EuroMeduc Paris Seminar 2008 Alba Ambròs Pallarès
EduCom: Education and nearby local TV
Introduction
The society of information and knowledge we live in beats to the rhythm of mass media, which have undoubtedly become paramount educational agents. Words, images and sounds merge together to give meaning to and speak about our reality and identity. Consequently, views of 21st century citizens have turned out to be fragmented, incoherent, momentary, manipulated and multicultural (Corea, 2004). Current screens conform the communicative system we live with (Deó, 2000), TV screens still being the greatest socialising agents. Considering this, AulaMèdia emerged. It is a monthly free-access on-line magazine dealing with Educating in Communication (also known as Media Literacy) issued in Catalonia. AulaMèdia magazine is promoted by AulaMèdia Association formed by teachers, educators, researchers at various institutions and universities as well as communicators and it is directed by Francesc-Josep Deó.
We, AulaMèdia members, wished all scholars could gain basic media literacy competences and become media literate and very much question the way our educational system goes about it. Education in Communication has been inefficiently incorporated in the school syllabus, few teacher training courses on the subject have been offered and family consciousness on it is still very poor. AulaMèdia was born with the aim to start off a civic platform that would promote and demand the right to be educated in communication. Most of the forthcoming audiovisual experiences evidence they are activities carried out after school and thanks to the good will of teachers.
Education and local Tv (EduCom) is a project born in AulaMèdia in 2004, which aims at illustrating the opportunities and advantages that arise when schools and local televisions collaborate. For a good understanding of EduCom’s objectives and activities, the article has been sequenced as follows. First, a general introduction will be made naming AulaMèdia’s projects and associated websites. After this panoramic view, a close-up shot on EduCom’s projects will follow. Here, different types of collaborations between schools and local TVs will be detailed and the pr oposed working methodology described. A worth-mentioning brief overview on the new model of nearby local TV emerged with DTT will conclude this section. Finally, a zoom throughout productions and experiences carried out with EduCom will be developed.
It is foremost that teachers, students, institutions and media agents share the same communicative codes to converse and perform both their rights and their duties in a plural and democratic society.
AulaMèdia projects: endorsing Media Literacy in Catalonia
Media literacy requires a course of actions to awaken awareness for its reason to be and at the same time respond to different society’s demands. All endeavours carried out by AulaMèdia started off when former Spanish syllabus designed both by MEC and Autonomous Catalan Government proved to be ineffective and inadequate as far as Education in Communication was concerned. LOE, the latest education law, which made a start in September 2007 and is still undergoing implementation, also includes media literacy and parallels knowledge and use of audiovisual language to verbal language in both its written and oral form. In addition to this, the new curriculum is based upon the development of eight basic skills. Education in Communication has a more explicit presence in the following: audiovisual and linguistic communicative competence, cultural and artistic knowledge, competence in dealing with information and digital competence. Yet, AulaMèdia still sustains the same principle alleged at the public consultation on media literacy launched by the European Commission: “[…] media literacy should be taught as a specialist subject at formal education (2007:11).
Optimistic with the future yet totally aware of important existing deficiencies in media literacy, AulaMèdia, in a constant effort to serve education, promotes, encourages, finances and collaborates in different projects such as monthly editing the magazine, training teachers and young people or coordinating other websites. In short, the association works to defend the right to be educated in communication. A panoramic view of AulaMèdia activities follows.
- AulaMèdia magazine, a monthly free-access on-line magazine since May 2001, is conceived as a tool to reflect upon the need to educate in communication in the 21st century. The purposes of the magazine are twofold: a learning approach based on the languages in media literacy and a critical analysis of contents in messages. In all issues the magazine displays a wide range of ideas, experiences and useful proposals for the education community.
- AulaMèdia organises annual face-to-face meetings focused on a monographic field within EC. Here are some examples: Una educació crítica davant la televisió (A critical education towards television, 2005); L’anàlisi crítica i la producció escolar(Critical analysis and school production, 2004).
