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www.projectlooksharp.org      July 12, 2017

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www.projectlooksharp.org      July 12, 2017

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morning session

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afternoon session

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Earlier this year, I began experimenting with different strategies for stepping outside of the 24-hour news cycle. I was overwhelmed by the continuous streams of information available online, and mainly consuming fleeting tweets and headlines, I felt like I knew a little bit about a lot of things and not a lot about anything specific. So I began reading a lot about how other people read the news and reconstructing my media diet according to my own information needs and time preferences.

In the age of the 24-hour news cycle, when high volumes of information are updated in real-time and are perpetually at your fingertips, choosing what to read, when, and how is a news literacy skill. In the same way that financial literacy requires knowing how money works and the most effective methods for managing it, news literacy requires familiarity with how journalism is made and with the most effective ways to consume it.

But before I could construct a news diet for myself, I needed to be familiar with available sources; I needed to know what tools existed to read or watch the news, spanning media (radio apps, RSS readers, curated apps, email newsletters, TV, Web video, print and digital editions of publications, social feeds); and I needed to have a useful system for mixing and matching platforms to create a reading routine that could keep me informed, sane, and fit my lifestyle.

While formalized training on how to do this isn't yet at the top of news literacy education agendas, which are still focused on teaching students to recognize reliable news sources, there are many tools and frameworks that do exist that helped me assess my schedule, manage my time, and help me start to read content in the most effective way.

One way to think about mitigating media overload is through the slow news movement, largely popularized by Dan Gillmor, director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University's Journalism School. It's named after the slow-food movement, which encourages consumers to buy, cook and eat slowly in order to fortify both their physical and mental health, going against society's emphasis on (unhealthily) convenient fast food.

In the words of slow-news blogger Marie-Catherine Beuth:

Instead of making their users fight to keep up with the 24 hour news cycle, I believe the media should make it easier for their (otherwise busy) users to be well-informed, especially when everything is reported in real-time. It is very pretentious to keep assuming we have our readers/watchers/listeners' attention at all times. It would be safer to bet on the fact that often enough, people have missed bits and pieces of unfolding stories. And they don't have a lot of time to catch up on news. I believe that solving this equation will make the media experience more valuable to its consumers. And hopefully improve the economics of journalism.

Toward this end, she developed Newstapes, an experiment around the concept of a news concierge in which casual news consumers are caught up on what's going on in the world through curated "mixtapes" of news ( here are some examples). That has since been developed into her current project, News on Demand. The formula she uses to power it is a three-step process that provides personalized facts and context based on a user's "attention profile," or how much time they have to read.

For those slow-news newbies who wish to fashion a news diet according to available time and depth of interest by themselves, rather than relying on other aggregators or curators, there are a host of tools available to help. Say for example, simple save-for-later services like Instapaper, Safari Reader, Pocket, or even WNYC's new save-for-offline-listening app. The trick is to consider uses for them in light of the framework that thinkers like Gillmor and Beuth provide for slow news.

"Carving out time for reflection is essential for everyone. I think that's a key point," says Gillmor, who does his longform reading in magazines and books, and mostly in the morning or while traveling. "We can't factcheck and vet all or even very much of what we read/hear/watch/etc., because we don't have the time or the resources. We should ask deeper questions when it's something close to home, and especially when we are making important decisions based on the information."

Here, for instance, are a set of questions (that came out of my experiment) to help construct a media diet, something of a DIY news literacy guide. I borrowed insights from the now-famous Getting Things Done time-management and productivity system, which was originally developed by David Allen, and from Jocelyn Glei's tips on building routine and maximizing creative energy.
Question 1: Why am I consuming this news?
-Is it news that I don't want to miss because it is about a place, people, or an issue I care for, am curious about, or am connected to through my personal, social, or professional communities?
-Is it news I consume by falling into a click-hole, through mindless procrastination, or because I feel I should consume it, to be in the know or to boost my image?
Question 2: What is the most effective way for me to consume news?
-Do I want to consume only news from a trusted source to minimize source-vetting time or do I want to include time to verify what I'm finding?
-What device do I want to read or watch on? What time of day? Where will I be? How long will I spend?
Question 3: Do I want to act on this news?
-Will I want to share it afterwards, in an email, an article, or social feed?
-Will I want to save it for later?
-Do I want to participate in the issue, write about it, comment or debate on it?

