COURTESY
WEARE — John Stark Regional High School English teacher Ben Boyington was a presenter at two conferences this fall, one in Keene and the other in California at the College of Marin. In Keene, Boyington was a panelist in a discussion of fake news and issues of local journalism at the Radically Rural event that looked at the five aspects of regional and community development: entrepreneurship, arts and culture, rural media, Main Street, and working lands. In the opening session of the rural media track, Boyington spoke of the importance of media literacy education in addressing fake news and other critiques of journalism, consumer responsibility, and education in how our institutions work. In the ensuing discussion, several attendees circled back to the importance of education, both in our schools and for those who have already completed their formal education.
In October, Boyington presented two sessions at the Media Freedom Summit 2.0: Critical Media Literacy for Social Justice at California’s University of Marin. Boyington facilitated a workshop on using a project-based lens to build solutions to problems of journalism; this is based on a final project he created for a journalism course. Boyington led a network-building session for the Global Critical Media Literacy Project, a resource center for critical media literacy educators built around crowdsourced resources and tools. Bill Boyington lives in Claremont.
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