Media Studies is a new subject for all students in year 10. As the basic media literacy curriculum for Berlin identifies between learning about media and learning with media, classes 10A, 10B, 10C and 10D are learning to critically analyse various aspects of social and regular media such as disinformation and fake news, confirmation bias and media ownership. The students debate about private versus public media ownership and are learning how to create digital collages and powerful presentations. Copyright, data protection and privacy are topics that will be revised as well. As this is a new school-internal subject, this curriculum will be actively revised and developed. Save the date: on the morning of June 2nd, 2013, the students will host the first NMS Media Fair, where they will present their personal Media Studies Projects. The assignment that was shared at the start of the year allows the students a large degree of individual choice, according to the following guidelines:
“You have until May 2020 to create a medium; a website, blog, presentation, comic, video, podcast, stop motion video, social media channel, game, magazine, photo or art exhibition, programming or anything else you can think of on any topic related to media studies. This can be about social media, gaming, coding, disinformation, fake news, journalism, history of film, freedom of expression, influencers, addiction, resistance, ethics in media, media creation or anything else that interests you. Your project can also be a workshop or lesson which you prepare on one of those topics, for another class or year group or teachers or parents. You may work in a team; with 1 or 2 partners, or by yourself. Your end of year grade relies on your participation throughout the year (50%) and the final product (50%), according to the assessment rubric.”
Parents who work in or with media are highly welcome to participate in the form of a mini workshop, presentation or otherwise on June 2nd, 2023.
As NMS is a hybrid trial school, all lessons and materials are taught in class, as well as uploaded in the respective online Classrooms. Students who miss a lesson through sickness or travel can therefore always access all materials and assignments.
Within the realm of the hýbrid learning trial project, we would also like to provide all students in the Media Studies classes with the opportunity to decide when, where and how they work on their Media projects; they may want to do that in the classroom and get support from the teacher or students, in the library or elsewhere in school, or work at home and use the lesson time to work on another project or assessment that needs to be done, wherever they choose to do so. The idea is that the freedom of choice to decide when, where and how to work on what subject, will lead to greater student agency during this trial, which will be held in the month of March. The hybrid school trial allows for this, for all students who return a signed permission slip. The Media Studies teacher will be available in room 201 during all lesson times in March. A reflection with the students on this kind of independent learning time will be included afterwards in the form of a short survey.
Vandalism campaign for Primary by 10th graders
Beginning of October 2022, the 10th graders were talking about TikTok challenges, in particular the vandalizing and dangerous kinds. This happened as an integrated part of the new subject media studies, which casts a critical eye on the use of (social) media. Recent repeated destruction of several Primary school bathrooms caused the school to take action, such as regulated use of bathrooms, more hallway supervision and classroom talks. The tenthgraders created a campaign, showing characters and memes from popular youth culture in situations that address senseless online challenges such as vandalizing school property. They cost time and money, whereas teachers and students have better things to focus on… these posters are only a small selection of the campaign. About 15 different posters will be shared throughout the Primary school.
