I don’t write about what I know: I write in order to find out what I know.

Hampl, P. (2000) I Could Tell You Stories. W. W. Norton & Company

2020

Navigating Media Literacy: A Pedagogical Tour of Disneyland (Myers Education Press) is an education playbook applied to the vast mediated universe of Disney. Readers of all ages can critically apply media literacy principles while still conscientiously participating as consumer-citizens, media creators, and agents of change. Media literacy is defined throughout this book as an instructional method rather than a political movement. The book counterbalances the frequently myopic critiques of cultural scholars and the critical exemption granted by those across the world who find Disney to be a source of great pleasure. Integrated theory and practical examples allow readers to investigate of themselves and draw their own conclusions based on real inquisitive, observatory, and creative experiences that constitute media literacy (access, analyze, evaluate, create, reflect and act). Each chapter is ideologically mapped to an actual physical realm of Disneyland (e.g., Main Street, USA; Adventureland; Tomorrowland; Frontierland; Fantasyland). Each site provides a pedagogical playground for experimenting with each media literacy concept (e.g., context, audience, language, ownership, representation). The reader will come away with a deeper pedagogical understanding of how to cultivate media literacy using any context or subject―not just Disney. Each chapter includes discursive excerpts from students, along with assignments, discussion prompts, and classroom exercises, making it a valuable resource as a classroom textbook. [Author Interview]

2015

Healthy Teens, Healthy Schools: How Media Literacy Can Renew Education in the United States (Rowman & Littlefield Education). My second book is intended for educators across levels and contexts in the shared responsibility of building critical media health literacy among adolescents. While the topic of health in the U.S. is predominantly framed as an individual choice and set of elective/learned behaviors, there are powerful institutional forces that both facilitate and impede widespread health literacy. It fully supports the “alignment, integration, and collaboration” model that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) release in July 2014. It makes sense in the 21st century for health promotion and public education to join forces in a systemic fashion. Visit my companion blog and read an excerpt from the Introduction at healthyteens.us.

 

2008

Rethinking Technology in Schools (New York: Peter Lang). Cover Matter: Among the many challenges facing public schooling in the United States is the often irrelevant usage of technology in the classroom—in ways that support the textbook and computer industries more than student learning and achievement. This primer reframes the longstanding debate about instructional technology in school classrooms and challenges the reader to think more critically and conscientiously about the fundamental communication and technological processes that mediate learning and ultimately define education. The primer offers educators at all levels a three-dimensional map for exploring the philosophical, pedagogical, and practical uses of technology to serve rather than subvert the public purposes of education in a democracy.