THE INTEGRATION OF NEW MEDIA LITERACY AND THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD AT THE DIGITAL MEDIA INTO THE CURRICULUM

Asst.Prof.Dr. Duygu AYDIN / Selcuk UniversityBetül 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

to be discussed and to be thought.

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,

which is open 7/24 for them.

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

Rights of the Child adopted by the UN General Assembly .

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,.

The concept of media literacy has universally two main points:

The first is the ability to use technology in order to access to media content ,

The second is the ability to produce and to evaluate the content as well as

understanding the content.

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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;

Strategy 1: Knowing the scope and limits of the media

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

which will be used by teachers in the lessons on the subjects has

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 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.

Learning With the Traditional / Innovative 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.

Student-centered Methods

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.

The Constructivist Approach,

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.

Rearrangment of the Curriculum

The Rearrangment of the Curiculum About The

Digital Media Literacy: 3 parameters

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’

The Definition of Digital Media Literacy

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.

Digital Competencies in the Media Literacy Education

First of all, students learn to criticize the abundance of information online.

Secondly, students learn to contribute to online culture appropriately and

meaningfully.

Thirdly, students learn to collaborate online by developing both platform-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

scope of the UN Convention on the rights of the child and other regulations.

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;

-Of the importance and the implementation of the digital media and the rights of the

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