Open Access Kent State (OAKS)

Presently, our students are inundated with media through a variety of resources. Now more than ever it is vital for students to be able to consume information, which is credible, reliable, and verifiable. All of this is being compounded by a shrinking world and a level of access which is almost instant and a media landscape where traditional gateways of editorship may not always be present. In order to address the need for media literate and global oriented citizenship we lay out a path for social studies teachers to foster media literate consumers of information and who view their citizenship through a global lens. Natural disasters provide wonderful examples of events which have both local and global impacts, and which are relevant to social studies.