EMS 301

EMS 30: Media Studies
Prerequisite: English, Grade 10, Academic or Applied

This course emphasizes knowledge and skills that will enable students to understand media communication in the twenty-first century and to use media effectively and responsibly. Through analysing the forms and messages of a variety of media works and audience responses to them, and through creating their own media works, students will develop critical thinking skills, aesthetic and ethical judgement, and skills in viewing, representing, listening, speaking, reading, and writing.

Strands:
The expectations in this course are organized into the following strands:

• Understanding and Interpreting Media Texts

• Media and Society

• The Media Industry

• Producing and Reflecting On Media Texts

Why offer this course to Mary Ward students?

Our world is increasingly moderated by, and understood through, media relationships. Social media has gone from keeping in touch with friends to influencing international elections. Media portrayals of race, gender, religion, and sexuality have sparked national reckonings and civil unrest. More and more of our personal data is being harvested and sold by telecommunications behemoths, usually without our knowledge or consent. Fewer and fewer independent, local media organizations are surviving in this climate, being bought up and vertically integrated by multi-billion dollar companies with partisan agendas. Youth spend more and more time online, creating incredible content, being subjected to ethically suspect information, and disengaging from - or, perhaps, redefining - “real life”.

Our students aren’t just entering this world - they’ve been in it since birth. The importance of media studies has moved far beyond “let’s make a poster advertising the best toothpaste”. Media literacy is a critical tool in understanding how we are constantly being pushed and pulled in different directions, towards divergent goals, by forces that we do not fully understand. Media studies is about not only understanding our relationships with media, but also defending ourselves from unwanted influences and actively engaging as informed digital citizens.

This course would offer multiple interdisciplinary opportunities for students of all levels to engage with their learning in a meaningful, reflective way that concretizes what happens to them every day. It could be quested with Arts, Tech, Comm Tech, Business, English, Philosophy, and any number of other subjects; further, it lends itself particularly well to Ward’s self-directed learning model. Media studies is more pertinent in 2020 then it ever has been before; our students deserve the chance to educate themselves on the new, amazing, terrifying, and changing world they live in.