mediakasvatus.fi - Mediakasvatus.fi on palveleva sivusto mediakasvatuksesta kiinnostuneille opettajille, tutkijoille, nuorisotyöntekijöille, varhaiskasvattajille, vanhemmille ja alan opiskelijoille.

It goes like this: Take a very large room and fill it with the latest digital media — laptop computers, music keyboards, recording equipment, video cameras and gaming consoles. Invite teenagers. Apply a little pressure, pushing them both to consume and produce media. Watch what happens.

"YOUmedia — a Digital Library Space for Teens," has become a magnet for young people in Chicago, so popular and influential that the library plans to replicate it citywide.

"We are in one of these rare moments in time where what it means to be literate today, what it meant for us, is going to be different from what it means to be literate for our kids," says DePaul University's Nichole Pinkard, who first envisioned the space. Just as schools have always pushed teens to read critically and pick apart authors' arguments, she says, educators must now teach kids how to consume media critically and, ideally, to produce it.

YOUmedia owes much of its basic ideology to Mizuko Ito, cultural anthropologist at the University of California-Irvine, who says the secret of YOUmedia's success is that it's based not on what adults think students should be doing, but on "what kids actually do and how they engage" with media and one another.

Read original story: http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/story/2011-10-09/chicago-teens-build-media-literacy-in-digital-library/50714312/1

(Source: USAtoday.com)