Why Teaching Media Literacy is Important in Election Years

The state of the United States’ collective consumption of news and media is tumultuous, at best – over the course of the last several years, social media, mistrust and more have made engaging with the country’s new organizations a complex, yet vital, task.

In the wake of what the company calls a period in 2017 when “respect and engagement with trusted news organizations were at an all-time low,” Bites Media was formed.

Bites Media’s singular goals is to use the experience of both CEO and Co-Founder Nick Farrell and Co-Founder and Head of Education Emily David to reignite engagement with America’s news organizations and, in turn, its democracy. To achieve that vision, Bites Media focuses on middle and high school students.

On this episode of the Voices of eLearning, Farrell and David sat down with host JW Marshall to outline exactly how Bites goes about educating those students, a process that involves giving educators, students and parents access to “trusted, engaging and authentic news” produced by undergraduate and graduate journalism students.

The platform also gives educators ways to track how their students are engaging with the platform in the form of short quizzes and analytics.

“Our platform is tracking how much time students spend in each of those multimedia assets,” David said. “Teachers get a data report with the amount of time each individual student has spent with an article and then across the platform as a whole.”

These insights help teachers understand how comprehension and consumption are related and how the platform’s use can be tailored to provide the optimal experience.

Stay Tuned for a New Episode Thursday!