Ithaca College

Facilitating Challenging Topics in the Classroom online course to be offered again in Fall 2018 due to waitlist and high success rate.

Early in 2018, Project Look Sharp offered its first 6-week online course for educators to broaden the reach of Look Sharp’s high-impact professional development trainings in media literacy to serve more educators, and through varied formats. The course was structured as a high-quality pilot version with a small cohort who could provide robust feedback so that Look Sharp could sharpen and iterate the course next fall.

Look Sharp welcomed educators from various grade levels, disciplines, and geographic areas. The topic of this first course was “Facilitating Challenging Topics in the Classroom,” and the issue was clearly on educator's minds as the course was filled just weeks after it was announced!

Sox Sperry, Look Sharp’s Curriculum Developer, worked with Karryn Olson-Ramanujan, a consultant who is supporting Look Sharp’s development of online trainings, and Sherrie Szeto, Look Sharp’s Program manager, to conceptualize, deliver and evaluate the course. Sox’s experience with working with men who had been convicted of domestic abuse strengthened his expertise as an educator to identify key structures and approaches for creating safe and respectful dialog about “hot button” topics in the classroom.

At the end of the course, extensive evaluation indicated that participants found the course to be very valuable to their development as educators. Participants quoted:

• Thank you for an awesome course! The incorporation of participant viewpoints and questions to shape the course was clear and powerful and the feedback/exchange of ideas throughout went directly the heart of education.
  
  
• This course offered so many insights about creating a positive learning environment that went beyond the application of media literacy in challenging conversations.

The Challenging Topics course will be offered again in Fall of 2018. Please sign up here if you would like to be placed on our waiting list or for more details about the course.

Also, in the Fall of 2018, Project Look Sharp will run its first iteration of the online course Foundations of Media Literacy Education. This Fall course will be offered in partnership with Southern Tier BOCES, however it will become available to other educators, organizations and the wider public in Spring 2019. Join our email list here to receive more information when the course is available.

Please contact Sherrie Szeto, sszeto@ithaca.edu,  if you have any questions regarding PLS's online courses.