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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

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http://ec.europa.eu/avpolicy/media_literacy/studies/index_en.htm

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Understanding Media Literacy

Media Literacy

Media education

Democracy

Right of information

Regulatory authorities

Family education

Informal education

Formal education

Teaching ethics and

values

Interaction with the media

Participation and active citizenship

Freedom of expression

Participation in the public sphere

Intercultural dialogue

ProfessionalsValues

Audiovisual literacy.

Digital literacy

Reading and writing literacy

Critical and creative abilities and skills

Analysis

Critical thinking

Personal autonomy

Creative and production skills

Evaluation

Technical skillsSemiotic and cultural skills

Communicative skills

Access

Solving problems

Informed selection

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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

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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

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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 problem-

solving• 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.

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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)

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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)

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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

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