EUROPEAN APPROACH TO MEDIA LITERACY Challenges of the digital world Seminar on innovations of media literacy and youth work, Tallinn, Estonia, 14 December 2009 Professor Tapio VARIS, University of Tampere & UNESCO Chair in Global elearning Varis 1
http://ec.europa.eu/avpolicy/media_literacy/studies/index_en.htm Varis 2
Understanding Media LiteracyDemocracy Family education Formal education Teaching ethics and values Informal education Media education Interaction with the media Intercultural dialogue Right of information Participation in the public sphere Regulatory authorities Freedom of expression Professionals Values Participation and active citizenship Solving problems Media Literacy Reading and writing literacy Personal autonomy Critical thinking Critical and creative abilities and skills Audiovisual literacy. Digital literacy Access Analysis Evaluation Informed selection Semiotic and cultural skills Creative and production skills Technical skills Varis 3 Communicative skills
European Framework for Key Competences: Digital Competence Digital competence involves the confident and critical use of Information Society Technology for work, leisure and communication. It is underpinned by basic skills in ICT: the use of computers to retrieve, access, store, produce, present and exchange information, and to communicate and participate in collaborative networks via Internet COM (2005) 450 Varis 4
PL5 - Digital Literacy: an essential life skill First, it must be critical, so that users can ask questions like who creates the media and its content, for what purpose, and how it works. Second, digital literacy must be creative, thus include being able to contribute content as well as simply being a consumer of others content. Third, it should be cultural and recognise the importance of entertainment, play, gaming, sharing videos, building identities, etc Varis 5
New Skills of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century (Henry Jenkins 2007) Play the capacity to experiment with one s surroundings as a form of problemsolving Performance the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery Simulation the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-world processes Appropriation the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content Multitasking the ability to scan one s environment and shift focus as needed to salient details. Distributed Cognition the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities Collective Intelligence the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal Judgment the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources Transmedia Navigation the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities Networking the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information Negotiation the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms. Varis 6
Forms of Participatory Culture Affiliations (memberships, formal and informal) Expressions (producing new creative forms) Collaborative Problem-solving (working together in teams, formal and informal, to complete tasks and develop new knowledge) Circulations (shaping the flow of media) Varis 7
Need for Policy and Pedagogical Interventions The participation gap (unequal access, experiences, skills, knowledge The Transparency Problem (learning to see the ways that media shape perceptions of the world) The Ethics Challenge (the breakdown of traditional forms of professional training and socialization) Varis 8
New Renaissance Education (www.layers.fi) The study of complexity has brought science closer than ever to art Knowledge has gone through a cycle from non-specialism to specialism, and now back to interdisciplinarity, even transdisciplinarity Art deals with the sensual world (media as the extension of senses) and the holistic concept of human being Varis 9
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