THE INTEGRATION OF NEW MEDIA LITERACY AND THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILDAT THE DIGITAL MEDIA INTO THE CURRICULUM Asst.Prof.Dr. Duygu AYDIN / Selcuk University Betül KARAOSMANOĞLU / Pamukkale University
DIGITAL IS THE NEW NORMAL
Digital Media and Children Today, if we look at from the perspective of the media literacy and children's rights, the relationship between the digital media and children is very important tobediscussedandtobethought. The particular reason is that the current generation of children are born into the digital world. The digital media environment is a world filled with question marks for those children who have the talency to use tablet computers and mobile phones, whichisopen7/24forthem.
Digital Media and Childrens Rihgts While the constantly changing and growing digital media has not been discovered yet, the institutionalisation of the childrens rights are discussible. In the near future, the world will be turning around the digital media. That s the reason why, steps taken by us towards the institutionalisation of the childrens rights to be updated are very significant.
Media and Child Media and the child is not a one-way communication but it is a two-way communication. Especially in the new media digital platforms children are not only passive recipients, but also they are active participants engaged in the production, checking, review and shaping. The characteristics and perception of each medium are diffirent from each other. The consumer behavior of each medium is also different from each other. If we consider that every child is a diffirent child, it is possible to say that today's media-child relationship, especially in the context of new media, is two-way and interactive.
Media Products and Effects Although media products are not prepared by targeting children, they are open in the public space, and their effects are permanent. Children internalize what they saw and experienced. This internalization is done through imitation, identification and sampling. Media can adversely affect the child's identity, cognitive, emotional and social development. Such adversery effects are much more in the digital media with multi-dimensional and multi-variable environment.
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Protection of Children: The UN Convention International and national legal and ethical regulations have been adopted to protect children from the negative effects of media and digital media. Principles regarding the child rights have been transformed into a legally binding international agreement in 1989 as the United Nations (the UN) Convention on the RightsoftheChildadoptedbytheUNGeneralAssembly. The UN Convention accepts the principle of priority to the best interests of the child.
Protection of Rights of Children: A Problematic Area Depending on the nature of digital media, whose boundaries can not be predicted in terms of content and users, the protection of rights of children as users of the digital media is a problematic area. Various content and the users factor can violate children's rights and can adversely affect the development of children. In this context, legal arrangements will not be enough to protect children for providing a full control. For providing the full control, a social competence should be provided as well as legal arrangements. In this sense, parents, educators and media institutions have also responsibilities for the social competence.
The Media Education On the other hand, it is not enough to protect children and their rights from the negative affects of the media. The Media education as well as arrangements, regarding the media content and the content developers based on the best interests of the child, is very important. In this context, it is necessary to evaluate the relationship between children and the media in the pedagogical form. That is why, a social movement, in which the media education is the center, should be carried.
Media Literacy Education
The Concept of Media Literacy The concept of media literacy is the adequacy of accessing to, understanding, analyzing, evaluating and creating media content in various formats,. 1 2 The concept of media literacy has universally two main points: Thefirstistheabilitytousetechnologyinordertoaccesstomediacontent, Thesecondistheabilitytoproduceandtoevaluatethecontent aswellas understanding the content.
The Importance of Media Literacy Education The importance of media literacy education does not only comes from protecting students against the negative effects of the media, but also comes from making students cultural producers and from making them participants.
The Media Literate Behaviours The media literate behaviours are the followings; Analyzing the media texts, Finding mistakes critically and making media texts, Identifying the source of media texts, Describing the political, social, commercial and cultural gains of the media texts, Interpreting the messages and values offered by the media, Selecting the appropriate media to reach their audience or to convey their own messages or stories, Having the media or demanding the accession to receive and broadcast media.
The Four Points About The Media Literacy Teachers giving the media literacy education have an important task for training individuals being able to read and to evaluate the media deliberately. UNESCO has focused on four main points about media literacy. These are 1) media education programs, 2) Teacher training, 3) researchs, and 4) international cooperation issues. As far as the teacher training is concerned, UNESCO has recommended to develop the content of curriculum of media literacy for increasing teachers knowledge and equipment.
The Unesco Strategies According to the strategies adopted by UNESCO, the focused points for media literacy education are the following; Strategy1:Knowingthescopeandlimitsofthemedia Strategy 2: Promoting the understanding the media functions, Strategy 3: Promoting the critical thinking associated with autonomy of the media messages Strategy 4: Strengthening capacities, rules and responsibilities of individuals against the media, Strategy 5: Facilitating the creative and the productive use of information and communication technologies.
The Media Literacy and ICT Tools With the change of digital media technology technological tools whichwillbeusedbyteachersinthelessonsonthesubjectshas been discussed. Using the Information and Communication Technology tools and software are effectively emphasized in the media literacy. Especially nowadays with the development of Web 2.0 technologies, different possibilities have emerged to be able to create and to transmit the media messages effectively on the Internet. Among these, social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter, and video sharing sites such as Youtube or Dailymotion, and sources of information such as Wikipedia, are examples of those.
