February 2023 MBR The Education Shelf

The Education Shelf

Media Literacy for Young Children
Faith Rogow
The National Association for the Education of Young Children
Box 97156, Washington, DC 20090-7156
https://www.naeyc.org
www.insighterseducation.com
9781938113970, $30.00, PB, 176pp

https://www.amazon.com/Media-Literacy-Young-Children-Teaching/dp/1938113977

Synopsis: Media literacy is about wonder and imagination, questioning and learning, thinking and reflecting!

"Media Literacy for Young Children: Teaching Beyond the Screen Time Debates" by Faith Rogow is about all these things, and more importantly, it is about how early childhood educators and professionals can prepare children for their digital future.

"Media Literacy for Young Children" is a first-of-its-kind guide for pre-service and currently practicing teachers and child care professionals looking for pedagogically sound and developmentally appropriate ways to help today's children navigate their media-rich world with confidence, curiosity, and critical thinking.

Detailed descriptions of media literacy competencies, along with dozens of activities, strategies, and tips designed for children ages 2 - 7, demonstrate how to integrate foundational skills, knowledge, and dispositions into existing routines as well as experiment with new lessons.

By examining media through a literacy lens, "Media Literacy for Young Children will show you ways to: Use inquiry and media-making to teach children about media; Plan activities to engage children in meaningful media discussions; Engage with families about the importance of media literacy education for young children; Address media concerns with joy and creativity rather than anxiety or fear -- and much more!

Critique: With the coming of social media, the internet, and Iphones, children must be trained on how to determine fact from fallacy, deal with misinformation and cyber bullying, exercise critical thinking, and benefit from all the good that digital communication has to offer them. A seminal and groundbreaking instructional guide, "Media Literacy for Young Children: Teaching Beyond the Screen Time Debates" is an essential and substantive contribution that should be a part of every professional, school district, college, and academic library Early Child Education and Media Literacy collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists. It should be noted for educators and non-specialist general readers with an interest in the subject that "Media Literacy
for Young Children: Teaching Beyond the Screen Time Debates" is also available in a digital book format (Kindle, $14.99).

Editorial Note: Faith Rogow (https://insighterseducation.com/?page_id=143) is a media literacy leader, innovator, and founder of Insighters Educational Consulting. She was the founding president of the National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE), a founding editorial board member of the Journal for Media Literacy Education, a founding advisor to Project Look Sharp, and a coauthor of NAMLE's "Core Principles of Media Literacy Education in the United States" (2007). For more than twenty years she has been one of the few people in the United States advocating for and creating media literacy education that is developmentally appropriate for early childhood. Her groundbreaking article "The ABCs of Media Literacy" (Telemedium, Spring 2002) has been widely circulated, as has her chapter - "Media Literacy in Early Childhood Education: Inquiry-Based Technology Integration" - in the Routledge/NAEYC anthology Technology and Digital Media in the Early Years: Tools for Teaching and Learning (Donohue 2015). She also coauthored The Teacher's Guide to Media Literacy: Critical Thinking in a Multimedia World (Corwin, 2012).

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