Computer gaming and media literacy

In my final post about the Oeiras a Ler conference in Portugal 20-21 May, I will mention the session from Luís Pereira (Universidade do Minho - Portugal) Contributos dos videojogos para a literacia dos media (Contribution of videgames to media literacy)
Luis Pereira described two research studies: into the opinions of parents about their computer gaming children, and into 10-12 year old’s perceptions of video games. They identified media literacy education needs amongst the children. Building on this research, and on the 20 years of work on media literacy by their group, they produced a colourfully illustrated booklet How to watch TV followed up by one called How to play videogames (both in Portuguese). There are pictures of the covers here: http://comedu.blogspot.com/search/label/Booklet
The booklets are written for parents and children, and give concisely worded information and guidelines (so e.g. it says what really might be of concern or beneficial about videogames, so that it counters scaremongering about them). Very large numbers of the booklets have been printed and e.g. distributed with their regional newspaper as an insert. Their excellent media literacy blog (in Portuguese) is at http://comedu.blogspot.com/ and the Centre’s website is at http://www.cecs.uminho.pt/
Photo by Sheila Webber: Foxglove, Sheffield, June 2010

Internet Challenge at Oeiras a Ler

Here is my third post about the conference I spoke at in Lisbon, Oeiras a Ler. Antonio Navarro and Maria Jose Amandio talked about the Oieras Internet Challenge organised by Oeiras Municipal Library (Bibliotecas Municipais de Oeiras, organisers of the conference). They were addressing information literacy (which is Literacias de Informacao in Portuguese) and also their library wants to develop learning to learn abilities.
Their Internet Challenge is a yearly event, targeted at the young in particular. They want to improve ability to search the web, and motivate people with more entertaining activities to come to the public library. Any one can apply to be in the challenge. People are set questions and they have to find the answer quickly using the web, in teams of two people. It has several rounds (each round is harder than the last), all on the same day, so it is a marathon from 9am to midnight. It is a public event, like a TV game show, with friends and family encouraged to come along and support their team. Librarians create about 300 questions (quite a hard task, thinking of good questions). There are lots of pictures of the 2009 challenge “Game day” on their blog http://oeirasinternetchallenge.blogspot.com/
The numbers of applicants and of teams selected has increased every year: Year 1 (2006): 32 teams; Year 2: 56 teams; Year 3 (2008) 61; Year 4 (2009): 70 teams (with 119 applications). They are aiming for 98 teams this year. At the conference, we were given a live demonstration, using two volunteer teams from the audience. First, each team chose a topic (e.g. science) then questions from chosen themes were mixed up. A question was posed (e.g. what is “2 loaves” in Czech) on the big screen and it was the first team to answer got the point (if correct) or a point deducted (if incorrect). The whole thing seemed fun, and also very interesting in terms of how people where finding the answers (you could see what was happening on contestants screens too).
A similar kind of thing has been done by some universities in North America, see the Digital Literacy Contest website.
Photo by Sheila Webber: Swans under the Charles bridge, Prague, May 2010

Information Literacy for 21st Century Life

On Thursday I spoke at the Oeiras a ler conference in Oeiras, Portugal, on Information Literacy for 21st Century Life. There will be information on their blog, and there was a twitter stream at http://twitter.com/home#search?q=%235eol%20 (mostly in Portuguese as that was the language of the conference). I will say something about other presentations in a future blog post, but in the meantime this is my presentation. I identify some of the different ways in which various groups of people experience information and information literacy (IL) in the 21st Century, with reference to 21st Century research studies. I go on to discuss some of the key aspects of IL that need more attention. I see these elements as evolutionary development of IL as a 21st Century concept, not as something completely new and different.

Information Literacy for 21st Century life

View more presentations from sheilawebber.