The Elizabeth Thoman Media Literacy Collection dates from 1943 to 2010 and contains organizational as well as personal/professional records. The collection includes the records for the various iterations of the organization that Elizabeth Thoman founded, beginning with the Media Action Research Center, and continuing through the Media&Values magazine, the Center for Media and Values, and […]

Interview with Mitch Resnick. For more than three decades, Mitch Resnick has immersed himself in educational technology and innovative learning models. Now a professor at the MIT Media Lab, and a co-creator of the popular Scratch programming language, Resnick remains a tireless advocate for student-centered education, collaborative learning environments, and the idea that coding is […]

Fifty years ago, Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act, which established the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Its charge was to conceive, develop and expand noncommercial broadcasting and it led to the creation of the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio. This anniversary is a fine moment to recall and commemorate values imbued […]

The 2016 USA presidential election campaign underscored some very worrisome trends in the present state of our democracy: the extreme polarization of the electorate; the dismissal of people with opposing views; the failure of many voters (and, quite often, the candidates) to focus on substantive policy issues; and the widespread acceptance and circulation of one-sided […]

Investing in media literacy education After a study from Stanford researchers evaluated students’ ability to assess information sources, the researchers described the results as “dismaying,” “bleak” and “[a] threat to democracy.” It wasn’t just young students either; many high school students couldn’t tell the difference between a real and a fake news source on Facebook. […]