Joe Waski's DU Masters Program Blog

  Media Literacy   Source: Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House  Media Literacy:  Media Literacy is an important topic for students to investigate before they graduate high school.  Media Literacy is defined as the ability to decode media messages, including the systems in which they exists.  Media Literacy also assesses the influence of those messages on thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.  In the state of Illinois, legislators recently passed a law  beginning in the 2022-2023 school year where schools must teach one unit of Media Literacy.  I believe this new law in Illinois is great and needed.  It is important that young adults entering the the adult stage of their lives should understand how media plays a role in their lives and that media is targeted to influence their behavior and spending habits.  Hobbs and Rheingold:  Hobbs and Rheingold have an interesting takes on Media Literacy.  H...

  Algorithms  Source: Geeks for Geeks This week I chose to dive into and investigate algorithms.  The topic of algorithms is very broad and almost impossible to fully cover all topics and usage of algorithms.  I will keep this in general terms and focus more on social media algorithms.  Overview of Algorithms: According to the article, Algorithmic Awareness , by Media Smarts, algorithms are defined as a set of step-by-step instructions for solving a problem or completing a mathematical or computational task. Algorithms sort data to find patterns and make predictions or recommendations. The term is often used to refer specifically to computer programs trained to make predictions.  This definition is the overall definition of algorithms.  Brent Barnhart defines social media algorithms in his article, Everything You Need to Know about Social Media Algorithms as   a way of sorting posts in a users’ feed based on relevancy instead of publish tim...