Digital Native and Media Education: Discover the 2.0 World
” Media and their content are access routes to locally shared worlds ” -Letizia Caronia
Today we are immersed in continuous flow of connections and sharing. We share knowledge, emotions, facts. It has changed the way of communicating and knowing. 2.0. Generation had the opportunity with the internet and the media to have a window on the world. Thanks to these powerful tools, we can communicate, work, connect with those around the world and shorten distances. We can find new things, and knowledge is always within reach with google and our smartphones. But like all things in the world, this new way of life has negative and positive aspects. Media Education, or education to new media, is that knowledge that allows us to know the new tools to make the best use of it.
Media Discovery: What Are They? Why does it attract?
New media are all those means of communication developed after the birth of computer science. They are computers, tablets, smartphones, smart tvs etc. These very young instruments have features that attract thousands and thousands of individuals: They are fast and allow remote communication;
- They have enormous memory potential;
- The information transmitted is accurate;
- They are interactive, participative multimedia and multisensory.
- They allow multitasking
Thanks to the sounds and the images they attract, involve, stimulate, astonish, interactively. For all these eye-catching features, they are becoming excellent learning tools for teaching. We talk about multimedia learning, that is, the learning that works by immersion, you actually dip with the sight, with the hearing the touch.
Children are attracted by the media because they are based on “edutainment” that is to educate are playing. Is it worth it that a child learns weeping what he can learn by laughing? Reminds us of Gianni Rodari. Edutainment usually seeks to educate through moments embedded within other forms of entertainment, especially in the family environment, such as video games, interactive apps, movies, music, websites, software etc.
Kids love new media because they use technology as a way to learn playfully about the most advanced technologies, participating and interacting with a dynamic and varied environment.
READ ALSO: THE IMPORTANCE OF DIGITAL LITERACY
Why is it important to educate into new media?
Even today, the media are seen with an eye of concern, and considered negatively. But like all the other things we use on a daily basis, these, with proper information and education about their use, can turn into valuable tools for learning and growth for our children and teenagers.
New Media is used mainly at home and in our leisure time, and this is why parents need to be more aware of the complexity of the child-to-child relationship. Parents first of all decide how to approach their children to new media, to new technology. Communicating clear the defined rules, sharing with children the knowledge of new technologies, helps them to understand and make them understand the new technology world.
Media education helps us in this. Through it in fact, children and teenagers can learn to use media in a critical and creative way. A suitable place for media understanding is the school where media education should be promoted and realized.
But how and what to teach New Media? Some issues to be studied could be:
- Human communication before the media and beyond, communication through images, communication for images and sounds;
- The exchange and sharing of information, the distinction between truthful and non-truthful news;
- Privacy, how to protect yourself from the dangers of the web;
- The feedbacks in the interactive App.
Internet and new media are already integral parts of our lives. It is impossible to imagine a world that is not digitized.
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What do you think?
