Link TV is an independent media outlet (including online fora and a satellite television channel) that seeks to foster these very skills through a project called Know the News (KtN). Link TV hosts two online tools called Remix the News and News Challenge, both of which are games that encourage students to reflect on the source of the news and how it is delivered; however, the ability to be critical is not one that is limited solely to the consumption of news broadcasts, but one that plays into a more basic literacy of information analysis. It becomes a question of pedagogy: by explicitly stating their aims to encourage media literacy, is KtN successful? Bloom's Taxonomy is a model worth investigating as a constructive means of assessing the efficacy of Remix the News, News Challenge and the overall objectives of the KtN project.
Bloom's Taxonomy is an educational tool that refers to different classifications of education in three main domains: affective, cognitive, and psychomotor.The taxonomy categorizes the cognitive model in a hierarchy of six levels: Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis and Evaluation. Generally speaking, the first three are considered "low-level," as they largely pertain to realm of content, while the latter three are more conceptual.
While this dichotomy is extremely reductive, the value of Bloom's Taxonomy is the way it functions holistically. In the same way that a student cannot base critical arguments without a sound foundation of knowledge, a wealth of facts without interrogating them is simply memorization. Not every educational endeavor can embody each category of the cognitive process. But the more levels that are put into practice, the more a student is able to learn to his or her maximum potential.
The first game, News Challenge, follows a fairly straightforward structure: after a practice question, the player views a short news clip, which is followed by two more questions. It functions both as a standard quiz as well as a simple reading comprehension test. In this way, the game is useful as a way to test students' knowledge of current news. News Challenge is factual and leaves no room for interpretation, which effectively demonstrates the first three levels of Bloom's Taxonomy: Knowledge, Comprehension and Application. Not only are students expected to have a basic level of understanding of global events, but they should also be able to ascertain facts from the video clip and then apply that learned knowledge to the questions asked afterward.
The problem, however, is in the game mechanics. It is possible for a student to finish the game without answering a single question or watching a single video. Without any sort of penalty/reward system in place, there is no motivation for the student to 'properly' complete the game outside of his or her own desire to learn. This is not to say that this is a fault of the game--after all, it's important to encourage self-motivation. If, however, the explicit aim of News Challenge is to educate students on media literacy, it doesn't make sense for a player to be able to bypass all the actual learning. Not only does the educational content become incidental, but the entire purpose of the game is ineffective at best and self-defeating at worst.
Whereas News Challenge is a conventional quiz game, Remix the News more closely resembles a toy... which works to its advantage. The interface presents the player with three different panels: one that offers a wide variety of news clips, one that previews and edits the clip, and a timeline that runs along the bottom. The idea is to construct one's own "episode" with the content provided, including narration titles, logos, and other television news conventions.
Like News Challenge, one of the strengths of this game is in its content: there is an abundance of video clips to choose from on a wide variety of topics, including oil shortages and various riots from around the world. Whereas News Challenge could have benefited from more analysis through its gameplay, Remix the News seems the exact opposite. The sole purpose of the tool is to demonstrate the transparency of media production practices. By trimming news clips and strategically placing them along their timeline, student go through the process of making the news. While there are some technical issues at work, the tool is still functional enough to serve its purpose.
It encourages Bloom's Application and Comprehension insofar as the student needs to assess the content in order to create a coherent episode: clips must be ordered in a way that makes sense to the viewer, e.g. with a beginning, middle and end. More importantly, however, the student must be critical of what each clip contains in order to form a coherent argument, which is a subtle distinction. In the same way that newscasts describe an event, they also tell a story. By assembling an episode themselves, students are forced to consider not only what they say, but how they say it. This ultimately highlights the constructed-ness of television news insofar as the facade of objective reporting is unveiled.
It is an effective process along the standards of Bloom's Taxonomy in that students not only learn about global events through watching the news clips (Knowledge, Comprehension), but they also learn to assess the various other factors and influences that play an equally important role--if not moreso--in manufacturing the news (Analysis, Synthesis). The news content is effectively secondary to the creation of the segment; as students edit their pieces, they may have to sacrifice information in order to create a coherent whole. This level of transparency is a crucial step in understanding and applying journalistic practices, as well as media production practices in general.