Learning With the Traditional / Innovative Methods Learning with traditional methods results in the fact that information only is overloaded without noticing the student's own learning processes. That is, learning with traditional methods is done without performing any operations such as interpretation, thinking, criticizing for the acquired knowledge. That is why, that methods leads to student become passive and adversely affects an effective learning process. Therefore, transforming from teacher-centered teaching to student-centered teaching is of utmost importence. At this point, student-centered teaching methods emerge as innovative methods.
Student-centered Methods At the core of student-centered methods; teaching students methods of how the information could be made meaningful and relevant, ensuring that they are exploring, giving them oppurtunities that they can apply new ideas, raising awareness for applying their own education strategies and fostering education process with that awareness are located. Giving students a ladder to ensure their learning, yet yielding students to climb the ladder theirselves constitutes the basic philosophy of this innovative teaching methods. At the student-centered classroom, a teacher should be «a guide on the edge» not a «sage on the stage» by helping students to find their immanent meaning or to construct the information rather than just teaching or controlling whole class activities. Learning theories based on these thoughts is called constructivist learning theories.
The Constructivist Approach, In the constructivist approach, by providing a social interaction around a problem in the real-life context, students can reconstitute new information. Integration of digital technologies to media literacy education and providing digital media literacy education in this context will enable the students to establish better equipped and protected relations with digital world by experiencing the digital world in education contents.
Rearrangment of the Curriculum Necessity of using digital technologies and platforms in media literacy education is clearly obvious. At the same time, such an education in itself contributes to the enhancement of digital media literacy. Therefore, in a world where the digital is the new normal, digital media literacy and media literacy is not apart. Accordingly, rearrangment of the curiculum is needed.
The Rearrangment of the Curiculum About The Digital Media Literacy: 3 parameters
The Definition of Digital Media Literacy Digital media literacy is defined as Basic social skills and cultural competence aimed at children and young people to be active, creative and ethical participants in the new digital participatory culture
Digital Competencies in the Media Literacy Education 4 curation competencies is reccomended for the development of digital competencies in the media literacy education. These competencies are criticism, contribution, collaboration and creativity. In this learning approach, the framework of the consumption of the media and of analyzing and producing media messages actively have been outlined.
Firstof all, students learn to criticize the abundance of information online. Secondly, students learn tocontributetoonline cultureappropriatelyand meaningfully. Thirdly, studentslearn to collaborate online by developing bothplatform-independent and platform-specific collaboration skills. Fourthly, students will learn to create.creativity fosters today s culture based upon the collaboration between online and social media. Also, there is a huge capacity of the youth in producing and redesigning media content.
If the integration of digital technologies into media literacy education also contributes to the enhancement of the digital media literacy education significantly as it is mentioned, this situation must be seen as an oppurtunity for the institutionalization of the rights of the child. Because such an education coincides with defined purposes for the protection of the children and especially ensuring community participation in the digital media within the scopeoftheunconventionontherightsofthechild andotherregulations.
Proposal 1 All legal regulations to protect the children from problems arising in the media, especially in digital media environments and to ensure their participation rights in a positive way must be integrated into the curriculum of media literacy education by analyzing the regulations on the basis of the articles.
Proposal 2 The content of the curriculum of the media literacy education that is clinched exactly with the right of the child must be rearranged in a form that will adapt to the digital age. For that, providing and improving technical infrastructure and the equipment in educational institutions is necessary. Digital technologies and new media tools in the educational content should be used in practice and conform the real-world situations. Thus, the curriculum should be renewed accordingly.
Proposal 3 The education of media literacy educators and candidates should be put on the agenda quickly. Educators should gain the skills namely; -Oftheimportanceandtheimplementationofthedigitalmediaandtherightsofthe child -Of using digital technologies and new media tools in the curriculum. -Of gaining the experience, information and the skills about learning the methods and the technics that provides innovative, interactive, fun and practical media literacy education that is integrated with the rights of the child.
In Summery and Conclusion If the basic requirements are fulfilled, it is expected that children who are educated in the field of media literacy education is more aware and equipped against violations of the rights aimed at themselves. Therefore, it is also expected they can reach a competence level that they can protect themselves.
Providing such a competence level is important especially in the context of the overlapping key points of media literacy, digital media literacy and the rights of the child These are access to the information, critical thinking and media production equipments.
Children with the equipment of the information access can reach the most valid and reliable information needed in a very short time. Also, they can protect themselves and scrutinize the validity and the reliability of the information, the content and sources that they are exposed in the digital environment. They can realize with the equipment of the critical thinking that for what reason and how whole media content produced, the application of the digital media and the meaning of that. With this realization and scrutinization competencies, they can protect themselves from all kind of abuses. With the equipment of participation, they can share and opine on any digital media content and media content production and they can use the right of the social participation by producing new content.
Thus; In digital future, contribution to the institutionalization of the rights of the child is possible.
The future means the digital. And if child means hope, the digital future is promising thanks to the children are born to this world. Each word has been said about the digital environment which respects the child rights is honorary Thank You