This year was one of growth and evolution of my work to support media literacy education everywhere, through our suite of high quality services, products, and relationships. While we haven’t reached the kind of mass impact that I believe our work deserves, I’m heartened by the stories of teachers impacted by our work, in big and small ways.
Here’s some of my highlights from 2022:
Relaunch of KQED Teach
Our main professional learning platform KQED Teach has gone through many iterations in its seven years of existence. In 2022, we decided to pivot toward a more modern, flexible learning management system, which we hoped would better serve our educator audience, while also cutting down on development and maintenance costs. It was a big risk – what if our users hated the new site? What if it couldn’t support the kind of rich learning experiences our audience expects from us?
But it looks like it worked. We recently surpassed 2,500 registered users! And our courses on evaluating online information and analyzing media are our most popular products. Seeing hundreds of teachers learn how to deconstruct media and do lateral reading checks on sources is so exciting!
PBS Media Literacy Certification Continues to Grow
The PBS Media Literacy Educator Certification by KQED is in its fourth year of existence, and it continues to grow and expand around the country. In 2022, we saw several cohorts of teachers earning micro-credentials led by PBS stations like WSKG in New York, SCETV in South Carolina, and PBS Wisconsin.
In all, we awarded 536 micro-credentials to 268 teachers in 2022, and fully certified 33 educators. Each one represents a teacher instructing their students how to analyze, evaluate, create and share media.
Received the NAMLE “Media Literate Media” Award
Along with giving our awards to teachers, KQED Education was so pleased to receive the “Media Literate Media” award from the National Association on Media Literacy Education (NAMLE) this year. This award recognizes “outstanding contributions to media literacy made by media professionals with national reach.”
The beautiful (and heavy) award sits proudly on my desk by my computer – a reminder of the impact our work is having.
Presenting at ISTE and NAMLE Conferences
I did quite a bit of presenting in 2022 – workshops, webinars, teacher cohorts, VIP visits, and more.
While most of these were virtual, I did get to travel to my first conference on behalf of KQED Education – the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) in New Orleans, Louisiana at the end of June! It was such a pleasure and an honor to get to represent our work at this huge gathering of educators, nonprofits, companies, and government agencies interested in the intersection of technology and learning.
I learned a ton from the many sessions, and I got to talk to teachers about the PBS Media Literacy Certification alongside one of our most active certified educators, Merek Chang, a science teacher in Southern California.
As I said, we received a major award from NAMLE this year, and I was honored to get to virtually receive it alongside my PBS colleague Kristin Lehner at the NAMLE virtual conference in July. It was a really great event, with some heavy hitters in the field of media literacy education.
I learned so much at this event! I’m particularly keen to integrate Critical Media Literacy into our work, to build a bridge between Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and Media Literacy. Basically, how can we bring a social justice lens to our work on media analysis, evaluation, making and teaching?
Other Notable Achievements and News
In 2022 I led another local teacher cohort, the “Bay Area Media Literacy PLC.” I learned a lot about what worked and what didn’t from the last cohort I organized, which I believe resulted in a better run and more rewarding experience for our teacher participants. It was great getting to work with so many dedicated and creative educators from all over the Bay Area, and to host them in person for our final meeting in April.
One super fun side project I got to be involved in was a video about lindy hop produced by the nice folks at KQED Arts! Kelly and Masha were so kind to involve me in this production, including scouting out locations, contacting notable dancers, and writing the blog post about lindy hop on the KQED site. It was so cool seeing my worlds come together like this.
As we close out the year, I’m excited about our work in 2023. We’re kicking it off with the unveiling in January of a new “starter kit” for PBS stations to support their own local communities of media literacy educators. Plus, I’m brainstorming a new type of media for the PBS Certification and micro-credentials that I believe will round out our work and expand our reach to new audiences and partners. Who wants to play? (Hint hint.)