“Prosuming” across cultures : youth creating digital media across borders

The Scratch Online Community is a space that enables young people to share their creative digital projects internationally with a level of ease that was impossible only a few years ago. Like all creative communities, Scratch is not just a space for sharing products, work, techniques and tips and tricks, but also a space for social interaction. Media literacy educators have unprecedented challenges and opportunities in digital environments like Scratch to harness the vast amount of knowledge in the community to enhance students’ learning. They also have challenges and opportunities in terms of implementing a form of digital media literacy education that is responsive to social and cultural representation. One role of digital media literacy is to help young people to challenge unfair and derogatory portrayals of people and to break down processes of social and cultural ‘othering’ so that all community members feel included and safe to express themselves. This article considers how online community spaces might draw on social interaction to enhance cross-cultural understandings and learning through dialogue and creative practice. The article uses statistics to indicate the amount of international interaction in the Scratch community. It then uses qualitative analysis of forum discussions and creative digital work to analyse the types of cross cultural interaction that occurs.

Teaching digital media to digital natives

The majority of today's undergraduate students are 'digital natives'; a generation born into a world shaped by digital technologies. It is important to understand the significance of this when considering how to teach Digital Media to digital natives. This paper examines the analogies to literacy that recur in digital native debates. It argues that if the concept of digital literacy is to be useful, educators must attend to the multiple layers and proficiencies that comprise literacy. Rather than completely dispose of old teaching methods, updated pedagogical practices should integrate analysis and critique with exploratory and creative modes of learning.

The power of percent

Which statistic would you use if you were writing the newspaper headline for the following media release: "Tassie’s death rate of deaths arising from transport-related injuries was 13 per 100,000 people, or 50% higher than the national average”? (Martain, 2007). The rate “13 per 100,000” sounds very small whereas “50% higher” sounds quite large. Most people are aware of the tendency to choose between reporting data as actual numbers or using percents in order to gain attention. Looking at examples like this one can help students develop a critical quantitative literacy viewpoint when dealing with “authentic contexts” (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority [ACARA], 2013a, p. 37, 67). The importance of the distinction between reporting information in raw numbers or percents is not explicitly mentioned in the Australian Curriculum: Mathematics (ACARA, 2013b, p. 42). Although the document specifically mentions making “connections between equivalent fractions, decimals and percentages” [ACMNA131] in Year 6, there is no mention of the fundamental relationship between percent and the raw numbers represented in a part-whole fashion. Such understanding, however, is fundamental to the problem solving that is the focus of the curriculum in Years 6 to 9. The purpose of this article is to raise awareness of the opportunities to distinguish between the use of raw numbers and percents when comparisons are being made in contexts other than the media. It begins with the authors’ experiences in the classroom, which motivated a search in the literature, followed by a suggestion for a follow-up activity.

Media arts section, arts Pop : arts packages of practice

This Media Arts-POP implements Media Arts curriculum in a Year 4 classroom at Waterford West State School, Queensland. While media arts form was the lead area for this package, students developed knowledge of and skills in English, visual arts and some elements of music. In the media arts elements, students learned to use media production equipment (in this case iPads, although other tablets could be used), and to use techniques such as composition and lighting to capture digital images and to record voice and sound effects. The package demonstrates that a number of curriculum areas can be combined to ensure that various curriculum areas are covered without losing the specificity of any one area.

Digital Media Literacies in the Early Years

This chapter addresses children’s development of digital media literacies with iPads in preschool settings. The authors argue that children living in post-industrial societies participate in ‘transmedia’ experiences that call for new understandings of media literacy that recognise children’s ability to successfully participate in complex media ecologies. The chapter outlines a model for digital media literacies that includes the application of digital materials and media concepts through the processes of media production and media analysis. This model is then used as a framework to interpret children’s media production work across the preschools in our project.

Media Arts should be at the core of the Australian Curriculum

The Final Report of the Review of the Australian Curriculum is seriously flawed. Many aspects of the report have attracted comment – but the recommendation that schools do away with a major, world-leading innovation has not. For the first time, Media Arts, one of the five strands of the Arts curriculum, was to become a compulsory subject for primary school students. This will no longer be the case if the Review’s recommendations are adopted by the government.

Children participating in science through digital-media literacies

This article outlines the findings of a research project in which primary school students in Queensland, Australia undertook science learning through media arts pedagogy. The project was a component of the URLearning Project. We found that students' development of digital media literacies allowed participation and communication in science in ways that were otherwise unavailable to them.