While each game has its own merits, the KtN project is most effective when both games are played in conjunction with one another. With the content-heavy News Challenge and the diagnostic, self-reflective Remix the News, students get a strong sense of what the television news industry is as well as the intricacies that go into its development. The only level of Bloom's Taxonomy that is missing is Evaluation: there is no real structure in place to encourage the student to ask, "why?" News Challenge fosters an understanding of global events, but does not question why these events have unfolded a particular way, nor does it question why it's important to know them (as evidenced by the player's ability to simply skip through the entire game). Similarly, while Remix the News is extremely effective in showing the news as a reproduction of the 'facts' (rather than a reflection), it remains to be seen why this is a problem (or if it even is one at all).
This is, however, not necessarily a concern that solely pertains to KtN, but to all educational games at large. Perhaps it is too much to ask that each student be a self-motivated auto-didact? Until we reach that point, the KtN project serves as a valuable educational tool in its stead.
While this dichotomy is extremely reductive, the value of Bloom's Taxonomy is the way it functions holistically. In the same way that a student cannot base critical arguments without a sound foundation of knowledge, a wealth of facts without interrogating them is simply memorization. Not every educational endeavor can embody each category of the cognitive process. But the more levels that are put into practice, the more a student is able to learn to his or her maximum potential.
The problem, however, is in the game mechanics. It is possible for a student to finish the game without answering a single question or watching a single video. Without any sort of penalty/reward system in place, there is no motivation for the student to 'properly' complete the game outside of his or her own desire to learn. This is not to say that this is a fault of the game--after all, it's important to encourage self-motivation. If, however, the explicit aim of News Challenge is to educate students on media literacy, it doesn't make sense for a player to be able to bypass all the actual learning. Not only does the educational content become incidental, but the entire purpose of the game is ineffective at best and self-defeating at worst.
Whereas News Challenge is a conventional quiz game, Remix the News more closely resembles a toy... which works to its advantage. The interface presents the player with three different panels: one that offers a wide variety of news clips, one that previews and edits the clip, and a timeline that runs along the bottom. The idea is to construct one's own "episode" with the content provided, including narration titles, logos, and other television news conventions.
It encourages Bloom's Application and Comprehension insofar as the student needs to assess the content in order to create a coherent episode: clips must be ordered in a way that makes sense to the viewer, e.g. with a beginning, middle and end. More importantly, however, the student must be critical of what each clip contains in order to form a coherent argument, which is a subtle distinction. In the same way that newscasts describe an event, they also tell a story. By assembling an episode themselves, students are forced to consider not only what they say, but how they say it. This ultimately highlights the constructed-ness of television news insofar as the facade of objective reporting is unveiled.
It is an effective process along the standards of Bloom's Taxonomy in that students not only learn about global events through watching the news clips (Knowledge, Comprehension), but they also learn to assess the various other factors and influences that play an equally important role--if not moreso--in manufacturing the news (Analysis, Synthesis). The news content is effectively secondary to the creation of the segment; as students edit their pieces, they may have to sacrifice information in order to create a coherent whole. This level of transparency is a crucial step in understanding and applying journalistic practices, as well as media production practices in general.
While each game has its own merits, the KtN project is most effective when both games are played in conjunction with one another. With the content-heavy News Challenge and the diagnostic, self-reflective Remix the News, students get a strong sense of what the television news industry is as well as the intricacies that go into its development. The only level of Bloom's Taxonomy that is missing is Evaluation: there is no real structure in place to encourage the student to ask, "why?" News Challenge fosters an understanding of global events, but does not question why these events have unfolded a particular way, nor does it question why it's important to know them (as evidenced by the player's ability to simply skip through the entire game). Similarly, while Remix the News is extremely effective in showing the news as a reproduction of the 'facts' (rather than a reflection), it remains to be seen why this is a problem (or if it even is one at all).
This is, however, not necessarily a concern that solely pertains to KtN, but to all educational games at large. Perhaps it is too much to ask that each student be a self-motivated auto-didact? Until we reach that point, the KtN project serves as a valuable educational tool in its stead.
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