Empowering Young Media Consumers & Creators

The world is saturated with information--all types of media, with millions of varying messages. Not only are your students consuming the media, but with new technology, and inexpensive tools, they are also creating content and using media in myriad ways to test their ideas, and tell their stories. With access to these tools, we have the opportunity to empower students so they can be both to be critical consumers of media, and authentic storytellers. Register for the three part "Live Learning" experience: Empowering Young Media Consumers and Creators. 

Teaching Students to Critically Analyze Media

February 28th @7PM ET

We are delighted to invite you to a live conversation with Robert Costa in the first episode of this three-part series. Designed especially for middle and high school teachers, we’ll consider how to tackle misinformation, how to analyze digital media and why it’s important for your students. Robert Costa is the Moderator of Washington Week, the Peabody Award-winning weekly news analysis series on PBS. Costa is also a full-time national political reporter for The Washington Post, where he covers Congress and the White House and regularly travels the country to meet with voters and elected officials.  

Led by PBS Digital Innovator All Star Leigh Herman and PBS Station Representative Mary Anne Lane this session highlights exciting resources and models that you can immediately implement in your classroom.

Prioritizing fun, engaging and accessible tools for your students, the series will highlight techniques for analyzing media, and amplifying student voice through authentic storytelling. PBS will provide a certificate of attendance for each one hour virtual professional learning event.

Download certificate of attendance here. 

Helping Students Create Authentic Stories

March 7th @7PM ET

In episode two, we’re thrilled to invite you to a live discussion with American art museum curator and host of The Art Assignment, Sarah Urist Green. The Art Assignment is a weekly PBS Digital Studios production that explores art and art history through the lens of things happening today. Episodes air every other Thursday, and since its premiere in February 2014, the series has grown to over 300,000 subscribers and generated thousands of viewer-created artworks.

This live learning series, like all our live learning, is designed by educators. This series, in particular, was created especially for middle and high school teachers and will be led by PBS Digital Innovator All-Stars Shawn Patrick Higgins and Leah Aiwohi. In addition to hearing from Sarah Green, attendees will also learn about resources and models that can immediately be implemented in the classroom. Facilitators will dive into media production technology and techniques, so participants can help students produce their own digital stories.

Download certificate of attendance here. 

Amplifying Student Voices Across the Community

March 14th @7PM ET

How do you foster you student’s authentic voice and empower your students to tell their stories through digital media? For this episode, we’ve gone to one of public media’s most powerful personal storytelling platforms: The Moth Radio Hour. A favorite of hipsters (think Lena Dunham) and grandparents alike, The Moth is a movement: ‘True Stories, Told Live.’ It started in a living room. But, through local story slams, international fellowship programs, student outreach, podcasts and public radio, millions of listeners tune in weekly to relate to the stories of ordinary, yet extraordinary, stories and storytellers.

In the final session of our three part PBS “Live Learning” experience: Empowering Young Media Consumers and Creators, we’ll be joined by The Moth storytelling expert, Micaela Blei. Blei is a teacher, writer, storyteller and PhD student, who, until recently, was Director of Education and Community Engagement at the Moth where she worked with teachers and students to cultivate their stories. Prior to coming to the Moth, she was a third grade classroom teacher.

Blei will join our PBS Digital Innovator All Star hosts, Joquetta Johnson and Steve Auslander, to talk about effective storytelling, and to highlight exciting resources and models that you can immediately implement in your classroom.

Download certificate of attendance here.