2013 Summit Programme - The Centre for Excellence in Media ...

Friday 20th 11.30 - 12.15. Cantor Atrium
Making is Learning -
practical media work in school settings
Michelle Cannon
The accessibility of digital media production tools is a significant issue for schools,
generating a tension between the democratic impulse and current retrogressive ideologies
favouring traditional content, skills and knowledge. Old dichotomies between the
academic and the vocational are re-surfacing, often resulting in the deployment of
practical media work in educational settings as a form of vocational industry training.
This and other instrumental policy shifts foreshorten the potential for personal cultural
enrichment and universal exposure to relevant literacy practices in relation to digital
media.
This research explores a possible rapprochement between the academic, the arts, the
technical and the economic imperative by interrogating the pragmatic principles of craft
and the critical/creative affordances of digital composition and editing. It is suggested
that a cultural reconciliation between these contested discourses might be reached and
argues the need for a reconfiguration of pedagogy and meaning-making practices in
schools - more in line with informal transmedia learning experiences outside school.
poster presentations
The study argues for a shift in our conception of young learners as active, socio-culturally
aware new literacy participants: as critical consumers and competent crafters of
omni-textural materials, with an informed grasp of the dynamic context within which
they and others are acting, sharing and contributing.
Keywords: digital production, primary, secondary, literacy, craft.
Michelle Cannon is a PhD Candidate at CEMP, Bournemouth University studying
digital media production with young learners. She works part-time in an East London
primary school, whilst researching and collaborating on British Film Institute school
projects.
Media Education Summit 2013 49