Humans spend a significant amount of our time engaging with an ever growing variety of media-from modern digital mediums such as TV, film, social networking, or video games, to more traditional forms of conveying information and meaning, like art, literature, or music. How do different media we encounter (or even avoid) contribute to individual and shared knowledge-building that occurs outside our formal institutions of schooling? What are the limits and promises of different media as modes of informal education, especially when they can just as easily encourage/broaden as stifle/mislead out thinking and perspectives? Why does this matter? In this course, we will critically examine the influences of different media on what we know and how we think, contemplate how this relates to our formalized educational experiences, and discuss some implications for individuals and society.