Imaginative education and the cognitive tools associated with somatic, mythic and romantic kinds of understanding provide a much-needed language to help elementary media educators understand why TV programs, computer games and advertising are so attractive to students; for example, why students can memorize a candy bar jingle but not their times tables. The strategies so prevalent in media (binary opposites, heroic qualities, extremes and limits) are often what drive the engagement of children (and adults as well), yet as Egan (1997) suggests,

"It is a little odd that the eight- to fifteen-year-old's enjoyment of books, TV shows, and films that deal with the exotic and the extreme has had so little impact on learning theories and curriculum planning (p. 85)."

This workshop will more closely examine the role of the cognitive tools in the development of engaging- and thought-provoking-media-education lessons. The focus will be on engaging, not enraging the students (which often happens when discussing topics of violence and video games) and most importantly, awakening their senses to the naturalness of media in our lives today.