We make all these decisions while navigating streams of content but don't necessarily take the time to reflect upon them. But by exploring those questions, my uses for read-later services such as Instapaper changed: I would save all longform articles separately from breaking news, and schedule time to explore specific topics only when I'd have the bandwidth to do so. For example, I try to read a longform piece every morning that has something to do with the events of the last month-in the morning, my mind is clear, I have the attention for longform, and I can slowly digest it over the course of the day. Meanwhile, aside from the beats I cover, I only check breaking news updates through curated apps or newsletters and in the late afternoon, because my attention span is shorter, I am likely on-the-go and I likely won't (and don't need to) remember them. And I allot specific time to comb through websites or publications I care for, reading short pieces then and there and saving longer ones for the next morning or a weekend.

Gillmor has developed similar strategies. "I assemble my own news report(s) from a variety of sources and tools, and increasingly I think that's true for most people, even if they don't do it consciously," he tells me in an email. "I spend considerable time following technology and policy issues. Some of the best information I get in those areas comes via mail lists where longtime experts send out links to things they considers important (usually they are). That automatically puts a time gap into the process, which is valuable," he continues. "The more current the news is, the more skeptical I am of what I'm seeing. That's been my rule for a long time, and is unlikely to change."
Funding for this coverage is provided by the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today.

Jihii Jolly is a freelance journalist and video producer in New York City

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Earlier this year, I began experimenting with different strategies for stepping outside of the 24-hour news cycle. I was overwhelmed by the continuous streams of information available online, and mainly consuming fleeting tweets and headlines, I felt like I knew a little bit about a lot of things and not a lot about anything specific.

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"At a certain point, there's a misery quotient that results from immersing one's self in the news, in the almost forensic detail of the suffering, and I have to ask myself, 'How does this affect my life?'" she wrote.

Experts said they had not seen data to conclude that consumers had changed their habits to protect their mental health, but added that the news ecosystem had changed drastically over the past five years, accelerating the sense of information overload.

Dan Gillmor, a professor of media literacy at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, said the number of news media has increased sharply, while there has been an "incredible rise of the ubiquitousness of social media" and sharing of news on platforms such as Facebook.

"Things really are different," he said. "There's just more stuff if we're online and paying attention. There's a lot to pay attention to."

He added that in today's television news environment, the definition of breaking news "means the latest thing we have to show you."

Leslie-Jean Thornton, a journalism professor who is a colleague of Mr. Gillmor's at Arizona State University, said that even faculty members who by necessity were steeped in news needed breaks from it.

"As journalism professors, there's a need and a desire to stay on top of things - so much so that it becomes somewhat addictive for some of us," she wrote in an email. "It's hard to step away, even for a few hours, but yet the constant wash of uncertainties is emotionally draining and physically harmful - teeth damaged from being clenched in anger or frustration, skyrocketing blood pressure, heart palpitations."

She added, "I joke that we need trauma care, but I'm not really joking at all."

Graham C. L. Davey, emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Sussex in England, said in an email that many people followed the news because they did not want to be caught unaware.

"These are the people with an intolerance of uncertainty, and are probably already anxious individuals, and are exactly the ones for whom negative news has a negative psychological impact on their own personal anxieties and worries," he said.

As consumers become satiated, the news media responds by increasing the "emotionality" of its coverage, meaning negativity is emphasized to keep customers engaged, he wrote.

Mr. Gillmor has been a proponent of the "slow news movement," named after the slow food movement, which maintains it is better for consumers' health to cook and eat more slowly.

"We haven't been asking anything of the news-producing group, namely journalists, who I would strongly argue should be more involved in managing the insane flow of information and misinformation," he said. "It would be better if we had an approach that said, 'Calm down.'"

How then best to cope with the velocity and quantity of news?

Some have found comfort in positive news, said Seán Dagan Wood, editor in chief of Positive News, a website and quarterly print magazine that highlights "quality independent reporting that focuses on progress and possibility."

