Syllabus

= **Welcome to Media Literacy with Ms. Perry** =

__**Course Description**__
Media Literacy is a course that enables students to analyze and produce information that communicates using a wide variety of forms. In Whitby's Media Literacy Course, you will apply the IB principles of inquiry and problem solving to design products/solutions. We will use the Design Cycle to create a solution that helps others understand or use a product better. How has technology changed our understanding?

__ **Year at a Glance Syllabus for UE** __
__** Unit 1: The Design Cycle (3 weeks) **__ Learning the IB Design Cycle, Approaches to Learning, IB Technology, Rubrics

__** Unit 2: Recycle This! (system) (October - January) **__ Create a system that helps Whitby recycle better and helps all students and teachers know what to do. Students will learn some basic good design skills as part of this unit.

__** Unit 3: Let’s Get Organized (system) (February - May) **__ Design your own personal learning network (PLN) by exploring different websites that will help students learn and creating a system to help them study and organize their academic life.

__**Year at a Glance Syllabus for MS**__
__** Unit 1: The Design Cycle (3 weeks) **__ IB Design Cycle, Approaches to Learning, IB Technology, Rubrics

__** Unit 2: Design Matters (information) (October - January) **__ What does it mean when we are asking you to look at good design? What are the elements of design? Develop short presentation using good design skills. Summative project is to create a product/solution that communicates effectively to others about values and ethics? How can we promote understanding of our values using design principles? Develop individual product explaining a Learner Profile trait or other value or ethic.

__** Unit 4: App-tastic (information) (January - May) **__ Develop an App for iPad, iPhone, or Droid.

__**Weekly Class Activities**__
We will use the online discussion tool called Collaborize Classroom to have conversations about various ideas related to media literacy and the unit we are working on. These will be designed to prompt the student to consider the wider context of what it means to be literate in media today.

__Expectatons:__
__**Participation:**__ You are expected to participate and this is an important part of your grade. This means you need to actively speak up in class, add to the online discussions and be engaged in conversations with your team.

__**Timeliness:**__ Work should be submitted on time for full credit. For blogs, you will receive a zero if not submitted on time. If you go away at times other than Whitby vacations, you are still expected to post to the blog.

__**Respect:**__ You are expected to respect the opinions of your classmates and the working space inside the classroom so that all can participate openly and without disruption.

__**Rubrics:**__ You will have a rubric for all the assigments you do. While I will provide you with some of these rubrics, you will help me create them most of the time.

__**Grading Policy:**__ My goal is to help you learn and grow. To that end, as long as you participate actively and do the projects, you will do well. I plan to grade often so that you are clear on what is expected, but as long as you continue to improve, I will take the best grade at the end of the course rather than an average. You will no have homework other than the blog response, some reading or if there is extra time needed to produce a summative project.

__**Universal Standards:**__ All students’ begin with a score of 100 for their grade based on 5 criteria. Deductions happen for each occurrence of a violation. The 5 factors that you are measure on include:
 * 1) Timeliness (deadlines)
 * 2) Respectfulness (Disruptions and Inappropriate behavios)
 * 3) Preparation (Incomplete work or General apathy in class)
 * 4) Alertness/Attentiveness (Lack of participation and Task completion)
 * 5) Compliance (Cheating, Plagiarism)