DML 601: Digital media & literacy
Introduction to the vocabulary, concepts, media tools and pedagogy for the effective and appropriate integration of technology into learning environments as a tool for developing literacy and 21st century knowledge processing. The course addresses the issues of institutional readiness, faculty needs and maximal student learning at a variety of levels.
Final Project
For this course I partnered with local non-profit Career Girls to create a series of career education lesson plans targeted at Middle School. The objective was to inspire more students, particularly girls and minorities to become interested in STEM careers. These lesson plans also provide opportunities to learn digital literacy skills crucial for all careers.
The rationale and background for this project include:
The rationale and background for this project include:
- Studies have shown that students make decisions about their careers as early as middle school and that students who know by 8th grade that they are interested in a science career are more likely to attain a science degree (Tai, Liu, Maltese & Fan, 2006).
- While the ratio of women to men has reached parity in some STEM fields such as biological sciences, women are not represented equally in many STEM fields such as engineering and physics (Hill, Corbett, & St. Rose, 2010).
- Researchers have found that middle school students whose teachers provided frequent career examples maintained a higher level of engagement and valuation of school over time (Orthner et al., 2013).
- Studies using the DAST test have shown that when students are provided access to female scientists and scientists of other races, their drawings of scientists included fewer stereotypical images (Bodzin & Gehringer, 2001; Farland-Smith, 2012).
Lesson 1: Students will take a career interest inventory as a starting point to research potential careers. Career Girls videos provide data for research that students will use to create a written reflection.
Lesson 2: Students work with salary data for different careers to calculate lifetimeearnings and also research the occupational outlook for careers to create a final multimedia presentation.
Lesson 3: In this lesson students research how math is used in different careers from interviews with Career Girls leaders and then take a career test to find out which math career might be right for them. Students create a final reflection about their research.