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PN 027 MeToDi: Methodological Toolkit for Publishers and Developers of Digital Educational Content and Services
M. Nouwen1, S. van Doninck1, B. Zaman1
1 University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
In many European countries (including Belgium) children are ‘protected by restrictions’, which means that parents prefer restrictive practices to mediate
their children’s online activities. A restrictive mediation approach may, however, reduce children’s opportunities to explore and learn in digital environments
(Helsper et al., 2013). Currently, many parental tools focus on controls and restrictions, leaving the potential for facilitating active mediation and co-use
underexplored (Zaman et al., 2016). In school context, teachers still experience several thresholds for the implementation of digital devices in class. Many
teachers worry about how to connect the digital activities with the official curriculum (Montrieux et al., 2014). In the MeToDi project, we want to support
the development of embedded tools or apps for parents and teachers that encourage active involvement and participation of parents in children’s digital
activities. Fostering active mediation practices at home and at school, we believe that parents, teachers and children may benefit more from online oppor‑
tunities for both entertainment and learning. Inspired by our previous experiences with the development of tools and apps (e.g. iMinds-MiX-WANAGOGO,
iMinds-MiX-RAGASI), and the expertise of our research team in terms of online risks and opportunities for children (e.g. EU Kids Online, Net Children go Mo‑
bile), we established a collaboration with partners from industry (publishers, developers) and social-profit organizations (e.g. safer internet centre).The aim
of the MeToDi project is to develop a methodological toolkit that provides support on a systematic basis to publishers or developers of digital content for
children. More specifically, the toolkit will incorporate concrete guidelines on how to implement a set of functionalities that helps parents and teachers
to engage in mediation practices that maximize learning opportunities and minimize online risks for children. In this panel, we will discuss the outcomes
of the user research, and howwe implemented these insights in a preliminary version of the methodological toolkit. Alongside, we will reflect on challenges
and difficulties we encountered during this process, how we move on towards the development of the selected use cases, the realization of the toolkit, and
howwe will deal with issues of sustainability and conflicting interests among the different stakeholders in the field of digital media education. In the MeTo‑
Di project we selected two use cases, one that focuses on family context and one on school context. In the family case, we will focus more on opportunities
for entertainment and informal (mutual) learning, while the school case will pay more attention to formal learning and assessment. In the build-up to
the actual development of the toolkit, we have set up a SWOT-analysis, using qualitative data from interviews, focus groups and observations. This helped
us to map parents’ and teachers’ perceptions and beliefs about the use of digital materials at home and at school, and was the basis for creating personas
and organizing ideation sessions. In a next step, these research activities will yield future scenarios on the use of parental and teacher tools, which will be
used in the development of the use cases and the final toolkit.
PN 028 Digital Media, Learning and Evaluating Methods: Assessing Existing and Forthcoming Skills of Media Penmanship in Schools
I. Froes1
1 IT University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
Nowadays Danish schoolbooks have websites and digital counterparts to be used concomitantly, either as support or as additional material towards learn‑
ing activities (see for example ). Teachers engage the students in learning using
a wide media range, which sometimes involves digital media production, such as creating stories and films about various subjects with the help of digital
tools. As already exposed in the recent European e-Skills Manifesto , despite the adoption
of technologies towards the development of pupils’e-skills, teachers’own development is overlooked and it is not uncommon for teachers to be sometimes
behind their students when dealing with current digital media advances. Beyond the actual technical skills, teachers need to be equipped with a wide range
of media knowledge, from film narrative genres to social networks, in order to be able to critically analyse and discuss them, preparing their students to do
the same. This requires teachers to be able to teach how to become an augmented digital media user - in other words users who are able to critically assess
the use and production of various media, being able to see and develop themselves with the help of digital tools beyond their digital media routines. Just
as coding has been incorporated in schools curricula in some countries (ibid. pp.69), should competences in digital media production and consumption also
join this initiative? In order to teach such competences, we are required to look at how devices are being currently used in classrooms across Europe. We
would like to propose the concept of media penmanship instead of the more traditional of media literacy (Livingstone, 2007; Marsh, 2004; S Weber et al.,
2010), the choice of the term is due to the skill set experience that goes beyond the artefact (in Danish schools it is mostly tablets), so it would be unfair
to limit the term to tabletmanship or to broaden it so widely as media literacy. Instead keeping a known term, such as penmanship, defined in the Collins
dictionary as the skill of writing by hand. The writing, which pre-requires reading, should be taken as a metaphor for the current and future skills required
in the use of digital media tools. These tools bring a set of key questions that need to be debated, such as what is the present form(s) of media penmanship?
How do we engage teachers in learning about media penmanship? When making use of digital media for content production at schools, how is the pro‑
duction then assessed and evaluated? Which skills are required to achieve satisfactory media penmanship? How does this fit with standardised testing
environments? These questions should guide not only further research, but also debates leading to possible reforms of educational structures.
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