Ithaca College

Chris Sperry, the Director of Curriculum and Staff Development for Project Look Sharp, has recently written an article for Social Education Magazine entitled WWI Through Constructivist Media Decoding. This article looks at teaching about WWI through interactive decoding (analyzing) of propaganda posters from different countries. It lays out the theory and practice of media analysis for teaching critical thinking, questioning strategies, media literacy and core social studies content. 

Some of the main topics of the article include: Constructivist Media Decoding, The Curricula of Adolescence, Teaching Key Concepts of Media Analysis, and Diversifying Our Use of Media Documents. The article focuses on dialogue between teachers and their students, and comments from three high school students on using media decoding in social studies. 

This article is aimed towards a target audience of secondary social studies teachers. Chris Sperry believes that the article “enables Project Look Sharp to make social studies teachers aware of our work and free online resources and promotes the theory and practice of media literacy nationwide to a critical audience.”

The print article can be read in full in Social Education Magazine, a publication of the National Council of Social Studies. The electronic version can also be viewed on the Project Look Sharp website at http://www.looksharpblogs.org/?p=415