional way of asking a series of questions to elicit students' comprehension has helped build reading and comprehension skills, teachers could provide more support in the form of the language, pedagogical scaffolds, and…

Utilizing film as a teaching tool in a personal leadership development course helped undergraduate students synthesize authentic leadership concepts. "Iron Jawed Angels" facilitated the culminating lesson as students applied course concepts to an observed leader. Three objectives guided the final lesson: (a) critique Alice Paul's…

Historical documentary film usually offers content in a format that students find more engaging than traditional historical texts. In the classroom, documentary film can be positioned within a historical thinking framework to study a broad concept like civil rights while facilitating students' source work and skill development. While social…

This paper highlights the results of a project, in which a group of students, who were enrolled in an African American film criticism course at a large university in Southern California, participated in a community engagement project that incorporated visual and media literacy skills acquired in the classroom setting. The parameters of the project…

This article synthesises an investigation of the making of a didactic programme as a consequence of the excess of consumption of audiovisual messages and the non critical and non-thoughtful attitude the youngsters have towards it. As an answer to this problem, the authors have produced a didactical programme about cinema and its language, the main…

Natural gas production in Wyoming is a lucrative and influential industry. All the perks--jobs, education spending, the budget surplus--are huge incentives for communities and the fossil fuel-friendly state legislature to play along, to stay silent. And many are willing. There has been natural gas production in the state for almost a century, but…

Three recent movies about war are examined. All have been honored by critics and welcomed by audiences. The three movies are very different from one another. They reflect different ways of thinking and feeling about war. More specifically, they represent ways we relate to the troops we send into battle and our concerns about whether we have done…

This article begins by recognizing the increasing use of film in Religion, Theology, and Bible courses. It contends that in many Biblical Studies (and Religious Studies and Theology) courses, students are neither taught how to view films properly, nor how to place films into constructive dialogue with biblical texts. The article argues for a…

Using movies to guide gifted students toward self-understanding provides them with numerous benefits. Movies have the potential to enrich and influence the lives of gifted students in constructive ways. A good movie, for example, can become a meaningful metaphor that explains the essence of a young person's dilemma. When an appropriate movie is…

As a co-author of the GEAR-UP (Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs) grant proposal to the Department of Education in 1999, the primary author (Kohl) of this paper is in her third year of working at Franklin Middle School, which largely serves at-risk minority students through the University of South Florida (USF),…

This paper describes the use of school films (popular movies that are in some way about an educator or student) to engage student teachers in critically reflective practice. The paper begins by describing the main goals of the effort, examining the basic structure of the practicum that involves these films, and explaining the various constraints…

Focuses on how to utilize films and television documents and incorporate analysis of these materials within the history classroom. Describes an approach that is applied to traditional historical documents. Explains that teachers must provide background materials to encourage critical analysis. (CMK)

Integrating "The West Wing" in public relations courses can effectively dramatize the concrete and abstract dimensions of public relations. In turn, students see public relations in action (albeit fictionally so) and learn much about it through structured lessons. From individual writing assignments about situations in "The West Wing," to the…