In the 12 weeks since the election, visitors to the website have increased by 93 percent, and magazine subscriptions are up by 77 percent compared with the 12 weeks before the election, Mr. Wood said in an email.

Fear-based media does nothing for our emotional wellbeing. I'm following @PositiveNewsUK https://t.co/JV6Fne7p6N
- HolisticEmotionalHea (@EmotionsHealer) Nov. 9, 2016

For those glued to the news, Curtis W. Reisinger, a clinical psychologist at Zucker Hillside Hospital in Glen Oaks, N.Y., recommended not reading or watching any just before bedtime because thoughts of how to respond to it can disrupt sleep. Better to watch sports or entertainment rather than the "worry content" of news, he said.

Nir Eyal, who writes a blog about "behavioral design" - the intersection of psychology, technology and business - said he habitually turned to campaign coverage to momentarily distract him from his work and escape from "an uncomfortable reality."

What he found, however, was that he traded one uncomfortable reality (the demand to get his work done) for another (the addictive quality of watching the news for fear he was missing out on something).

"The solution became the problem," he said.

In a recent blog post, "How to Stay Informed Without Losing Your Mind," he noted that "online news is never done," adding that reading it left him "overwhelmed, exhausted and anxious."

"The internet never says, 'You've had enough, now go away,'" he wrote.

Mr. Eyal has changed some of his habits; he has installed the News Feed Eradicator for Facebook and removed Facebook and Twitter apps from his iPhone, checking them only from his desktop.

He has also taken to reading a daily newspaper because editors select the top stories and spare him from reading "the incomplete, incremental, second-rate stuff often published online."

"And when I physically turned the last page of the newspaper - such a satisfying moment - I felt as if I'd read enough to be informed for the day," he said.

If all else fails, and you still feel bouts of news fatigue, you can turn to Twitter for photos of cute animals.

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Fatigued by the News? Experts Suggest How to Adjust Your Media Diet

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"At a certain point, there's a misery quotient that results from immersing one's self in the news, in the almost forensic detail of the suffering, and I have to ask myself, 'How does this affect my life?'" she wrote.

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Guidance/ideas for Web site evaluation from Project Look Sharp

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Guidance/ideas for Web site evaluation from Project Look Sharp

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Project Look Sharp :: K-12 & Higher Ed. Media Literacy Lesson Plans :: Ithaca College

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Project Look Sharp provides lesson plans, materials, training and support to help teachers integrate media literacy into their classroom curricula.

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Hydrofracking lesson information from Project Look Sharp

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Hydrofracking lesson information from Project Look Sharp

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Project Look Sharp :: K-12 & Higher Ed. Media Literacy Lesson Plans :: Ithaca College

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Project Look Sharp provides lesson plans, materials, training and support to help teachers integrate media literacy into their classroom curricula.

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PBS story on fake news in K-12 curriculum

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PBS story on fake news in K-12 curriculum

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JUDY WOODRUFF: But first: Helping children distinguish between false information and fact-based news, it's a distinction increasingly a problem for adults.

And, to be clear, we're referring to false information disguised as a legitimate news story, not reporting that people dislike for political reasons and label fake news.

In Washington state, educators and media literacy advocates have joined together with legislators to address the problem.

Special correspondent Kavitha Cardoza with our partner Education Week traveled there recently.

It's part of our weekly series Making the Grade.

NIAMH O'CONNELL, Third Grade Teacher, Bertschi School: This was the front page of The Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Niamh O'Connell third grade history class at Bertschi School is analyzing old news stories, looking for evidence of bias.

FRED CODDON, Third Grade Student, Bertschi School: People, if they don't know how to analyze it, will just say, oh, wow, that's true.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Fred Coddon looks at the choice of words used in a story about Japanese internment camps during World War II.

FRED CODDON: Notice how they're wording it Japanese, instead of Japanese-Americans?

NIAMH O'CONNELL: What was the purpose of that? Why do they do that?

FRED CODDON: The purpose was to say, oh, we're not imprisoning American citizens, or, as they put it, we're not evacuating American citizens. We're evacuating Japanese.

NIAMH O'CONNELL: And why do they use the word evacuate?

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Another student also notices the language.

