About Understand Media

Understand Media was founded by Nick Pernisco with the sole intention of educating the community about media. Mr. Pernisco is an Associate Professor at Santa Monica College, and an Adjunct Professor at California State University, Northridge. He has been involved in the media education community since 2005, but has been producing media professionally since 1996.

Since media is something we should all know about, Understand Media contains resources for teachers of all levels, parents, children, and the general community. Resources include lesson plans for teaching media literacy in the classroom, helpful books about media, media literacy and media issues, and links to numerous websites that help deepen the understanding of media in our society.

Articles about media are also provided for download and use in the classroom and in general discussions. The site also features multimedia presentations of key issues, available in both audio-only and in video formats.

We also pride ourselves in being one of the only media education sites in the United States to provide resources in Spanish.

Content Accessibility Policy

Understand Media's first priority is to spread the values and concepts of media literacy throughout the world, to the most amount of people possible, through the use of original content available on the site. Because of this, the content on Understand Media is provided free of charge.

The materials may also be reproduced for use in classrooms, but may not be posted on other websites. If you find an article or resource useful, please link to the page on Understand Media on which the content is available.

For more information about this and other legal policies, please visit our terms of use.

Site Advertising

Understand Media is proud to present our content with no third-party advertising. This means that we do not accept money or barter exchanges for any ad, banner, or content on our site. We are committed to bringing you only the best material we possibly can, and this can only be done free of bias by not accepting money or gifts from any person or organization. This way, you can be assured that any content you see on the site is content we personally believe will be of use to you.

We also work with our sister organization, Carmelina Films, to present information about media resources on video to our site's visitors. Understand Media and Carmelina Films are tightly related, so you can be sure that both organizations have the same ideologies and goals. All proceeds from the sales of the video resources are reinvested directly into creating new and exciting content for Understand Media and Carmelina Films.