Peer Review

Critical Media Literacy and Civic Learning

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Reviewed:: Apr 22, 2022 by ICT Literacy

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Ratings

Overall Rating:

Content Quality:

Effectiveness:

Ease of Use:

Overview:: This OER ebook provides over 50 interactive multimodal explorations about media literacy and civic engagement through learning about key topics in United States Government and civic life. The core target is middle schools.
Type of Material:: Open (Access) Textbook
Recommended Uses:: Can be used by teachers, college professors, and librarians to facilitate workshops using the ebook's activities to be done in class or assigned as homework.
Technical Requirements:: works in Windows browsers
Identify Major Learning Goals:: Gain critical media literacy skills to better understand key topics in civics, government and history at the 8th grade level.
Target Student Population:: Middle School, High School, Professional
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:: basic ICT literacy skills

Content Quality

Rating:

Strengths:

Well organized curriculum with very specific and relevant resources

Offers a variety of well written activities to address the topic

Subject matter is clearly presented and makes use of an open resource platform to disseminate information.

Content is accurate, and covers both historic and current issues. Subject matter is clearly presented and makes use of an open resource platform to disseminate information; to that end, the well organized curriculum provides very specific and relevant resources. The activity directions are easy to follow, and lead to a constructivist approach to learning. The variety of well written activities are meant to accompany the ebook Building Democracy for All, but can be used without that text context. However, to gain full knowledge, an instructor is probably needed to debrief and generalize the exercise. The materials are created by university faculty, and linke to state and national standards. Most links work and are appropriately attributed.

Concerns:

To get all the information, users need to consult the linked textbook.

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

Rating:
Strengths:: Learning objectives are clear, and tie to state and national standards; they also reflect ICT literacy standards. Presentation of material is linear in nature and provides a logical and coherent instructional flow. Each topic has several subtopics, which provide progrssive learning. A introductory video provides the basics. Additionally, each subtopic provides several activities to build knowledge. Especially when the linked textbook is used, learning is very efficient and well developed. Users can also dig deeper through the references provided. The knowledge and skill gained from the activities and supporting information not only applies to civics but to daily life skills.
Concerns:: None

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

Rating:
Strengths:: The ebook is easy to navigate intuitively and independently, and it requires little technical skills. The ebook is surprisingly interactive and engaging, both in terms of visuals and writing tone. Videos can be close-captioned.
Concerns:: No help feature was seen.

Other Issues and Comments:: Overall, the Critical Media Literacy and Civic Learning resource is a helpful site that contains scores of relevant and engaging activities pertaining to media and civic literacy that will promote higher-level thinking on the topic.
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