Memorandum submitted by the Media Literacy Task Force (1)

 

Executive summary:

 

§ In today's world 'media' is ubiquitous and most pupils have access to its content, services and channels of communication;

§ To make the most of these technologies and opportunities, citizens need to be 'media literate' as well as 'digitally fluent';

§ The possibilities of media enrich creativity;

§ The Charter for Media Literacy sets out the profile of today's new 'literacy' skills;

§ Such skills and competencies empower pupils' creativity;

§ The Task Force makes recommendations in Section 4 below;

§ 'Media literate' pupils' imagination will be better empowered for the opportunities in today's world.

 

 

1. Introduction

 

1.1 Whilst reading takes up 30 minutes a day for most Europeans, they spend an average of 2.3 hours a day watching TV/video/DVD. 70% of all European households with children have a PC and 33% have broadband access. 94% of Young Europeans (12-18) are Internet users and 95 % of these have their own mobile phone (2).

 

1.2 If citizens are to live a full life and make their full contribution in this knowledge-based society with its digital economy, they must be fully media literate - by which is meant everyone having not just the opportunity, but also the capacity to reach their full potential. The UK needs people who not only know how to access digital technologies - to be digitally fluent - but who have the critical and creative ability to use them and not be abused by them - in other words, to be 'media literate'. In this connection, it is alarming to note that some 70% of teenagers in the UK believe all they read on the web, despite its almost complete lack of content regulation (3).

 

1.3 If the benefits of today's converged media and communications' technologies are to be harnessed for the good of all, and a 'digital divide' is to be avoided, urgent steps need to be taken to empower all citizens to take up the opportunities media offers and, most of all, to have space within the curriculum for children to learn the creative and critical possibilities, as well as those relating to their use as consumers, of all the communications media now at their disposal.

2. Charter for Media Literacy (4)

2.1 For the reasons above and others, the Media Literacy Task Force (4) launched a Charter which sets out definitions of what being media literate today means as well as priorities for developing this. The text of the Charter was widely consulted upon, both within the UK and Europe, and many individuals and agencies in education, cultural organisations, the media and communications industries have pledged their support. The Charter is championed across Europe by a wider group and has signatories from at least 19 other countries.

2.2 The main purpose of the Charter is to raise the profile of media literacy as a portfolio of creative and critical skills, knowledge and understanding which is essential for every twenty-first century citizen.

2.3 The UK Task Force believes that the Charter will help champion the value of media literacy and encourage both public and private investment in its development.

(1) The Media Literacy Task Force was set up with the support of the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport in 2004 and is chaired by Heather Rabbatts, CBE (formerly Head of Education at Channel 4, and a member of the UK Film Council Board). It comprises senior representatives of the BBC, the British Board of Film Classification, the British Film Institute, Channel Four, ITV, the Media Education Association, Skillset and the UK Film Council. DCMS, Ofcom, the Broadband Stakeholder Group and Andrea Millwood-Hargrave sit as observers. 

(2) Statistics supplied by the Conseil de l'education aux medias at the launch of the European launch of the Charter for Media literacy, September 2006.

(3) By Anthony Lilley in The Guardian, 12 March 2007

(4) see www.medialiteracy.org.uk

3. Creativity in the Classroom

3.1 There is a common misconception that because many, but not all, pupils are 'digitally fluent' - that is they can use some technologies with confidence - that they are also 'media literate' - that is have a critical understanding of media, its contexts, uses and implications.

3.2 That is why the Charter for Media Literacy sets out three inter-linking competencies that the Media Literacy Task Force believes are essential for anyone to be truly and fully 'literate' in today's world. These are the capacity for Creative work linked to Critical understanding and the knowledge of a wide spread of Cultural forms and contexts. The Charter suggests that these three together make people literate in the way that similar skills and experiences - of literature and the written and spoken word - empowered people in their creative lives in previous generations.

