How important is it to attend an educator training workshop?
Attendance at a teacher training workshop is fundamental to success in implementation of the Media Ready program. This conclusion is based upon recent research by Hobbs and Frost (2003) who examined high school teachers implementing media literacy in their classrooms for one year. They found that at the close of the study, some teachers were still uncomfortable analyzing advertisements as well as guiding their students through the process. This important finding is consistent with the idea that media literacy skills are a challenging set of critical thinking skills to master, even for adults. Because of the abstract nature of persuasive messages found in advertising, it is believed that a key element of this curriculum is to slowly and cumulatively build critical thinking and media deconstruction skills in both the adults teaching the program as well as in the students who are taking it. The educator training workshop and the cumulative nature of the Media Ready program are designed to
