(TED) As part of the European Commission's development of a media literacy policy, the Commission is seeking assistance in the form of an experts' study on the analysis and testing of the media literacy assessment criteria set in the 2009 study on assessment criteria for media literacy levels. The study will be a close follow-up of the previous one; however it will have more of a practical approach. The main goal is to analyse and test out the criteria detected in the previous study and to get in-depth and concrete results on the media literacy levels of European citizens. (The European Commission will provide the study team with the assessment criteria for the analysis and the testing of the media literacy levels). Time limit for receipt of requests for documents or for accessing documents: 14.1.2010.
(Europa) Council Conclusions on media literacy in the digital environment have been adopted by the Education, Youth and Culture Council meeting on 27 November 2009. In these Conclusions, the Council reaffirms its commitment towards media literacy and welcomes the Commission Recommendation C(2009)6464 of 20 August 2009.
(Heise) Medienkompetenz braucht Vorbilder: Damit Kinder in Zukunft verantwortungsvoll mit Computerspielen, SchülerVZ und Handys umgehen können, setzt der Deutsche Kinderschutzbund auf die Eltern. Die Organisation stellte auf der Kölner Spielemesse gamescom die Initiative Medien-Dschungel vor, die Eltern den Umgang mit neuen Medien lehren soll. Das Projekt wurde in Kooperation mit der EU-Initiative klicksafe entwickelt.
(Europa) The way we use media is changing, the volume of information enormous, demanding more of us than being able to read, write or use a computer. The European Commission today warned that Europeans young and old could miss out on the benefits of today's high-tech information society unless more is done to make them 'media literate' enough to access, analyse and evaluate images, sounds and texts and use traditional and new media to communicate and create media content. The Commission said EU countries and the media industry need to increase awareness of the many media messages people encounter, be they advertisements, movies or online content. The European Commission has adopted policy guidelines calling on EU countries and industry to promote media literacy across Europe through activities that help people access, understand and critically evaluate all media they are exposed to, like TV and film, radio, music, print media, the internet and digital communication technologies. Education is a national competence, but the Commission invited EU countries to open a debate on how to give media literacy a prominent place in schools. Commission Recommendation C(2009)6464 on media literacy in the digital environment for a more competitive audiovisual and content industry and an inclusive knowledge society.
(IPPR) Many young people are effectively being 'raised online' spending in excess of 20 hours a week using sites such as bebo, Myspace, Facebook and YouTube, according to new research by the Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr). This is over three times higher than previous official estimates. This new research comes ahead of the final report of the Byron Review of children and new technology, set up by Gordon Brown in 2007 and headed by Dr Tanya Byron. See Behind the Screen: the Hidden Life of Youth by Kay Withers with Ruth Sheldon.
(BBC News)
The European Union is spending 14m euros (£10.5m) to create a standard way to send TV via the net. An additional 5m euros (£3.7m) is being contributed to the project by 21 other partners including the BBC and the European Broadcasting Union. The project will create a peer-to-peer system (based on the BitTorrent technology) that can pipe programmes to set-top boxes and home TV sets.
(Ars Technica) A new UK report on the habits of the "Google Generation" finds that kids born since 1993 aren't quite the Internet super-sleuths they're sometimes made out to be. For instance, are teens better with technology than older adults? Perhaps, but they also "tend to use much simpler applications and fewer facilities than many imagine." The report, Information Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future, sponsored by the British Library and the Joint Information Systems Committee, tries to get beyond the stereotypes to find out just how good young people are with information technology, and what the implications are for schools and libraries. Based on log analysis from British Library web sites and search tools, along with a "virtual" longitudinal study based on literature reviews from the past 30 years, the report explodes a number of myths about students today. See also table of contents and teaser content (Stephen's Lighthouse).
(Times) Google is "white bread for the mind", and the internet is producing a generation of students who survive on a diet of unreliable information, a professor of media studies will claim this week. In her inaugural lecture at the University of Brighton, Tara Brabazon will urge teachers at all levels of the education system to equip students with the skills they need to interpret and sift through information gleaned from the internet.