Media literacy educator Nick Pernisco's new book, Practical Media Literacy: An essential guide to the critical thinking skills for our digital world, is the perfect introduction to media literacy for young adults, teachers, and parents. Pernisco has distilled his years of teaching experience into a practical guide for learning the most crucial skills needed to be a digital citizen in the 21st century. This is a must-read for anyone interested in learning how to interpret the enormous amounts of information we are exposed to everyday, both in traditional media and online.

The book includes an introduction to media and media literacy, explaining what media is, how it affects us, and why we should pay close attention to it. The reader is then presented with a framework that can be used to analyze any type of media. Once the basics are thoroughly explained, the book focuses on individual types of media and specific methods for analyzing each type. Readers will learn to analyze and think critically about movies, television, music, social media, advertising, news, video games, and more. Each section contains relevant exercises to help readers better understand the impact each type of media has on their lives. These exercises can be completed alone, or may be used as lesson plans in a classroom setting.

This 2nd edition builds on the strengths of the previous version.

-A stronger focus on the learner. The book explains media literacy from its most basic elements to some sophisticated topics of interest for all ages. This makes the book a perfect textbook for any K-12 classroom.

-Expanded information on more types of media. Movies, TV, advertising, photography, social media, music, news, and video games each get their own chapter, each illustrating details about how to analyze each type of media and numerous activities that may be used as lesson plans.

This book is perfect as a textbook for a course on media literacy, an introductory course about media, any class that uses media (tv, movies, music, the web) to convey information, for at home use by parents, and for curious minds trying to better understand their world.
About the Author: Nick Pernisco is an instructor in the Media Studies department at Santa Monica College, and has lectured in the Cinema and Television Arts department at California State University, Northridge. He has taught classes on media literacy, race and gender in journalism, and radio and television production. Nick has been a professional in the media industry since 1996, beginning his career as a freelance media producer. He later went on to work in radio advertising, music production, voice and screen acting, and film production. Nick has also worked in many other facets of the media industry over the years. In 2005, Nick founded Understand Media, a media literacy website containing original articles, podcasts, videos, lesson plans, discussion forums, and a blog. Since its creation, Understand Media has become one of the most visited media literacy website on the Internet. Also in 2005, Nick founded Carmelina Films, a film production company dedicated to producing socially-relevant video content. The company has produced several critically acclaimed educational videos, including "Teaching Media Literacy: Asking Questions", "Understanding Media Literacy", and "Podcasting and Blogging Essentials". In 2009, Nick founded TeleBEEM, at first developing educational and entertainment apps for iPhone/iPad, Android, and Blackberry. TeleBEEM later expanded into other app categories and eventually also included a portfolio of online media brands. Nick currently teaches online media studies courses at Santa Monica College, lives in the Seattle area with his wife and two cats, and participates in a variety of volunteer activities in the non-profit and government sectors.