Podcasting. Snapchat. Video. Virtual Reality. Podcasting, again. Clubhouse. As a digital director for media companies and now the digital advisor for West Virginia University’s Student Media department, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had well-meaning publishers, editors, and now college students come to me excited about the hot new thing everyone is using.…
At the start of the spring semester, the Journalism Department at San Francisco State University added a line to its student code prohibiting students from using “automated tools or assisted processes, such as machine learning or artificial intelligence” without citing the source. Any assignments found to have represented the work of others in this way…
Illinois enacted the nation’s first public school media literacy law just shy of two years ago. Since then the press has mostly ignored it, teachers have struggled to figure out what it requires, educators have received little training and no one is checking to see if students are learning to be more media literate. I’m…
It has been four years this week since Julian Assange was imprisoned in London’s Belmarsh Prison, held in a legal battle over his extradition to the US on espionage charges for publishing classified military information. Although the Trump Administration brought the charges against the Australian-born Assange, the Biden Administration has indicated it plans to pursue…
Teachers came out of the COVID-19 pandemic, then they heard about the Illinois’ media literacy requirement. Raquel Bliffen, an English teacher at Mt. Vernon Township High School, said her reaction to the new requirement may have been tainted by her whole mindset since COVID-19, which is “kind of like one more thing.” “I kind of…