Media Education in the Finnish School System : A Conceptual Analysis of the Subject Didactic Dimension of Media Education

The aim of the doctoral dissertation was to further our theoretical and empirical understanding of media education as practised in the context of Finnish basic education. The current era of intensive use of the Internet is recognised too. The doctoral dissertation presents the subject didactic dimension of media education as one of the main results of the conceptual analysis. The theoretical foundation is based on the idea of dividing the concept of media education into media and education (Vesterinen et al., 2006). As two ends of the dimension, these two can be understood didactically as content and pedagogy respectively. In the middle, subject didactics is considered to have one form closer to content matter (Subject Didactics I learning about media) and another closer to general pedagogical questions (Subject Didactics II learning with/through media). The empirical case studies of the dissertation are reported with foci on media literacy in the era of Web 2.0 (Kynäslahti et al., 2008), teacher reasoning in media educational situations (Vesterinen, Kynäslahti - Tella, 2010) and the research methodological implications of the use of information and communication technologies in the school (Vesterinen, Toom - Patrikainen, 2010). As a conclusion, Media-Based Media Education and Cross-Curricular Media Education are presented as two subject didactic modes of media education in the school context. Episodic Media Education is discussed as the third mode of media education where less organised teaching, studying and learning related to media takes place, and situations (i.e. episodes, if you like) without proper planning or thorough reflection are in focus. Based on the theoretical and empirical understanding gained in this dissertation, it is proposed that instead of occupying a corner of its own in the school curriculum, media education should lead the wider change in Finnish schools.

¿Actores o consumidores de imágenes?

Revista con LCC: Reconocimiento – NoComercial – SinObraDerivada (by-nc-nd)

e-Literacy, schools and municipalities towards a common goal : e-citizenship

Tese de doutoramento, e-Planeamento, Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Universidade de Aveiro, 2015

Integrating Media Education Into the Curriculum: What Chinese Educators Can Learn from Ontario Education

This study sought to determine if and how the Ontario approach to integrating media education into the curriculum can be applied to Chinese education. The study used thematic analyses to identify the Ontario curriculum‘s attributes and approach to teaching media literacy, and to investigate relevant policies and national curriculum standards in Chinese compulsory education to reveal the status quo of Chinese media education. Finally, the study explored the feasibility of applying the Ontario media education model in China. Findings indicate that the Ontario model can be employed in the Chinese context, but only partly so, because current Chinese media education is limited by protectionism and restrictive policies corresponding to the use of media merely as research tools.

Media Education and Brazilian Educational Policies for the Enhancement of Learning

As media education concepts and practices have been disseminated and strengthened in European countries and Americas, the policies responsible for that expansion remain little known, particularly in countries where the achievements have been recently noted. That is the case for Brazil, where there have been new opportunities for media education, considered as a valuable resource to help accomplish goals of the educational system. This paper looks into the contribution of media education to the enhancement of teaching and learning in the context of innovations brought by recent policies of the Brazilian Ministry of Education. After educational reform programmes which brought the opportunity for emerging fields such as media education, we produced teaching material and conducted a series of workshops with students and teachers from state secondary schools. By reading and producing multimedia information about local public services available to young people, pupils learned about democracy, citizenship, civic engagement, media language, and identity. Lessons from our experiment are discussed against the backdrop of education policies being implemented to ameliorate harsh conditions resulting from the recent economic crisis. We suggest that media education can help by creating a learning environment in which the students become aware of the value of educational attainments.

Mídia-educação no ensino médio: uma experiência com alunos e professores

This paper describes the development of educational materials on media education as a result of workshops held for students and teachers of high school in Midialab – Media Education Laboratory of Universidade Sagrado Coração. The objectives of this exploratory research were to investigate how teachers and students learn about media, looking for similarities and differences in the performance of the two groups in order to make it possible to conclude what methodology frameworks had a best result for promoting the media literacy of each group, taking on account the characteristics of public school and the paradigms of international media literacy. The methodology involved the application of activities focusing on six strategies: textual analysis, contextual analysis, content analysis, case study, translation, simulation and production. The results suggested that such activities are a productive way to develop critical reading skill and to reduce the differences between teachers and students’ repertoire. They also presented good results in the development of language usage by them and promoted collaborative learning, in a social approach.

Competência informacional e midiática no ensino superior: Desafios e propostas para o Brasil

A presença das tecnologias e das mídias é hoje tão importante, que é impossível ignorá-la. Os calouros e estudantes universitários de hoje têm telefones celulares com fotos digitais e ídeos. Eles usam blogs, twitter e sites de redes sociais. Ao mesmo tempo, leem livros e artigos, e fazem seus projetos e a lição de casa. Continuamente, diferentes tecnologias e novas informações estão impactando o ensino superior. Isto exige uma rápida atualização da competência informacional e midiática pelos alunos. Apesar do impacto progressivo da tecnologia digital na cultura acadêmica contemporânea, é imperativo resgatar e consolidar um compromisso mais crítico com a informação, mídia e tecnologia. Nós defendemos a convergência da literacia da informação e da literacia dos media no ensino superior. O Projeto CIMES (Competência em Informação e Mídia no Ensino Superior) está em estágio inicial. O presente artigo tem como objetivo revisar as questões teóricas, políticas e práticas sobre a educação para a competência em informação e mídia no ensino superior, especialmente no Brasil. O objetivo final do Projeto CIMES é fornecer uma estrutura para desenvolver programas educacionais no Brasil que tenham a competência em informação e a competência midiática como uma aplicação transversal no ensino superior. O atual estágio do projeto permite apenas traçar um quadro geral analítico