Ithaca College

Project Look Sharp has received a two-year, $104,500 grant to develop two new curriculum kits on media literacy.

Project Look Sharp is a program under the auspices of IC's Center for Teacher Education and directed by psychology professor Cyndy Scheibe.

The kits -- Presidential Elections, Mass Media and Democracy and News Media and the Middle East -- will provide the country's high school and college faculty with ways to instruct their students on applying critical thinking skills to messages from mass media in the context of a history, civics, or global studies curriculum.

"The founding fathers of our nation articulated the need for a literate citizenry as core to the development of a deep and enduring democracy, " says Chris Sperry, director of curriculum and staff development for Project Look Sharp and author of the program's first national curriculum kit, Media Construction of War: A Critical Reading of History. "We live in an age in which the most influential messages about the issues of our time are delivered through mass media. It is essential to the success of our democracy that young people consciously and consistently analyze and evaluate those messages."

The two new kits -- along with Media Construction of War -- will be available nationally through the online catalog of the Center for Media Literacy on the GPN Educational Media website.