Dyad 56: Media Mindfulness

Jamie Chatel and Donna Nelson-Schneider

WHO WE ARE:

Jamie is an MBA student at URI by night, and a Data Visualization Specialist for MetLife by day. Her real passion is her happiness coaching business, where she works with adults and teams to help them be happier and more mindful in their daily life.

Donna is a journalist and experienced network news producer with NBC and CBS News. After many, many years in the news media, I want to teach and advance media and news literacy in our schools and to the general public. It’s such an important life skill.

OUR PARTNERSHIP: Collaboratively brainstorm ideas to create and publish the same remote lesson on Media Mindfulness.

Provide a brief description of the context in which you work and your learners to help readers better understand the unique work that evolves from your collaboration.

THE PURPOSE OF OUR INQUIRY: The compelling INQUIRY question that guides the design of our course: Why should I care about the way I use media, and how can I become a more deliberate consumer of information?

LESSON SUMMARY: This is an 8-week course aimed at undergraduate or high school students. It includes anytime elements that teach mindfulness techniques and media and news literacy tools as well as real time check-ins over video conferencing to discuss what they’re seeing and encountering in their media feeds and share experiences. The lesson plan will be flexible enough for the teacher to incorporate current events.

TEACHING GOALS:

• Anytime assignments will consist of videos and interactive lessons on Nearpod to introduce a different mindfulness exercise each week (meditation, yoga, better sleep habits, acts of kindness, etc). It will also teach them how to evaluate what they see online, including tools they can use to verify information, and what to consider as they consume media throughout the week, especially before sharing.

• Real-time practices will include regular check-ins for students to discuss their experiences doing the mindful exercises as well as a space for students to share how current headlines, trending stories and what’s gone viral are impacting them and what emotions they are generating. And then taking the next step to talk about how mindfulness practices combined with demystifying what they are seeing online has helped them better process the information they encounter.

LEARNING OUTCOMES:

• Know: Students will know how to practice healthier media consumption habits and how to use . tools to verify information through lateral reading, reverse image search, etc..

• Understand: Students will understand how media sources impact their happiness, their worldviews, and the context through which they view life. In addition, students will be empowered by recognizing they are in control of their media consumption and how they share.

• Be able to do: After this course, students will be able to strike a better balance between information overload and mindful consumption. They will be able to elevate the power of share, and potentially improve the quality of information others will come in contact with. They will consciously move from passively scrolling and watching what pops up next in their feeds to being active, thoughtful and deliberate consumers of news and information.

TEXTS/TOOLS/TECHNOLOGIES AND RATIONALE:

This eight-week course will be based in a Google Site, and each student would ultimately curate their own media mindfulness exhibit of content they unveiled in class and how they are responding to it. The instructor will have all of the Google documents, Padlet boards, Nearpod lessons, real time meetings, etc, in one place for the class.

Each week, the student logs into Nearpod for the anytime learning experience. Within that tool, we will place instructional content, with interactive prompts, and links to other resources that will be a personal and customizable learning experiences for students. Real-time touchpoints will take place one a week on Zoom. This is an opportunity to have an emotional check in for students to share what they’re learning and seeing as well as discuss current events and responses from their assignments in Nearpod.

Digital tools within the Nearpod lesson include:

• Their own social media accounts

• News sites and publications

• Youtube videos (using Video Ant for annotations and discussions)

• Facebook Ad Library

• Google Reverse Image Search

• Google Sites for the students' public media exhibition

• Infographic checklist for evaluating sources of information https://newslit.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/How-to-know-what-to-trust-DIGITAL-copy.pdf

• Meme creators (IMGUR) https://imgflip.com/memegenerator

• Padlet for posting and sharing news, social media posts, memes and videos. As a class, students will curate a board representative of a broad view of what’s coming to their feeds - not just what’s coming to me - to examine differences. In small groups and then as a class, students identify and curate a variety of reliable media sources they can then incorporate into their daily lives. Empowering the students to be more mindful of their sources and seek broad points of views.

  • In real time sessions, the instructor will pull up opposing views and examples of credible and misinformation to spark discussions.

• An “Authentic Inventory Happiness Quiz” which students will use to rate their levels of happiness before and after studying social media

• Various research studies, charts and visuals to show how our minds are affected emotionally when consuming media as well as the impact of sharing misinformation and the media trust gap.

This Inquiry Plan Template documents our planning and learning this week.

Digital Product 2: Week 4 Snapshot (Nearpod)

We created a snapshot of one week in the course with the Nearpod learning tool. You can find this under week 4 in the Class Website link above. We choose week 4 because at this point, the students have learned some mindfulness techniques and they are understanding how different sources of information and consumption are influencing their behaviors, emotions and decisions.

In week 4, they start to explore algorithmic personalization and think critically about how content is produced to appeal to their personal preferences and biases.

The lesson includes a greeting to set context, a video that the student must annotate using videoant, a scholarly article, and some open-ended questions. For the learning assignment, the student must investigate content on the Facebook Ad Library and create a meme that reflects how media has impacted a recent decision that they made. Then they post their meme on the collaborate board at the end of the lesson. When the class meets over Zoom for a real time class, the instructor can use responses from the video and the questions, and the memes on the collaborate board, to lead a discussion.

Teaching Artifact: Click here to go straight to the Week 4 Nearpod Module