Technology can help us make sense of the world around us – or it can make the world seem impossibly strange and even frightening.
As a technology teacher at Edgewood Elementary School in Scarsdale, Paul Tomizawa is charged with finding helpful and responsible ways to integrate technology into daily lessons and help make the unfamiliar more legible.
“It's a fun job,” said Tomizawa, a member of the Scarsdale Teachers Association. “It gives me the opportunity to find areas within the core curriculum where we can enhance student comprehension or the delivery of teacher instruction.”
According to Tomizawa, responsible use of technology begins with media literacy. “It's an essential skill for kids to learn the purpose of media and what it's trying to do to its consumers,” he said.
Tomizawa will be one of the panelists in the third annual Civic Readiness Summit, which will explore the critical role that media literacy plays in healthy civic engagement. Hosted by DemocracyReady NY, the online summit will be moderated by teens and cover the responsibility that schools, Big Tech, and media creators have in shaping how young people consume and act on digital content and the role media plays in a healthy democracy. The event is part of NY Civic Learning Week, which takes place March 10-14.
“Media literacy is a civic skill but it’s also a necessity,” said Mary Kate Lonergan, another panelist for the summit. Lonergan is a social studies curriculum specialist for the Fayetteville-Manlius School District and member of the Fayetteville-Manlius TA. “Media literacy is just literacy in the 21st century.”
“We spend so much time on our devices as passive consumers that it's difficult, especially if you are a child, to know which information is useful, which information is accurate, and which information is being perpetuated by people who have an interest in disseminating a particular narrative that may not be about building a healthy community,” Tomizawa said.
Tomizawa said it’s important to teach students to look at all media critically, and that means interrogating its source and its purpose. He said it’s also important to explain how algorithms work, and that corporate money has an outsized role in driving those formulas and determining what gets delivered to everyone’s feeds.
“If we lack those critical literacy skills, then we become susceptible, vulnerable to embracing someone else's premise of reality,” he said.
Despite the importance of media literacy, and its relevance, Tomizawa said too often this curriculum is left up to individual school districts. “It’s time for a comprehensive plan for teaching media literacy to all — we crossed that threshold a long time ago. We should already have a plan in place,” said Tomizawa, adding that 95 percent of teens have smartphones, and most children have ready access to the internet. “The question is, who's providing them with that guidance, right? Who’s talking to them about the content? And what kind of seeds are being planted by that content?”
Often teachers feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of new initiatives they are being confronted with each year, but Lonergan said it’s important to emphasize that teaching media literacy usually just involves a “couple of simple shifts” in what teachers are already doing. “This is not ‘another thing’ teachers need to do, it’s another way,” she said, and it boils down to getting students to ask questions about what they’re seeing, why they’re seeing it, and where it’s coming from.
“It's important for parents and teachers to start providing really explicit skills and an understanding for how to use the technology responsibly and what to look for as they're consuming online content,” he said.
NY Civic Learning Week will also include “Media detectives crack the case of Click Clack Moo!” which focuses on elementary-appropriate activities, as well as a conversation with Judge William E. Smith.
DemocracyReady NY is a coalition of educators and advocates committed to preparing all New York students for civic participation. For a full list of events, visit: New York Civic Learning Week 2025 Events