EDUCOMUNICAÇÃO

"A Educação para os media na era do digital"

Texto de David Buckingham, um dos nomes de referência na educação para os media, no plano internacional, que serviu de base à intervenção que fez no acto evocativo dos dez anos da MED (Associação Italiana de Educação para os Media), em 3-4 de Março de 2006, em Roma.
Alguns dos pontos de vista que defende neste documento encontram-se sumariados neste excerto:

"(...) the current scale of investment in computers and other digital devices is unprecedented; and it poses some significant challenges for media educators. As we all know, media education (teaching about media) is often confused with educational media (teaching through media) – that is, the use of media to teach other curriculum areas such as science or history. This confusion may be even more acute as technology becomes more widely available in schools. On the level of funding and policy, it is hard not to be dismayed by the way in which the technology ‘bandwagon’ has overtaken media education. In an international survey we undertook for UNESCO a few years ago, experts in many countries complained about the difficulties they experienced in making the case for media education to policy makers – and saw a striking contrast with the often uncritical enthusiasm for ICTs.
So what are media educators to do in this situation? I want to make several suggestions here. Firstly, I want to argue that the use of technology in schools is actually quite out-of-step with young people’s use of technology outside schools. Increasing numbers of young people find the use of technology in schools limited, boring and irrelevant – particularly as compared with the ways in which they can use technology in their leisure time. Bridging this gap – this new ‘digital divide’ – between home and school will require a new, and less superficial, attention to young people’s digital cultures.
Secondly, I want to argue that media educators need to challenge the merely instrumental use of technology – the idea that technology is merely a neutral tool for delivering ‘information’. On the contrary, we need to define and promote new forms of ‘digital literacy’, extending and perhaps rethinking our familiar critical approaches in relation to new media such as computer games and the internet. However – thirdly – I will also argue that digital literacy is not simply about critically reading new media: it is also about writing in new media. Indeed, I think that some of the most positive and exciting possibilities of these technologies are to do with the ways in which young people can use them to produce and distribute their own media. Ultimately, I do not believe that the computer will ‘blow up’ the school; but I do believe it might contribute to a broader rethinking or re-imagining of what schooling might be about (...)".

Entre os livros de D. Buckingham, destacam-se: Children Talking Television (Falmer, 1993), Moving Images (Manchester University Press 1996), The Making of Citizens (Routledge, 2000), After the Death of Childhood (Polity, 2000) and Media Education (Polity, 2003).