Electronic: Media Reporting Strategy 2

After digital communication strategies are electronic strategies, in which students use audiovisual technologies to create media such as the following:

• Audio tape: simulate a radio program, panel discussion, speech, press conference, debate, music, narration for a slide/tape show, storytelling with dialogue and sound effects, self-guided tour, or directions for a process.
• Video tape: create a commercial, public service announcement, dramatization, infomercial, demonstration, TV magazine, news, special effects, documentary, story, interview (talk show), or quiz show; use long shots, medium shots, and close-ups to guide the viewer's attention.
• Combined digital, audio and video: use computer software to create animations, movies or photo collages for DVDs and CDs for viewing on TV.

Much more will be said in this Creative Teaching blog about media literacy, strategies and resources. We are just looking at reporting strategies in the most general sense here, because the end of the school year is coming and such broad categories for strategies are good to help generate ideas for final reports that fit specific standards teachers are responsible for teaching.

Theodore Sizer has said that educators must learn to "plan backward", considering what students' reporting strategy will be first and only then devising the lessons and practice sessions that lead up fairly and logically to that assessment. So it makes sense in that regard to look at what we will be expecting students to know and do with their knowledge.

Reporting strategies -- at the end of the year, at the end of a unit, or at the end of a course of study -- are the interactions with students that fall under the last category in "How We Learn" above. In other words, reporting as an assessment tool is "Using" the information and skills that have been acquired in the previous three steps -- first students make "Connections" with previous learning or to the real world, then are given explanation and clarification to "Construct" new learning, followed by "Extension" through practice and feedback, until they finally "Use" the new information or skill in the same way or in a different way by reporting. We will give more time to the control and sequencing of these four interconnected steps later on this blog when we discuss instructional design. Suffice for now to simply clarify that I am putting the horse before the cart for a reason.

That reason is because Sizer has been saying for years that teachers must plan the last step first, how students will "Use" or be assessed, before they plan the other three. So we will then look at planning our coursework differently:

In the Coalition of Essential Schools, "planning backward" is for an entire course of study, in order to better determine what the curriculum should be, how it should be taught, and what learning students should be expected to demonstrate. Sizer and the Coalition will be topics of a future blog, but interested readers can find much about them online.