Incorporate Ecomedia Literacy into Your Classroom with These 30-minute Activities
These 1/2 hour ecomedia literacy activities offer a diverse range of exercises that encourage students to critically engage with environmental media messages, fostering interdisciplinary connections with liberal arts and sciences disciplines. From analyzing environmental claims and ethical dilemmas to delving into the impact of visual rhetoric, these activities empower students to navigate the complex landscape of ecomedia, enhancing their media literacy, environmental awareness, and ethical reasoning skills.
Ecomedia Literacy: Principles and Practices
This short article offers practical insights and strategies for incorporating ecomedia literacy into media education, addressing the urgent need to foster environmental consciousness and media engagement in today’s interconnected world. By presenting a diverse array of educational activities and methods, it equips educators and learners with tools to navigate and critically evaluate the complex relationships between media, ecology, and society.
Bringing Ecomedia Literacy into the Classroom
This article underscores the vital need to integrate ecomedia literacy into media education, addressing the interconnected challenges posed by media and technology on society and the planet. It provides a wealth of practical strategies and examples for educators, offering an invaluable resource to build awareness and empower students to critically engage with ecomedia, environmental issues, and ethical considerations across various media platforms and genres.
Consumerism and Sustainability
Media literacy and critical thinking lesson asking students to consider their own consumer decisions relating to sustainability through a process of decoding TV commercials and videos about bottled water.
What About Bottled Water?
Media literacy and critical thinking lesson analyzing videos and TV commercials to discern messages about decisions to purchase or not purchase bottled water.
Corporate Greenwashing? Exxon and Greenpeace
This is a media literacy and critical thinking activity in which students decode an ExxonMobil commercial and an environmental advocacy video for conflicting messages about corporate advertising credibility and about human impact on the environment.
Chobani Ad: Dear Alice
This short animated Choboni ad about the future of food production can be useful for exploring different environmental discourses, including pastoral, food, and sustainability. It can be used to generate a discussion about food, agriculture, eco-modernism, and mechanism.
Keep America Beautiful: The Crying Indian (1970)
This is a great media example for discussing environmental discourses and ideology. It utilizes the eco-utopian discourse (often represented by indigenous and First Nations peoples) to promote conservationist environmentalism, which aligns with anthropocentric environmental ideology.
Chipotle Ad: Can a Burrito Change the World?
Chipotle asks, Can a burrito change the world? What kind of environmental discourses are used to answer this? How does it describe farming practices? How does Chipotle back its claims? Can Chipotle legitimately claim they are changing the food industry? Discuss the meaning of the phrase at the very end: How we grow our food is how we grow our future.
Sun-Maid Raisin Girl goes to Hollywood
This advertisement for Sun-Maid Raisins is a strong example of the pastoral environmental discourse. It represents an idyllic version of farming that has a long tradition in Western visual culture. Discuss with students about whether or not this ad accurately represents the reality of industrial farming. They can research how raisins are produced and the conditions for laborers who pick grapes. They can also explore what kinds of beliefs about the environment are communicated in the ad. Finally, what do they think about the ad’s focus on celebrity?