- The magazine also organises training sessions, talks and seminars addressed to teachers, parents and teenagers. Our third Summer School for teachers has recently started.
- AulaMèdia also coordinates two more monographic websites, namely EduCom.info Education and Local Communication and CinEscola.info. The former opened on 15th October 2004 to provide schools interested in EC local mass media collaboration (television and radio) and the experience this talk will illustrate falls within this framework: favour teenager audiovisual production through close collaboration with local TVs. (see next section). CinEscola.info inaugurated on 10th February 2005 and coordinated by Ramon Breu, is a free-access website about cinema. It provides teachers with didactic proposals to work on films in Primary and Secondary classes. All such proposals follow the CinEscola pattern of film, a method widely developed in a book called Cinema and Education. Cinema in Primary and Secondary School (released in Catalan and Spanish). The book has recently been awarded first prize in Premio nacional Aula 2008 National Prize Aula 2008, by MEC (Ministry of Education) for best book in educative practice of interest for young people.
- AulaMèdia is also involved in Media Production. In 2005 a DVD collection about the principles of Educating in Communication started. The first DVD was called Educar en Comunicació (Educating in Communication). In January 2007, a second one was released about cinema for Primary and Secondary schools: El cinema a l'aula (Cinema in Classrooms). In July 2007 the collection ended with AulaMèdia 6. In this DVD, a series of brief reports and interviews show most of the work carried out by AulaMèdia since its beginnings. A new collection on media production started in May 2008. The first title is Darrere la pantalla. Una visita guiada a la televisió (Behind the screen. A guided visit to a TV). It is a guided tour to the insights of a local TV and showing its organisation, working and use of technology among others. Along with the DVD comes a worksheet (see section “Zoom of productions and experiences”).
EduCom: Education and collaboration with nearby local TV
In 2004 AulaMèdia initiated the project EduCom (Education and local nearby TV and Education and local radio) supported by the Department of Education in Barcelona. We embarked on this new website in order to let all educational centres know the many advantages of close collaboration with local nearby TVs, in compliance with existing TV regulations in the country. Still, local TVs are currently immersed in a process of great change due to DTT implementation and resulting legislative changes. The following part of this talk will deal with the two issues aforementioned: first, origin, early experiences and development of EduCom project, and second, a brief overview on the new model of local TV in Catalonia. This structure responds to our desire to highlight AulaMèdia’s proposal: young audiovisual productions should entail participation, involvement and collaboration of local nearby TVs and schools.
At AulaMèdia we sustain the best way of explaining, persuading and encouraging media literacy incorporation in schools is by recounting “filming” experiences carried out by primary and secondary teachers. Pedagogically speaking, it has been proved that “sharing among equals” greatly fosters the will to learn in others and increases a desire to get involved in new projects and educative challenges which respond to 21st century demands. At AulaMèdia online broadcasting experiences are complemented with face-to-face seminars and production of audiovisual materials about various monographic fields. In this sense, in October 2006 a Seminar on Education and Local Communication was organised, where experts from the Local Communication Observatory in Catalonia (In-Com-UAB), as well as primary and secondary teachers put forward advantages and inconveniences of working with nearby mass media. A CD depicting an assortment of “life” experiences of schools collaborating with local media was handed out (see following section).
A response to the question: what are the advantages of TVs and schools collaboration? Which, in turn, summarizes the main ideas detailed in Deó’s book 2000, follow:
- First, is local TV proximity which offers a wide range of didactic possibilities and participation in issues of shared interest between parties: local TV and citizenship, that is, emissary and audience. Sharing communal urban space or being nearby, bonds the audience because of the communal reality shared (history, traditions, projects) which cohesions parties and reinforces cultural identity (Prado & Moragas, 2002). This favours an interest in receiving messages with local and regional content. In the same line, but from a broader social point of view, the Commission (2007:7) underlined [...] “media literacy should ultimately be about empowering people to participate actively in society and to prevent the creation of social and geographical divides”.
