The 7Ws of Media and Information Literacy

The Media in Action project has published its resource bank of hand-picked, tried and tested tools, literature, how-to guides, articles, videos and inspiration. The resources are split into our 7Ws;

What – with resources on historical context, the definition and concepts of convergence literacies, pedagogy, and the era of prosumerism.

Why – on media citizenship, democracy, content curation, disinformation, misinformation and bias.

What For – On understanding, interpretation and evaluation of media messages alongside creating content and using it responsibly.

With What – Tools for creating content and telling stories in an educational setting.

Now What – Convergence literacy and storytelling theory, digitally supported strategies and digital identities.

Who – Teachers, Families, Government and NGOs

How – How to guides and tools for digital content creation and problem-solving.

If you have examples of activities, digital stories or resources you have used or created and are willing to share with the wider media literacy community, you are welcome to create an account on our MIA platform or send them to us directly in the comment box below.

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Educate to Create

This year, Bulgaria holds the presidency of the European Union, I was invited to Sofia to be a panel speaker at one of the associated conferences, Educate to Create.

The conference was billed as “an opportunity to bring attention to the pressing need to raise digital skills and competence levels across Europe and to support young people in using technologies for creativity, knowledge construction and effective and efficient learning.”

There were panel discussions and plenary sessions on the maker movement, digital creativity, educator training, partnering with industry,  how to raise digital skills across the board, gender equality and inclusion.

My panel addressed Digital Creativity and maker skills – the role of teacher education. In my introduction I presented the Media In Action project which aims to provide educator training and resources with a basis in journalistic techniques, story telling and digital content creation.

In summing up we were asked what European policy should focus on for the next five years in the field of supporting teachers and teacher training.

My answer;

“Being the media literacy representative here I should say media literacy is the number one priority. It is essential for a functioning democracy, we all need the to tools to access, critically evaluate, interact with and create digital media.

But teachers don’t need one more thing bolted on, one more thing to be responsible for.

We do need to embed digital, media, “convergence literacies” throughout the curriculum. We need to support educators with practical ideas and practical resources, useful stuff, things you can use with your class tomorrow morning. We need to support them with training. We need to support them by creating time and space for educators to learn and to be creative with what they learn.

Teachers are already creative but we drum it out of them with constant bureaucracy, assessments, inspections, hoops to jump through.

We need to trust our teachers and their abilities to do their jobs. We should be fostering a culture of trust in educators so that they have more confidence in themselves to go and be creative”

It was an honour to share a stage with Deirdre Butler (DCU), Nina Lindstrom (Strawbees), Oliver Quinlan (RaspberryPi) and Jan de Craemer (Flemmish Ministry of Education and Training), who did an excellent job moderating us!

Feminist Maker Spaces

A post I wrote for the Taccle3 project output on STEM attitudes and encouraging girls and young women to engage in STEM…

I recently came across the article The Rise of Feminist Hacker Spaces and How to Make Your Own which describes the history and creation of Double Union hacker space in San Fransisco.  A hacker space is another term for a maker space, an environment in which people are encouraged to be creative and to make something from first principles, to build something from its most basic components. That something could be as ambitious as an all singing all dancing robot or it could be an item of clothing.

It got me thinking that there must be other groups doing great things for inclusivity, so I went searching for some. First I found Mz Baltazar’s Lab, and then an article about the rise of feminist hackerspaces in the US published by The Journal of Peer Production. The article explains the phenomenon in more depth than I ever could and is worth a read if you’ve got the time.

Here at Taccle we’re not expecting teachers to go out and start a maker-space, you’ve got enough on your hands as it is, but you may find inspiration for yourself, your groups and classes in the great projects below.  At the end of this blog post we have added links to some online resources to help keep your practice inclusive.

Mz Baltazar’s Lab – Austria

This intersectional feminist makerspace is an inclusive and accessible way for everyone to get involved with making and computing.

http://www.mzbaltazarslaboratory.org/about/

Hacker Moms – San Francisco

“We give mothers of every gender the time and space to explore DIY craft and design, hacker/maker culture, community workshops, entrepreneurship and all manner of creative expression — with on-site childcare. Our HackerSprouts program teaches children the creative process through educational childcare and STEAM-based workshops. HackerMoms creates families that build together.”

http://mothership.hackermoms.org/

Prototype – Pittsburgh

“Prototypers have access to shared tools, space, events, knowledge, and support. All genders and disciplines are welcome to join. ”

https://prototypepgh.com/

Liberating ourselves locally

“Liberating Ourselves Locally (LOL) is a people of color -led, social justice Maker Space in East Oakland. Led by a gender-diverse, majority queer and trans crew of hackers, healers, artists and activists of color,

LOL makes space and resources for community to come learn, play, experiment, and build skills while working on projects they love, for self-determination and community power”

https://oaklandmakerspace.wordpress.com/

Dragon Hall Tech Hub – London

This group is all about “Bridging the Digital Divide” bringing new technologies, coding clubs and opportunities to those who would not usually be able to access them, the focus here is on including marginalised groups including: learning disability; homelessness; mental health; LGBT, BME and young women.

“Dragon Hall has a strong track record of engaging the most vulnerable, disenfranchised children and young people in society, providing activities that promote inclusion, social justice and enable them to realise their potential”

http://www.dragonhall.org.uk/innovation/

Inclusive resources

There are a lot of great projects going on around Europe with the intention of teaching young people to code, to think logically, to make and create. There are a couple of well known schemes you can easily get involved with by signing up online such as Coder Dojo and Code Club.  There’s also Girls Who Code.

If you’re not ready or able to sign up for a club there are other freely available resources;

https://imagirlwhocodes.com/ This blog is written by girls and young women who are learning code and want to share their experiences and hopefully inspire other girls

https://www.madewithcode.com/ encourages learning through projects such as designing an emoji and mixing music. Other fun projects are showcased here including making games in Scratch. (The sew-electric projects look great but require additional materials)

Google’s CS First has some 1 hour activities and some longer projects designed to introduce Computer Science https://www.cs-first.com/materials

Lesson Plans

For lesson plans click on ‘Ideas and Resources’ on the Taccle3 Portal page or use the links below…

Taccle3 English language site

Taccle3 Welsh language site

Taccle3 Dutch site

Taccle3 Finnish site

Taccle3 Estonian site

Taccle3 German site

Taccle3 Spanish site

TACCLE3 CODING Conference

On October 6th 2017 we are organising the Taccle3 project’s final conference in the Flemish Parliament in Brussels.

If you:
• Want to learn more about ‘computational thinking’ and the link with coding,
• Listen to some motivational speakers
• Participate in hands-on workshops full of practical class room approaches
… then mark the date in your calendar now!

Thanks to the EU’s Erasmus+ programme we are able to offer this conference free of charge including lunch.

The conference language is English but some workshops will be offered in Dutch. A formal invitation will become available shortly with details of speakers and workshops and with reservation instructions. If you want to receive a personal invitation for the conference and a limited amount of updates on the project then leave us your contact details via this form: https://goo.gl/forms/Dqsdn3d63u5cZX423

Taccle3 Coding is an Erasmus+ funded project coordinated by GO! The aim of the project consortium is to empower primary teachers to introduce ‘computational thinking’ and coding in their class room practice.

The project website www.taccle3.eu provides a lot of materials and resources for classroom teachers. The Ideas and Resources tab takes you to resources, reviews and lesson plans in six different languages.

For more information contact: jens.vermeersch@g-o.be and jenhughes@me.com