Media Literacy Toolbox provides a complete introduction to media literacy concepts, skills and applications. It’s an interactive DVD-ROM containing over 100 new media examples - television commercials, magazine ads, excerpts from TV and radio shows, newspaper and magazine articles and other media messages. The disc also includes over 30 printable activity and discussion guides with suggested media examples you can use to lead a conversation or teach a class using the media examples on the disc.

The activity and discussion guides teach media literacy concepts, skills and techniques of persuasion. Topics include body image, alcohol, tobacco, race, class and aging, and illustrate the new marketing techniques of stealth and viral marketing.  Media Literacy Toolbox looks beyond the frame to investigate our media system and the power of Big Media, independent media, media justice and media activism. While it can be used for individual study, Media Literacy Toolbox is designed to be used in classrooms, community groups and other group settings to:

• Teach basic media literacy concepts to people of any age
• Learn how to deconstruct media messages
• Understand our changing media system and current media issues
• Access ideas and resources for making your own media
• Discover ways to improve our media environment

The Media Literacy Toolbox DVD-ROM will be available in February 2008.

Special pre-order price! (ALL orders placed before March 1, 2008)     $79

The New Mexico Media Literacy Project is proud to offer the resource Media & Consumerism as our monthly featured product.

Media & Consumerism is a K-12 curriculum containing over 40 lesson plans that teach students how corporations market consumerism as a value and the impact of consumer spending on our world.

The curriculum incorporates hands-on activities, peer collaboration and classroom discussion to build critical thinking skills in subjects including language arts, science, health, social studies and technology.

Students learn how media influences purchasing decisions and ways to actively confront the onslaught of commercialism in our culture.

This resource is available for the sale price of $69, which includes free domestic shipping.

Since its inception in 1997, NMMLP has seen submissions for the annual Bad Ad Contest increase each year. We are expecting a record number of entries for the 10th annual celebration.

The contest serves as a showcase for student deconstruction of bad ads. NMMLP would like to celebrate the contest in grand fashion this year with an open invitation for young people to participate and compete for cash prizes. There will also be prizes awarded to teachers or others who sponsor the winning entries.

The recent Federal Communications Commission's vote to relax its newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership rule was a huge disappointment to all minority owned media, according to UNITY: Journalists of Color, Inc.

A recent study released by Free Press, a national media policy organization, found that even though people of color comprise 33 percent of the U.S. population, they only account for 3.15 percent of commercial broadcast television station owners.

UNITY, representing more than 10,000 journalists from the Asian American Journalists Association, the National Association of Black Journalists, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and the Native American Journalists Association, responded to the study by supporting FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein's call for an independent task force that would examine the effects of media consolidation and oppose the FCC ruling until it addresses how to increase minority broadcast ownership. The vote went forward without the creation of the task force to address these crucial issues.

"As the nation's demographics shift towards more people of color, we have a responsibility to the future generations to fight back and demand media ownership that reflects our nation's diversity," said UNITY Executive Director Onica N. Makwakwa.

Despite the recent ruling, UNITY is continuing to take action to advocate for minority ownership. Participants can get involved in several ways:

- Visit www.stopbigmedia.com and sign the open letter urging Congress to stop the FCC and stand with the public interest.

- Write your member of Congress.

- Send a letter to the editor of your local paper.