WILL PARSONS, Third Grade Student, Bertschi School: I saw some fake advertising for the Japanese internment camps. They said they were assembly centers.

NIAMH O'CONNELL: So they kind of made it seem really cool, and, actually, it wasn't?

WILL PARSONS: Yes.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: O'Connell uses examples from the past, so these kids can become smarter about media messages in the present, even though they're only 8 years old.

COCO JAMES, Third Grade Student, Bertschi School: I want to learn how to like analyze it myself and have my own opinion.

NIAMH O'CONNELL: They soak up everything around them. I think it's important for kids to be able to control the interpretations that they hear and see every day, instead of the interpretations maybe controlling them.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Recognizing bias in news stories is one form of media literacy. Spotting when the news is entirely fabricated, like these stories, is something else entirely.

Often, these stories are designed to look as if they come from legitimate news organizations, and are meant to be easily shared on social media, resulting in confusion over what's real.

During the recent election season, there have been reports of a concerted effort to spread fake news, in a bid to influence public opinion. A recent Stanford University study of almost 8,000 students showed they were easily duped online.

Researchers found, overall, young people's ability to reason about the information on the Internet can be summed up in one word: bleak.

You have been working on media literacy for how long?

CLAIRE BEACH, Media Literacy Now: About 40 years.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Claire Beach is a media literacy advocate and former teacher. She says just because kids are comfortable with social media doesn't mean they're savvy about the information they're consuming.

CLAIRE BEACH: When they're using their phones, they may know how to make something work, but they don't have the ethical piece, the emotional intelligence piece. It's a wilderness out there for some kids.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: She's worked with lawmakers like Democratic state Senator Marko Liias to encourage media literacy classes in grades K through 12.

MARKO LIIAS (D), Washington State Senator: I was reading a stunning statistic that, just since 2003 to today, humanity has created more information than we created in all of human history up until 2003. So the pace of information, the pace of data, the pace of what our students are being exposed to is rising exponentially.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: How do you convince people that this is not about politics, this is about critical thinking?

MARKO LIIAS: Both of the bills that I have passed have had bipartisan support. Whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, right or left, we want people to go into the voting booth educated and prepared to make the best decision for our communities. And if people can't discern fake information from real information, that really corrodes the basic institutions of our democracy.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: The law in Washington state encourages educators to develop policies around media literacy and to share resources.

It also allows districts access to federal technology funding. This new law in Washington is being used as a model by about a dozen other states. Advocates want to see media literacy taught in all 50 states.

JAMES STEYER, Founder and CEO, Common Sense Media: There's clearly growing momentum to pass this kind of legislation.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Jim Steyer founded Common Sense, one of several organizations dedicated to media literacy.

NARRATOR: Here are five ways to spot fake news.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: They have also worked with Harvard University to create free lesson plans and online resources.

JAMES STEYER: The essence of media literacy is critical thinking. Every child in America needs those skills, particularly when they live in this 24/7 media and technology world, where they're just bombarded with information. Oftentimes, it's inaccurate.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: These students are in Catherine Sparks' English class at Edmonds-Woodway High School.

STUDENT: It's crazy how many people actually trust these sources.

STUDENT: You can't distinguish the difference anymore.

STUDENT: It can get 1,000 retweets. It is not even true.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Sparks uses the play "Hamlet" to talk about fake news.

CATHERINE SPARKS, Teacher, Edmonds-Woodway High School: It's about spying and lying and how that creates a ripe environment for the proliferation of fake news.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Sparks has created untrue stories based on the play.

CATHERINE SPARKS: In act one, scene two, when he says oh, but this too, too solid flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew, sure, it could be a metaphor, but Hamlet has a shocking flesh-eating illness.

(LAUGHTER)

CATHERINE SPARKS: Could you actually support that with evidence from the text? Good luck. Fake news is not news you disagree with. Fake news is fabricated news.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Sparks believes letting her students create their own fake news will teach them how to critically think through some of the information they receive. What words are used? Who benefits? Is there any truth to the story?

STUDENT: It's got to be dramatic, like, absurd things that you're like, what?

CATHERINE SPARKS: This is a juicy story right here.

STUDENT: It's entirely fabricated.

