Week 2 Blog #3 Media Literacy

Watching Gever Tulley's video Life Lessons Through Tinkering is right on target. It reminded me of all the 'hands-on' learning activities I did while in school. You ever wonder why Art class falls in the category of favorite classes to take? It was always one of my favorite classes, and still is today for many students.
While growing up in the 60s and 70s, the grade that I 'got' in Art was not given importance. It was, in a way, the mindset of the time; it did not fall into the category of Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic. Yet if you think on Gever's video, I think it should have been added to the important class(s) section, like math, English, science, and social studies. Why? Because we were creating and having fun in the process.
Let me give you an example, the first time I attended school in the United States was in El Paso, Texas. I was new to the school, to the town, and to the language; I did not understand anything in the English language. That said, I do remember our teacher having us create Xmas trees out of Reader's Digest magazines in 2nd grade. She modeled how to create one for us, then the 'ownership' of the creation was up to us. She let us decorate it any way we wanted to. Now, many years later, every time Christmas comes up, I think of the tree I created.
I also remember my science teacher, Miss. Cornell. She had us create a 'book project' about the different habitats found on Earth and the animal and plants that belonged to each; computers and printers did not exist at the time, so we really had to 'cut and paste' pictures from books and all the old National Geographic magazines we had.
I have been a middle school teacher for a couple of years, and it always amazes me how few teachers in middle school, implement hands-on activities in their lessons; the ability to 'create' is somehow lost during middle school.
These examples may seem 'corny' to you, maybe not. But the idea I want to get across is that literacy comes in many forms, and there are many ways to learn it. The classes where I was given the opportunity to create, are the classes that I most remember.

References:
Ted.com
colorincolorado.org