President Obama to US students: Practice new-media literacy

Work hard to find and pursue your unique contribution was the basic message I heard the President tell American students this week – what I think the US's founding fathers and mothers meant by "pursuit of happiness" in their historical context. More to the point for NetFamilyNews and its readers, though, was something he said in the Q&A session with students after his 19-min. speech at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Va., that Reuters zoomed in on: that they need to be careful about what they post in social network sites because what they upload "could come back to haunt them in later life," according to Reuters. "The presidential words of advice follow recent studies that suggest US employers are increasingly turning to sites such as Facebook and News Corp's MySpace to conduct background checks on job applicants."

You could say that the President of the United States is promoting new-media literacy – the kind of media literacy that employs critical thinking about what we say, upload, and produce online and with digital media as much as what we see, download, and consume. I use "new-media literacy" interchangeably with "social-media literacy" (see this post), but really we're also talking about a new kind of media literacy (unhyphenated) that employs all the old media-literacy skills while embracing new (interactive, multidirectional) media delivered on multiple devices and platforms; the old one-to-many mass media still exist, are definitely in the mix, but we are not truly media literate any more if we are mindful only of what we're consuming. Media use is behavioral now, too, right? I'm glad that smart student asked Obama "for some advice on becoming US president." Social media are a factor now, and the new media literacy is protective of reputations, prospects, friendships, and safety, as well as good for social and cognitive development.

Calling all student videographers!

The buzz has already started for President Obama's announcement of the "I Am What I Learn" video contest. I saw a couple of my favorite educators tweeting about it just now and want you to know too: "On September 8, the US Department of Education will ask students to respond to the President’s Back to School challenge by creating videos, up to two minutes in length, describing the steps they will take to improve their education and the role education will play in fulfilling their dreams," the DOE says on its placeholder page. Here's the White House's info page. Hmm, will schools will have to stop blocking YouTube now? For great examples of already-completed student video projects, see "Young practitioners of social-media literacy" (doing homework the dog just can't eat!).

Inaugural links

So many smiles, teary eyes, and teachable moments were captured in the music, poem, prayers, and remarks of our 44th President's inauguration, and now it's all on the Web for classrooms and family discussions. Within minutes of President Obama finishing his inaugural address, it was up on YouTube, with its full text printable at Time.com. Here's video of poet and Yale professor Elizabeth Alexander reading her inaugural poem "Praise Song for the Day," as well as the full text at NowPublic.com and a Q&A with her at Time. Don't miss Aretha Franklin and John Williams's composition played by Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, Anthony McGill, and Gabriela Montero on YouTube with Chinese subtitles and on Breitbart.tv (looks like NBC footage). Because stories are powerful teachers, here's "One's family's long road [from Selma, Ala.] to the Obama inauguration" in the Christian Science Monitor, with its subhead: "Frankie Hutchins, whose grandmother was born into slavery, saw her mother fight for voting rights. She attended a white school" and today her children saw and heard the first black president. Finally, it seems fitting to include Rev. Joseph Lowery's inaugural benediction on video at YouTube.