3.3 The formal work of the curriculum is likely to be underpinned, rather than under-mined, by a growing range of out of school activities such as those encouraged by the UK Film Council's Film Club (5), the networking and social skills involved in participating in sites such as YouTube and Bebo, and in playing video games and using the internet and mobile phones. Indeed to include these informal ways of learning and the cross-over between them would be to enhance the significance and value of this Select Committee Inquiry. Recent academic work has clearly identified the educational benefits to be derived from social networking and the shared experience of communication and team working that such out-of-school activities encourage (6).

3.4 Curriculum development is more likely to be successful if it can tap into pupils' wider activities and interests and incorporate them into the processes of formal learning. Any curriculum shift towards greater creativity across subject areas, if it is to be successful, will work both with pupil's needs and their current activities and interests by drawing these into their formal studies. It will enable and facilitate a productive cross-over with these interests and activities from their lives as a whole. This is why the benefits of understanding the critical contexts - both economic and social - of media and technologies, as well as the skills and competencies that the use of media brings to learning, needs positively to be grasped by heads, teachers and cultural animateurs. In-service provision, as well as initial teacher training, will therefore need to be examined to ensure these sufficiently empower those who facilitate education with media literacy skills and experience. Encouraging parents and care providers to support and inform pupils media use and creative activity with media is also important.

(5) Film Club: In England, Film Club is an exciting new initiative which aims to bring the world of film into 10,000 primary and secondary schools across England. It offers young people across the country the chance to enter the limitless world of film.  Teachers and pupils will be able to access hundreds of recommended titles which include mainstream blockbusters and specialised and foreign language films such as Cinema Paradiso.  All of the films are grouped into specially devised seasons and engaging themes to help guide the teachers through the vast array of titles.

(6) See An occasional paper on digital media and learning: Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century by Henry Jenkins, Director of the Comparative Media Studies Programme at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The educational benefits of social networking and 'playing' with digital games etc include:

 

Play - the capacity to experiment with your 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.

 

4. Recommendations

 

The Media Literacy Task Force recommends:

 

4.1 The adoption of the Charter for Media Literacy by schools and other educational establishments and cultural agencies, in addition to those already committed as listed signatories, in order to establish a basic bench mark for creative work in a media rich world and empower teachers and educators to use media and media technologies in an informed and critical way within the curriculum.

 

4.2 That the training of teachers and others, through the main agencies and academies, should be encouraged to contextualise creativity within the context of media literacy as an entitlement for all. It should be noted that The Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA), Learning and Teaching Scotland, the Association for Media Education in Scotland and the Media Education Association are already signatories to the Charter and the latter a partner in the Task Force.

 

4.3 That any future development of the Creative Partnerships Programme should incorporate the Charter for Media Literacy and thereafter to develop an Action Plan based on the Charter, which sets out how creative activity might best be situated within contemporary means of communication, making full and critical use of the new media 'languages' and forms for a richer literacy and creativity. This would also enable a productive cross-over between creativity in the classroom and pupil's everyday life and interests, work opportunities or community-based concerns and applications.

 

5. Summary:

 

5.1 Creativity as part of the whole curriculum and the integrated lives of pupils is of immense importance to the future of the UK. A more critical and creative media literate population, aware of the cultural spread of media, media content and services, will be better placed to take their full place in society as citizens, consumers and users.

 

Creativity is also important in enriching the range of possibilities open to every pupil today as a result of new technologies, in their everyday lives and in their studies, of whatever subject or curriculum area.

 

5.2 For this reason the Media literacy Task Force has made the recommendations above, and for the reasons outlined, since a full, rich and contemporary 'literacy' needs knowledge and competence of more than words and written texts today.

 

5.3 The key issue, as Tessa Jowell MP, then Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, said recently is about ensuring that everyone is "assisted to develop the skills which will make them infinitely more powerful in today's world" (1). Part of that power springs from the empowerment of the imagination which creative pupils and people can bring to the world around them and to the tasks in front of them much more successfully if they are fully 'literate' in the terms defined by the Charter.

 

(1) In a speech to the Associate Parliamentary Media Literacy Group, 28th February 2007.

 

 

 

July 2007