CATHERINE SPARKS: What would be the outcome of producing this story?

STUDENT: If the public saw this, they're like, oh, my gosh, there's so much drama and scandal going on.

CATHERINE SPARKS: What's been the most painful about the proliferation of fake news in the media is to watch my students start to distrust everything.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: That's exactly why state Senator Marko Liias says media literacy is so important.

MARKO LIIAS: At its bedrock, when our founding fathers created this country, the reason why they were so committed to public education was to make sure that we had an educated citizenry.

CATHERINE SPARKS: Anything that starts with "share if you're outraged," that's a bad sign. And outrage is just the lifeblood of fake news.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: For the PBS NewsHour and Education Week, I'm Kavitha Cardoza in Seattle, Washington.

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How media literacy can help students discern fake news

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Recognizing bias in news stories is one form of media literacy. Spotting when the news is totally fabricated is something else entirely. How can teachers help students tell fact from media fiction? Educators and media literacy advocates in Washington state are working together with legislators to address the problem.

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Super interesting resource for determining what is owned by major media companies own

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Super interesting resource for determining what is owned by major media companies own

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Who Owns What - Columbia Journalism Review

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Who Owns What The Delacorte Lectures Magazines and Their Websites: A Columbia Journalism Review Survey and Report Study Guides

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The Brady Bunch - Bad Luck, Come and Get Me!

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Peter puts on the bad luck tiki idol and wakes up to a huge spider crawling up his chest!

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Lemming Suicide Myth
Disney Film Faked Bogus Behavior

Lemmings do not commit mass suicide. It's a myth, but it's remarkable how many people believe it. Ask a few.

"It's a complete urban legend," said state wildlife biologist Thomas McDonough. "I think it blew out of proportion based on a Disney documentary in the '50s, and that brought it to the mainstream."

Lemmings are a kind of short tailed vole, a mouse-like rodent that favors tundra and open grasslands. Three kinds are found in Alaska, including the collared lemming, the only rodent that turns white in winter.

In 1958 Walt Disney produced "White Wilderness," part of the studio's "True Life Adventure" series. "White Wilderness" featured a segment on lemmings, detailing their strange compulsion to commit mass suicide.

According to a 1983 investigation by Canadian Broadcasting Corporation producer Brian Vallee, the lemming scenes were faked. The lemmings supposedly committing mass suicide by leaping into the ocean were actually thrown off a cliff by the Disney filmmakers. The epic "lemming migration" was staged using careful editing, tight camera angles and a few dozen lemmings running on snow covered lazy-Susan style turntable.

"White Wilderness" was filmed in Alberta, Canada, a landlocked province, and not on location in lemmings' natural habitat. There are about 20 lemming species found in the circumpolar north - but evidently not in that area of Alberta. So the Disney people bought lemmings from Inuit children a couple provinces away in Manitoba and staged the whole sequence.

In the lemming segment, the little rodents assemble for a mass migration, scamper across the tundra and ford a tiny stream as narrator Winston Hibbler explains that, "A kind of compulsion seizes each tiny rodent and, carried along by an unreasoning hysteria, each falls into step for a march that will take them to a strange destiny."

That destiny is to jump into the ocean. As they approach the "sea," (actually a river -more tight cropping) Hibbler continues, "They've become victims of an obsession -- a one-track thought: Move on! Move on!"

The "pack of lemmings" reaches the final precipice. "This is the last chance to turn back," Hibbler states. "Yet over they go, casting themselves out bodily into space."

Lemmings are seen flying into the water. The final shot shows the sea awash with dying lemmings.

Certainly, some scenes in nature documentaries are staged. In Sir David Attenborough's recent documentary, "The Life of Birds," the close-up footage of a flying duck, filmed razor-sharp from the bird's wingtip, was shot from a car using a mallard drake trained to fly alongside the car. But faking an entirely mythical event is something else.

"Disney had to have gotten that idea from somewhere," said Thomas McDonough, the state wildlife biologist. Disney likely confused dispersal with migration, he added, and embellished a kernel of truth.
Lemming populations fluctuate enormously based on predators, food, climate and other factors. Under ideal conditions, in a single year a population of voles can increase by a factor of ten. When they've exhausted the local food supply, they disperse, as do moose, beaver and many other animals.

