BRAVE NEW MEDIA WORLD
The first question of media literacy is to ask who authored it.
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ing kids to read carefully is the first step in media literacy. Cybercivics is a media literacy and digital citizenship curriculum for middle schoolers. The first year of Cybercivics focuses on digital citizenship and how what you post on social media reflects on you. In the second year, Cybercivics focuses on copyright, plagiarism, cookies and filter bubbles.
After building these basic skills, Cybercivics goes on to focus on media literacy in the third year, i.e., how to evaluate for veracity and stereotypes and how to avoid becoming a purveyor of inaccuracy. The founder and teacher of Cybercivics, iste member Diana Graber, says that by middle school, kids are ready to become good, ethical think-
ers. “They should use these muscles in the classroom with friends before they go out into the online world and make critical mistakes,” she says. Graber teaches students to use author Howard Rheingold’s “craap detection test” when assessing media. Is the information current? Is the information reliable? Who is the author? What is the point of view or purpose?