The Nomadic Professor: Media Literacy 10-month Subscription
Teach teens to dissect headlines, decode bias, and cut through media noise using real-world tools, short videos, and sharp analysis. A one-semester course that builds brains, not just opinions.
$149
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Please note: this item is non-refundable.
2026 Eleventh-Grade Curriculum Kit
The Nomadic Professor: Media Literacy is a one-semester high school course that teaches students how to evaluate modern media, analyze messaging, and assess the reliability of information.
The course is organized into five units—Fundamentals, History, Politics, Language, and Tools—each focusing on a different aspect of how media is created and interpreted. Students examine how information is presented, how language shapes perception, and how bias can influence what is reported and how it is received.
Students work through real examples. They evaluate political cartoons, analyze rhetoric, and practice fact-checking using methods such as lateral reading and source comparison. These activities are designed to help him move beyond reacting to information and begin assessing it more deliberately.
The format combines short video instruction with guided exercises and written responses, allowing students to apply each concept as they learn it.
This course meets the standard 65-hour requirement for ½ credit in language arts. For students who need a more advanced option, it can be extended with additional reading and a research project.
It fits well in the later high school years, particularly for students who are regularly interacting with digital media and need a clearer framework for evaluating what they encounter.
This course trains students to pause before reacting—looking past the headline to ask what’s being said, how it’s framed, and what might be missing.
How to Use The Nomadic Professor: Media Literacy
- Set aside a regular block of time each week. Most students complete 1 to 2 sessions per week, depending on pace and schedule.
- Have your student work through each session in order. This includes watching the videos, reading the lesson material, and completing the exercises.
- Make sure he completes the real-world assignments. These are central to the course and give him practice applying the concepts to actual media.
- Expect some topics to take longer than others. When a lesson raises new questions, it’s worth taking the time to follow through rather than moving on quickly.
- Stay consistent with the schedule. Most students finish the course in about 16–18 weeks, which meets the 65-hour requirement for ½ credit in language arts.
- For a more advanced option, add the recommended reading and assign a research project to extend the writing component.
- Keep a simple log of time and completed work. This makes it easy to document the course for credit at the end.
In the 2026 kits this course earns high school credit:
0.5 credits of Media Literacy Elective
Language Arts · 11th grade · Classic and Non-Religious kits
Unit 1: The Fundamentals
- From humane technology, to technology's way of pushing back on us, to the impact of the medium, to our confidence in our intuitions, and more.
- Where did "the media" come from in seven parts: from the "penny press," to 24-hour news, to social media, to the fragmentation of legacy media, to artificial intelligence, and more.
- From the "political spectrum," to the American media landscape, to echo chambers, filter bubbles, and the "Daily Me," to information warfare, and more.
- Including bias, vested interest, agenda, fact, opinion, rhetoric, logic, fallacies, value judgments, political cartoons, figures of speech, framing, inferences, and more.
- Including lateral reading, reading like a historian, cognitive resistance, misinformation and disinformation, single-tasking, search engines, and more.
- Follow today’s headlines and partisan news coverage with clear insight into the interests of your sources
- Find the range of sources that will constitute your healthy news diet
- Learn to understand and get behind the surface of language and images like a professional
- Gain perspective on the political landscape of our information environment, and arm yourself and your students with lifelong skills for discernment and judgment
Publisher: The Nomadic Professor
Author: Dr. William Kesler Jackson & Nate Noorlander
Age Recommendation: 14+
Grade Recommendation: 9th Grade+
Faith-Based: No
Subscription Info: Online 10-Month Subscription
Full Course Time: 65 hours
System Requirements: Internet access
Format: Online
Copyright: 2025
Media Literacy has been designed to fulfill the hours requirements of a one semester, ½ credit elective course, when taken in full. The course will require approximately 65 hours of classroom time to complete.
Media Literacy fulfills the hours and content requirements for the credits listed above. Students, instructors, supervisors, and/or parents should organize coursework into a portfolio that can be used to justify the credits and grades claimed on final high school transcripts. The Nomadic Professor does not provide the high school transcript unless the course is taken through one of our partners, such as Aim Academy Online. When taken through our live instruction listing with Aim Academy our courses are also A-G and NCAA approved.
Last, each Nomadic Course comes with an Instructor’s Guide with further details about how to document hours and content for transcript credit.
Receive complimentary access to The History of Free Speech course with any Timberdoodle purchase of The Nomadic Professor!
“From 'doom scrolling' to 'fake news' to scams of all kinds—not to mention young children carrying around smartphones from the time they can barely toddle—understanding the risks we face being online is imperative for all of us. If you are looking for a practical elective for your high school student or a current-events 'continuing education' course for yourself, I highly recommend The Nomadic Professor’s Media Literacy course.” Read the Review.
Homeschool Happenings:
“The Nomadic Professor's Media Literacy course is excellent. The time and effort that went into putting this course together is greatly appreciated. This is an excellent course that I would highly recommend.” Read the Review.
Find answers to the most frequently asked questions about this product below:
The Media Literacy course includes a research and writing assignment that supplements the core content. The paper is largely taught through outside readings in So What?: The Writer's Argument (available from the publisher). A student could take the course without the book if they wanted to plan on finding alternative (free) resources for those lessons or exclude the paper from the course altogether. Excluding the paper would change the hours they put into the course, but essentially, it would be the difference between a standard version of the course (without the paper) to something like an honors version of the course (with the paper).
Media Literacy has been designed to fulfill the hours requirements of a one semester, ½ credit elective course, when taken in full. The course will require approximately 65 hours of classroom time to complete.
The course includes some abstract and sophisticated concepts that make it most appropriate for students between 8th and 12th grade.
Sessions are designed to be completed in 30-90 minutes, depending on the reader and what parts of the course they utilize.
Media Literacy has been designed to fulfill the hours requirements of a one semester, ½ credit elective course, when taken in full. The course will require approximately 65 hours of work to complete.
Further calendar and planning guidance is included within the course as part of the course Instructor’s Guide.
A subscription to Ground News’s paid features is not required to complete the course. However, some parts of the course, such as learning about who funds a source, or what parent organizations own a source, will be easier to research with access to the paid features of Ground News.
The core content of the class can be completed entirely online! However, some of the course content is optionally available as downloads, which can be printed if that works best for the student.
Your subscription will last 10 months, so your student will have plenty of time to complete the course if he prefers to set his own schedule.
Sessions are designed to be completed in 30-90 minutes, depending on the reader and what parts of the course they utilize.
Media Literacy has been designed to fulfill the hour requirements of a one-semester, ½-credit elective course, when taken in full. The course will require approximately 65 hours of work to complete.
Further calendar and planning guidance is included within the course as part of the course Instructor’s Guide.
Your subscription is for 10 months.
The Nomadic Professor: Media Literacy counts as half a credit of Media Literacy Elective on a high school transcript. To turn its grade into a GPA, use our free homeschool GPA calculator: it works out each letter grade from your student's scores, figures the GPA by year and for all of high school, and prints a grade record for the transcript.
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