Download COMMUNICATION: a new frontier for social inclusion

COMMUNICATION AND NEW
LITERACIES
Professor Tapio Varis
Unesco Chair in Global e-Learning
University of Tampere, Finland
www.uta.fi/~titava
April 12, 2008
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Three Perspectives
• European perspective
• UNESCO Chair in Global e-Learning
• Communication and education
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Trends of the 21st Century
• -Technology: digitalization (from analog to
digital); digital literacy = way of thinking
• -Globalisation: local to global and global to
local: multicultural world
• -Knowledge societies: the role of
information
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Ministerial Declaration 2006
(supported by the European digital technology
industry)
• Countries will put in place, by 2008, digital
literacy and competence actions
• Needs of groups at risk of exclusion
• Actions through partnerships with the
private sector
• Media literacy, e-skills, life-long-learning
• Digital literacy a right for all
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UNEVOC International
Conference ”Vocational Content
in Mass Higher Education”,
September 2005
• ”It is necessary to rethink the whole education
system, from primary to higher, and understand
the links to multiliteracies, multimodality and
multimediality”
• UNESCO (2005): there is a general agreement
on the expression ”knowledge societies” but not
of the content of it
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Knowledge for What?
• Are we endorsing the hegemony of the
techno-scientific model in defining
legitimate and productive knowledge?
• Should the term “Digital Age” be replaced
by multicultural world?
• The spirit of knowledge sharing and caring
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Mr. Koichiro Matsuura
DG Unesco
• “It is necessary to build up large
movement to humanize globalization,
based on solidarity, on the spirit of caring
for and sharing with others”
• Open Educational Resources (OER)
initiative as a cooperation mechanism for
the open, non-commercial use of
educational resources
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UNESCO IIEP Internet Discussion
Forum 2005
• Technology
• Cultural issues: reservations about
publishing content produced by a foreign
institution
• Collaborative development rather than
”providers” and passive ”users”
• Translation and adaptation
• Original content production
• Quality assurance and assessment
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Communication and Digital Literacy
• The most important skills of the future
would be communication skills in a
multicultural world
• E-learning in a narrow sense seems to
have passed its peak and is on the
decline. We are now moving towards a
more societal or communitarian activity
with social web, blogs, and wikipedia
• Digital literacy becomes a right to people
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The Power of e-Learning
• Traditionally defined courseware is not an
effective e-Learning strategy
• eLearningware is more related to
pedagogy than an actual product
• It emphasizes computer mediated
communication and is student-centred
• Discussion goups, chat, blogs, wikis,
webinars
• Tools available through open source
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Communication
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Communion, sharing (Debray)
Mediation (communicating between people)
Communication, education (Freire, Dewey)
Global network (ICT technology)
Local network (meanings)
”Space has vanished and time ceased to exist
(McLuhan)
• Space-biased, time-biased communication
(Innis)
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Media
• ”…each of the so-called ”media” does far
more than this (moving information): it
makes possible thought processes
inconceivable before” (Walter Ong 1977)
• ”Orality and Literacy” (1982)
• ”Secondary orality” = electronic media
(generates a sense for groups
immeasurably larger than those of primary
oral culture – McLuhan´s ´global village´)
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Mediation: The Oral-Literacy
Theorems
• Primary oral culture (no literate modes of
communication): additive, aggregative,
redundant, conservative (memorized)
• Writing/print brings with it much more than
mere ways of recording oral speech –
writing restructures consciousness
• Electronic media: secondary orality
• New literacies, skills, competences
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What is needed in working life
• Master appropriate tools to gather
information
• Understand the context of that information
• Actively shape and distribute information
in ways that make it understandable and
useful
• Exchange ideas, opinions, questions and
experiences
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Workplace skills
• Challenges: to acquire the skills necessary
to enter an increasingly digital job market,
and to continually improve those skills,
and learn new ones
• Studies suggest that working people may
not be keeping pace
• Schools are failing? Motivational
problems?
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Workplace training
• Large corporations provide the bulk of
employer-managed and employerdelivered technology training
• Small and mediumsized enterprises rely
on third-party organizations for such
support, or establish partnerships with
educational institutions etc
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Educational revolutions
• The phonetic alphabet
• Printing
• Telematics (computers connected to
networks)
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Trends and Movements
• Media literacy movement
• E-Learning movement
• Convergence 2006? Media competence,
digital literacy
• Open on-line media environment
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New concepts
• Multiple intelligences (Gardner) (emotional
intelligence originates with Darwin´s ”Origin of
the Species” 1872)
• Multiliteracies (digital literacy, technology
literacy, information literacy, media literacy)
• Multimediality (Aristotle´s Poetics c.335 BCE)
• Multimodality
• Multiculturalism (transcultural, intercultural)
• Open, global learning environment
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Elements of ML: UNESCO definition
Vienna Conference
• Analyze, critically reflect
upon and create media;
• Interpret the messages and
values offered by the media;
• Gain, or demand access to
media for both reception and
production
• Select appropriate media for
communicating youngsters’
own messages or stories and
for reaching their intended
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audience;
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Media Literacy definition
ML European Charter
“...every European citizen need to develop the skills and
knowledge(...)
(...) to use media technologies effectively to access, store, retrieve and
share content (...)
(...) access to, a wide range of media forms and content from different
cultural and institutional sources; Understand how and why media
content is produced;
Analyse critically the techniques, languages and conventions used by
the media, and the messages they convey; Use media creatively to
express and communicate ideas, information and opinions; Identify,
and avoid or challenge, media content (...) that may be unsolicited,
offensive or harmful;
Make effective use of media in the exercise of their democratic rights
and civic responsibilities. (...)
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Elements of ML: EC definition
European Commission
"...the ability to access, analyze
and evaluate the power of images,
sounds and messages which we are
now been confronted with a daily
basis and are an important part of
our contemporary culture as well as
to communicate competently in
media available on a personal
basis..."
• Ability to create and communicate
… and
messages
• Critical thinking
• All Varis
the 2008
Media
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Key
Selecting
concepts
All the media
Access
Production
Creating
Analyzing
Critical
thinking
Interpreting
Evaluating
Communicating
competently
Active
citizenship
Participating
Reception
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New Renaissance Education
• 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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