Lemmings can swim and will cross bodies of water in their quest for greener pastures. Sometimes they drown. Dispersal and accidental death is a far cry from the instinctive, deliberate mass suicide depicted in "White Wilderness," but Hibbler explains that life is tough in the lemmings' "weird world of frozen chaos." The voice-over implies that lemmings take the plunge every seven to ten years to alleviate overpopulation.

"What people see is essentially mass dispersal," said zoologist Gordon Jarrell, an expert in small mammals with the University of Alaska Fairbanks. "Sometimes it's pretty directional. The classic example is in the Scandinavian mountains, where (lemmings) have been dramatically observed. They will come to a body of water and be temporarily stopped, and eventually they'll build up along the shore so dense and they will swim across. If they get wet to the skin, they 're essentially dead."

"There's no question that at times they will build up to huge numbers," Jarrell added. "One description from Barrow does talk about them drowning and piling up on the shore."

Jarrell said when people learn that he works with lemmings, the mass suicide issue often comes up.

"It's a frequent question," he said "'Do they really kill themselves?' No. The answer is unequivocal, no they don't."

Receive a monthly notice about new issues and articles.

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Lemming Suicide Myth, Alaska Department of Fish and Game

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Lemmings do not commit mass suicide. It's a myth, but it's remarkable how many people believe it. Ask a few. "It's a complete urban legend," said state wildlife biologist Thomas McDonough. "I think it blew out of proportion based on a Disney documentary in the '50s, and that brought it to the mainstream."

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Sure, men can think with only one thing at a time: their brains or their penises. But how much does the latter really run the show?

Quick: What are you thinking about right now? Well, given that you're reading this article, it's probably sex. But there's a good chance you were thinking about it anyway. After all, men think about sex every seven seconds, right?

That's more than 500 times an hour and more than 8,000 times during the approximately 16 hours you're awake. We can only imagine how those numbers fluctuate during sleep.

From the editors of ​ Details ​

But there's no real research to back up this oft-cited stat. And while people often attribute the myth to research by the Kinsey Institute, the *actual *research shows that while men think about sex a lot (and yes, more often than women), every seven seconds is a gross exaggeration. When Kinsey researchers asked men and women how often they think about sex, 54 percent of men said they think about sex several times a day, 43 percent responded a few times per week or just a few times per month, and 4 percent said less than once a month. Meanwhile, 19 percent of women said they thought about sex every day or several times a day, 67 percent responded a few times per week or a few times a month or, and 14 percent said less than once a month.

It should be noted that this study included men and women of all ages, and while we're sure there are a few randy grandmas and grandpas out there, the average elderly couple keep their beds apart for a reason, which could have a lot to do with all of the I-rarely-think-about-sex responses. Also, the study didn't get into the nitty gritty of "every day or several times a day," which is a pretty big range. And last but not least, if a researcher asked you right now how often you think about sex, how on-target would your estimate really be?

But since there's no good way to look at people's brains for months on end and determine exactly what they're thinking about all day, Ohio State University recently approached the question in a different way. They armed a group of 18-to-25-year-olds with handheld tally counters and told them to track their thoughts about sex, food, and sleep.

The results: The average man tallied 19 sexy thoughts per day-that comes out to about once every 1.26 hours. To compare that with other thoughts on the average mind, men counted thinking about food 18 times and sleeping 11 times per day. Sex wasn't even the top craving for women, who reported thinking about sex 10 times, food 15 times, and sleep 8.5 times a day.

What are you thinking about now? We're guessing a good romp followed by a snack and a nap.

MORE STORIES LIKE THIS ONE

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Health Myth: Do Men Really Think About Sex Every 7 Seconds?

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Sure, men can think with only one thing at a time: their brains or their penises. But how much does the latter really run the show? Quick: What are you thinking about right now? Well, given that you're reading this article, it's probably sex. But there's a good chance you were thinking about it anyway.

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Project Look Sharp :: K-12 & Higher Ed. Media Literacy Lesson Plans :: Ithaca College

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Project Look Sharp provides lesson plans, materials, training and support to help teachers integrate media literacy into their classroom curricula.