Media Literacy and School Partnerships at Temple University: An Interview with David Cooper Moore

Posted by on February 29, 2012

David Cooper Moore is an assistant professor in the School of Communications and Theater at Temple University and has worked with colleague Sherri Hope Culver on various media education projects that affect youth and K-12 teachers. This work has allowed Temple faculty and staff to create unique partnerships between Temple students and K-12 schools all over the Philadelphia region on innovative media literacy and incorporating media in to classrooms using collaborative and project-based methods.

Former professor at Temple Renee Hobbs started the Media Education Lab at Temple University and she continues to run her nationally recognized programs at the Harrington School for Communication and Media at the University of Rhode Island. The Media Education Lab, now located at University of Rhode Island, has a had a ground breaking effect on Media Education nationally and helped to create long standing relationships and programs that serve Philadelphia and area schools and students.

In addition to the work done through the Media Education Lab, Dr. Hope Culver founded the Center for Media and Information Literacy (CIML) at Temple, which is a hub for community and industry activities for media and technology. Part of the work done by the CIML includes Community Based Learning (CBL) initiatives and serves as a lab for professors who are doing media and information literacy work.

Q: What is “information literacy” and how is Temple involved?

A: “Information Literacy” is about expanding digital access to people who don’t normally have it. (from UNESCO) Temple is part of a global initiative to increase information literacy that only includes seven universities world-wide. The creation of the center came out of this “global chair” position held by Temple. In 2014 Temple will be hosting an international conference on media literacy. The creation of the CMIL and many of their school-based initiatives are part of short term research and goals regarding how people (and especially young people) access information and media of all types. One of  Dr. Hope-Culver’s main goals as part of this initiative is to learn how to engage media outlets to get people to think critically about media.

Q: How did you begin to work with young people and create school partnerships through the CIML?

A: Sherri Hope Culver and I have worked on projects that focus on learning how young people and adolescents interact with the media and how they create their own media. The first project that Sherri and Renee both worked on was the creation of an online studio designed for girls ages 10-14 that focuses on different skills in creating their own media projects. My Pop Studio gives girls free access to software that is age appropriate and give students experience with music making, tv sequencing, magazine editing and digital recording and making comics. Sherri obtained a grant to help build this with a web developer and turn it in to a nationally accessible website. My Pop Studio is designed to help young people identify how and why they use different kinds of media. When developing this program extensive focus groups were conducted with both young people and teachers resulting in the creation of a whole multi-media curriculum for teachers to go along with the individual work that young people can create. As part of this project undergrads from Temple maintain a blog on contemporary issues which real teens around the country can use to express their thoughts and opinions. Public school teachers use this tool in California to help their students better understand how and why to interact with the Internet and online learning.

Q: What has been your main Philadelphia youth focused media project?

A: The second project which is less “online” and more program based is Powerful Voices for Kids. This program was created as a low-cost and free program for students and teachers to explore how they use media and to incorporate media tools in to project based learning.
Powerful Voices now has partnerships with three area schools, one charter school and one alternative school in West Philadelphia and has done many workshops and professional development with teachers from all over the city.

Q: What is the structure of the program and how did you help students and teachers incorporate new media tools in to their learning?

A: The first summer of the project Temple undergraduates and graduate students, including me, had the opportunity to run three summer programs that were 5 days a week for a month. The summer program served mostly as an enrichment program mostly for students in elementary school. They worked with kids from ages 6-12. Because this was a new idea and project I and the fellow Powerful Voices teachers had the freedom to really allow students to work on projects and with media tools they were interested in.
We had a “laboratory” environment where Temple students could learn what teaching is really like and what it takes to use these tools in a classroom. We also got to give teachers professional development and do comparative [is this “collaborative”?] workshops with them. We want students to be excited about media and positive ways to use it and to give teachers and schools a chance to change their cultures. Students were even able to use “screencasting” so that kids can analyze media in real time.

Q: What did you learn from these first “laboratory” experiments?

A: Due to the newness of the field of “media education” for elementary age students we learned a lot about how media can be used more effectively for different age groups. Since then we have been developing age appropriate curricula for media education to share with K-12 teachers in Philadelphia. We also realized that often teachers feel “out of the loop” on how to know which kinds of technology to use. Part of the goal of Powerful Voices was to help teachers and schools feel comfortable exploring media and technology.

For example, we taught a veteran high school teacher in a Philly public school who now works with 5th graders in a charter school. He was a complete technology novice, it’s just “not his thing”. But he also bridges his interests in politics and civics with his students. Through our training he got a lot of comfort with technology and also how to bring current events in to the classroom. In the process of creating lesson plans with him he was able to open up creatively. Mostly he was able to engage his students in current events regarding childhood diabetes. The technology wasn’t in the “Center” the teaching is in the center, and the use of technology is part of the lesson.

Q: What have been the outcomes and future of these partnerships?

A: We continue to work with the schools we’re working with and now we’re working with the Lenfest Literacy Project: Education Center. The PAL (Police Athletic League) Center is 8-12. 10th and Erie is where it is. We’re going to start doing after-school programming there. We’re also working with Kensington CAPA  High School. Teachers there really want to connect their students to Temple. So I’m using my CBL course: “Field Experience in Youth Media and Media Literacy” KCAPA teachers and the Philadelphia Education Fund really pushed to get in to this work and they identified us through the CITI initiative to create high-school to college bridge programs.

For teachers we have an open doors summer “learn with us” model as well as a Professional learning community model. We have meetings over the course of 3-6 months. Over the next month you have an in-school mentor relationship with undergrads and graduate schools who help you implement a new-media lesson plan.

Q: What makes you inspired to continue this work?

A: I’ve been a filmmaker for about 10 years. I realized at some point in my education that I like the education part as much as the film. Renee Hobbs was making those connections to the community and with documentary film etc. It wasn’t until I actually worked with 6th grade kids as a counselor for our media literacy program. We had them for about 6 hours a day and we had so much fun and it was so creative that I loved it. I started to ask, Why would I ever teach something as an abstract art? How can we connect students to the community? “Service” is the word that gets the attention of students, they want to connect to the community.

As far as working with adults, I see teachers who go in to the hardest part [of media literacy] early and so the vision they have of the possibilities of teaching is really hard. Our teachers could really have a “dream” classroom. They could really do anything they wanted that their students could do.

Media Literacy Links:
Center for Media Literacy at Temple: http://www.centermil.org/
Media Education Lab at University of Rhode Island: http://mediaeducationlab.com/
My Pop Studio: http://mypopstudio.com A tool designed specifically for girls to create and understand the uses for media.
Scratch: http://scratch.mit.edu/ A tool that students can use to create their own media online.
Copyright and fair use in K-12 Education: http://mediaeducationlab.com/copyright
If you understand your rights under fair use when it aids classroom learning. So teachers aren’t afraid YouTubeEducation, TeacherTube