To start teaching about climate change in an immediately attention-grabbing and fully somatic way, the author begins with an activity called Singer/Songbird. The goal is for students to quickly identify that media and technology influence our environmental knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors toward climate change. Besides learning that…

The nonfiction letter offers students an opportunity to study a dying art while also gaining insights about people, places, and eras. Teaching students the value of letters teaches community, caring, and connection. Whereas reading great works of literature can and does provide insight into life's purpose and meaning, the nonfiction text of a…

This article describes a class in which media literacy was used as a means for student inquiry into cultural constructedness of adolescents. Students read and critiqued media portrayals of teenagers, then used digital video to re-construct their own complex re-presentations of their adolescent selves.

This article introduces a new framework for teaching adolescents to read: Connected Reading. By sharing instructional practices and describing digital tools, the authors argue that a mindful, social model of connected reading is a crucial part of any research activity. As teacher-researchers, the authors led teens through lessons on digital…

In the author's effort to find out more about how "English Journal" articles have led to meaningful changes, he asked several teachers to write about "an "English Journal" article that made a difference." Several council members write about influential articles they read in the pages of NCTE's century-old journal. The brief stories they tell…

The classroom dynamic has become a competition of whose information is more important: the quickly accessed and popular digital texts or the perhaps less popular print texts. Whether or not teachers or school systems sanction the reading or teaching of popular culture texts in the classroom, students are reading--are even bombarded with--messages…

Although not a new concept, remix has recently gained popularity in mainstream sources ranging from video games to newspaper columns and television commercials for airline tickets, fried chicken, and soft drinks. All these examples draw on a concept that originates from hip-hop culture and refers to the creative blending of materials from…

The author advocates music videos as great sources for narrative and social commentary that can serve as excellent prompts for student writing. With access to personal artist websites, Yahoo! Music, YouTube, and MTV.com, students can view thousands of videos at their discretion, and English language arts teachers can bring them into the classroom…

Implementing multimedia in the high school language arts curriculum has become necessary so that teachers may build connections between the background knowledge of students and the printed texts that are thrust upon them. This idea comes from an area of research in cognitive science known commonly as schema theory, which contends that every…

Suggests that mass media advertisers are responsible for the creation of our modern mythologies. (JL)

Suggests that television's imaginative hold on its viewers is produced by its use of primal mythological stories and powerful ritual narratives. (MM)

A survey shows that in 1992, 60.9 percent of American adults read at least one book in a year, which was 56.6 percent in 2002. For literary texts the figure was 54 percent in 1992, which reduced to 46.7 percent in 2002. According to the California State Librarian Emeritus Kevin Starr the decline in reading is connected with several cultural…

Urges that children would be better served by educators' enlightened use of technological tools rather than by a horrified retreat from television and its effects. (MM)

Warns that schools must make sure that students are aware of the relationship between reality and image, particularly the image presented by television. (JL)

Uses examples from advertisements to support the claim that usage opinions have a minimal influence on actual usage, and formulates a new law of usage, stating that when a language change occurs, some people will adopt it, some will oppose it, and most will ignore it. (NH)