Week 5 - Media & Information Literacy

In this week's lesson we learned about media information and literacy. The presention we watched was very helpful in demonstrating ways of efficiently presenting information in a visual form. The four key guidelines were Contrast, Repitition, Alignment and Proximity. I think this information is usesful for our everyday lives. For example, these principles will be helpful when creating a powerpoint presentation for a class or even designing a resume. We also learned how to determine if a web site is authentic. I think this is important not only for teachers who are transmitting information, but also for students who are writing papers and conducting research. Because web pages can be created by anyone, it is essential to know that we are accessing valid information.

Media literacy is in essence a part of advertising itself because advertising is transmitted through different forms of media. As an advertising student, it is important for me to be aware of the different forms of media and how they each portray information differently. Also, in order to effectively reach certain audiences, it is critical to be aware of the different forms of media they are using.

I chose a video from YouTube called Show Your Media Literacy to explore different ways we can use media.

This video was really interesting and I thought it was cool that it mentioned several tools that we are actually using in this class. It showed blogger, delicious and podcasting as ways of transmitting or viewing information. It also talked about Creative Commons and properly citing information that you have used. I thought it was informative in an entertaining way.