Nov. 8, 2017
Lisa Guernsey wrote for Slate about teaching kids media literacy:
Deep within a public library in Maryland, pinned to the wall of a room called the Innovation Lab, is a photograph that will cause you to look twice. It shows an adorable little boy in flip-flops, a blue T-shirt, and red shorts, nestled up against a muscular, slithering snake at least 10 times his size. The little boy, grinning, is patting the snake on the head.
The boy in the image created the photograph last year after bounding into the library with his younger sister and mother to gather images for an elementary school project. With guidance from Linda Bartkowski, a part-time librarian in the digital media resource hub, he searched the library’s free image database for a photograph of a snake, captured an image of himself in front of the green screen set up in the back of the lab, and then used photo-editing software to generate his masterpiece.