This unit is intended for students embarking on a sequence of three digital media production courses: Digital Media Movie Making, Broadcasting, and Animation. Because these are electives, the district doesn’t have a formal curriculum for the courses. Many of the teachers in my district refer to the 2015 edition of the Connecticut Career and Technical Education Performance Standards & Competencies to develop their curriculum.
According to this document, literacy and numeracy are to be considered competencies in each of the Career and Technical education courses.
“Since the enactment of the Carl D. Perkins reauthorization legislation of 1998, all states have been required to integrate academic learning into CTE courses. Hence, our Connecticut CTE courses in secondary schools have become an enhancement for academic achievement.”33
In this unit students are called upon to read and analyze at least five documents.
Lesson one: Part 1 requires the students to read a web page posted by the University of Michigan Library entitled: Fake News," Lies and Propaganda: How to Sort Fact from Fiction”. They then apply the information by analyzing news stories. In lesson 1: Part 2 students read and answer questions on an article explaining the significance of Birth of a Nation as a movie plus an article that speculates on how America would be different if Reconstruction had not failed. In Lesson 2, students will read an article that was supplied by the teacher describing a media related event and then they will read an article of their own choosing on the same topic. They will then lead a discussion using the information gleaned from the articles. In Lesson 3, the students will read an article on media bias, and answer questions about it. In the culminating lesson students will write their own code of ethics and then read, the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics then compare and contrast the two. The ultimate goal of the unit is to learn about ethics however the manner in which the students achieve this goal is through reading. These readings are all intended to help students to figure out both the legal and moral ethical concerns of making and sharing media. This is a key competency according to the 2015 standards. Students should be able to “Define and describe the legal concerns of copyrights, ethics, releases, and royalties.”34 The unit is designed to focus on ethics by helping students to understand the power of media and to decide what it means to them handle their power responsibly.