- Promoting team work in adolescents in real life daily situations in order to carry out a communal project: a joint production in collaboration with local media, a living and clear example of teamwork.
- Knowing the medium from “inside” and watching from behind the camera undoubtedly favours demystifying the medium in order to understand it better and at the same time foster reflection on teenagers. Critically reading television messages becomes an easier task when “agents” are teenagers. This situation also favours democratisation in communication (Prado & Moragas, 2002) among students because it is a clear way of breaking up with the hierarchy of the medium.
- Fostering interdisciplinary work of curricular content, given the amount of knowledge and cognitive processes involved when producing an audiovisual.
We will end this section with a cite by Deó (2000:29,33): “drawing teenagers near the medium from technical, expressive and critical perspectives (...) so as to turn educative their fascination for technology and the medium”.
Another question we wish to respond to in this section is: how can collaboration between local TVs and schools (or groups of students) be detailed? An overview at experiences reported in portal EduCom, shows collaborations fall mainly into three categories (Deó, 1996): a) reference or approximation audiovisual activities; b) activities of didactic support linked to the curriculum and, c) integration activities which offer students the possibility to directly participate in local running programmes. Brief explanations of the three follow.
a) Reference activities are sporadic and are offered by local or nearby TVs via Education Resource Centres (CRP) or associations such as AulaMèdia. Their aim is to let the TV medium known as far as technology and production are concerned. Among reference activities are guided visits to a TV, video workshops to show students professional television production or assorted workshops involving student participation in tasks such as sound technician or camera operator. AulaMèdia audiovisual workshops are exemplifying reference activities since they involve gaining awareness of the whole production process (see next section). However, they differ from initiatives exposed at results of the public consultation (2007) “to encourage young audiences to develop a critical awareness of media content”, because experiences have been carried out in a non-formal education framework, rather than within formal education.
b) Activities of didactic support are audiovisual activities also offered and organised by CRPs and other institutions. They differ from the abovementioned in as much as such activities are clearly designed to pedagogically complement class work related to any aspects surrounding edition or production of audiovisuals or news reports. In a way, they are a means for local TVs to gain social and economic profit of their installations. But primarily they allow non-experienced teachers willing to get into media literacy to gain experience on the subject and see their endeavours facilitated. An example of one such initiative is Entra a la tele (Come inside the TV) by CRP Sant Andreu in Barcelona along with Clot local TV (see next section).
c) Integration activities can be either regular o sporadic, and their most outstanding feature is that they involve student direct participation in periodic TV programmes integrally or partially broadcasted. Two such initiatives will be developed, namely IES InforMA and CampusMèdia, the latter cited “activity outside the formal educational system” at the results of public consultation on media literacy (2007:11) (see next section).
To schools seeking collaborative initiatives with local nearby TVs, we strongly recommend and defend they follow a pattern of performance so that all phases of the work to be undertaken are clearly established and sequenced. If not, they may easily get fascinated by the medium and consider it another toy. In this sense, Deó (2008) suggests adhering to the following recommendations concerning didactics, technology and organisation.
· Avoid complex or highly ambitious audiovisual productions. They imply excessive dedication for teachers, and are so long a process that could easily make students lose interest.
· Design audiovisual activities suitable to age-range and foremost fitting technology available at schools and local TVs.
· Get acquainted with the technical and expressive possibilities of technology to be used in the project. Be aware of the limitations of school productions in terms of technology and expressivity.
· Directly involve teenagers in all stages of the project: design, production, post-production and broadcasting. This way, they will be motivated to choose and develop contents.
· As much as possible, avoid replication of known TV programmes, they do not foster student creativity. Avoid stereotyped roles and models portrayed in big media.
· Avoid fascination and mystification of audiovisual technology, always providing leisure or curriculum content to the work to be undertaken.