Birth of Image: Stay Curious!

With the photo contributions of young peope from Vilnius, Birzai, Thessaloniki, Budapest, Ommen, Warsaw and Frattamaggiore: A treatise on the nature of media youth exchanges…

A New Media Literacy e-Guide for Educators, Youth Workers and Volunteers

Below you can find the new Concise Guide to Media Literacy, documenting 18 months of innovative youth work and experimenting with media tools, such as digital video, web 2.0 and social media. It is available in print and online, in 7 languages: Enlgish, Italian, Dutch, Hungarian, Greek, Lithuanian and Serbian.

Download Publication or view it on Issuu below

Ommen meets “Tarzan Project”

Different groups of different countries met in the Group Accomodation “Olde Vechte” to take part to the project.

DO IT NOW!

By now we see it everywhere, but what does it mean?

It’s the slogan which promote “Tarzan Project”, an international design with the purpose of introducing medias in an alternative way, focusing the attention to human beings.

It’s an innovative way to best express yourself through several specific exercises, original in themselves.

It’s not simply a training with theoretical lessons and practical ones but an interwined work.

It’s about “practing ideas”, manipulating them through sensations and feelings concerning about our mood of a specific moment.

In this sense the attention to the 5 senses is really important and absolutely necessary.

How many times did you pay attention to the senses, especially on what they can express?

And how they can manipulate your vision? They permit us to get confidence with the world all around, especially paying attention to details we don’t see at first sight.

Frequently we waste our time thinking about only the result of our work because we are interested in the feedback of people no paying attention to the process, how it develops according our ideas and feelings.

The excellent team of “tarzan project” disapproves this kind of approach to work. It’s not important to have a good result or a bad one, if it’s nice or ugly.  Miki says “no sort of work is good or bad, everything is good if it’s well thought” and Krizsta continues “…you have to feel it in yourself as a deep breath”.

Therefore, “Tarzan Project” with its team shaped by specialists offers the opportunity to put your ideas into practice, realizing them through your feelings and medias.

But what are medias? What does media mean? Media is the present and the future; it’s a way to communicate through an image, and image should represent you in all yourself. But media is more than this; “Tarzan Project” process develops through curiosity, creativity and actions.

The specialized team is composed by 5 people well connected between them and their interests.

Krizsta works carefully on psychological meditation and physical relax. In this way it is possible to take emotions out and to think about ourself from an interior perpective.

Miki helps you to bring out ideas through brainstorming-useful technique at the base of each well structured work-with interesting questions about what we want, need and expect from a production, connecting people.

Andrew can help you to transform dreams in multimedial reality with his creativity supports and give you several devices.

With Sofia’s knowledge about the use of colours in a picture, planning events in the team and “light-position” everything appears much more clear.

Vicky’s ability in video editing, managing permissions for copyright medias, and much more concerning technologies support all the team.

During the training in Ommen, (Holland) people of different ages and countries met all together in the Olde Vechte, a group acccomodation, in which they felt their personal re-birth and personal development as human beings working together in different groups, feeling themselves day after day much more confortable.

They confirmed a new way of perceiving themselves and express their feeling through videos and photos. “It’s a wonderful experience” says someone “because finally you open your mind and have a new, completely different vision”. And someone else continues “if you want you can, and if you want to improve something this is the best way to do it”.

5 Reasons for Not Believing the Social Media Hype

Is creative media literacy overrated?

by MIKI AMBROZY, 5-Jan-2011

In the past decade the mantra of educational policy has been to stick a single word to the evolving terms of computing science. Ever heard of digital literacy, web literacy, media literacy, visual literacy, information literacy?

Welcome to the era of new literacy.

With the unemployment figures of Europe’s youth looking a little bleak, there’s much debate going on about how to match up the content delivered by education to emerging new jobs. The turning point in the technological development has been the dramatic rise of social networking, turning users into creators of content.

Out story is centered around the birth of new media and new forms of social activity on Youtube, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Delicious and their dozens of thousands of smaller or more localized brothers and sisters. These networking sites and tools have been rapidly growing in unique visits, registered users, traffic and, consequently, value.

Yet, I can’t help seeing the digital revolution as hype.

Here are five reasons why.

#1 The ‘user-who-generates-content’ is still in minority

My hunch is that creative media literacy is still the benefit of the few, even if the circle is gradually widening. To join the hype, you need to be equipped with the necessary basics of general literacy, speak English or another major world language, have a solid Internet connection, a reasonably reliable desktop PC, and afford to maintain your computer system over time.

What’s more, in order to join the game on the video and mobile applications side, knowledge of downloading cracked software, hacker friends and a digital video camera manufactured after the era of Hi8 video tapes (late 90s) are a must.

Let me rephrase this one: the above two are the technological and social pre-requisites of creative media literacy and user-generated content.

#2 The majority is still digitally half-literate

As a youth worker, I have been cooperating for over a year with young people from the deaf community of Thessaloniki, Greece. My organisation’s young deaf volunteers define themselves as a cultural minority group. They are proud of their sign language and won’t really hear of cochlear implants (“bionic ear”) for deaf children. They come from one of Europe’s most criticized and patchy educational systems, where middle class children attend private afternoon schools to make it to university. As a minority group, widely regarded by the majority as physically disabled, deaf young people’s educational paths have been at best the typical ones.

So how about their media literacy and the new hype?

On the one hand, they use some functions of Facebook. The more advanced use includes the use of google translator to chat with friends abroad, and to post information about events in the community.

On the other hand, video-sharing sites were largely unknown to them until recently, when their first upload appeared on Facebook. This is quite surprising, given the fact that sign language and the experience of deaf communication is highly visual. Similar gaps in actual media literacy have been observed in the UK among working class children.*

Apparently, the above listed pre-requisites of creative media literacy have been missing from their computer (or any other) classes. The result: no hype.

#3 Non-formal learning of digital stuff is effective, yet marginal

I’m a firm supporter of the empowerment of marginalized social groups through media and digital literacy. I believe that participants’ control over content is crucial for a successful learning outcome, or for a truthful account of reality in journalism, for that matter. One of the domains where gaps of new literacies can be most effectively patched up is informal, extra-curricular learning.

I find that using video in team-building, as a tool for self-expression or during an outdoor adventure game can be more effective than a lesson in aspect-ratio, picture composition and video file formats. It’s an excellent starting point for career orientation as well.

This recognition doesn’t need a genius. The European Union’s social and educational policies are allocating millions of euros for developing the digital and media literacy of young people in Europe in the framework of non-formal learning programmes.

The number of school hours spent on new media literacy in Europe is, to my knowledge, marginal. Non-formal learning programmes can’t make up for that. We are left with hacker friends, appalling phenomena such as chatroulette and hype, without the necessary skills to make sense of it all.

#4 So, you’re a digital native. What can you create?

I completely agree with Sonia Livingstone:* it’s doubtful how digitally literate youth actually is. If I take a look at the videos that young people bring back from exercises in youth exchanges, seminars and workshops, there’s no need to celebrate.

The development of new media technology is quick, commercially driven. The activity and practices of new media users are heavily determined by access to money and time.

A person’s creative media literacy will largely depend on his or her educational pathway, cultural practices, and the family’s socio-economic resources. I can’t help remembering the director of a private school in Greece, who still today has the secretary manage her e-mail and Facebook accounts, printing out emails. I wonder if she gets a summary of the status updates of her friends at the end of the day – in print.

Before raving about the democratic opportunities of the Internet, e-learning, e-citizenship and video blogging, let’s not forget the generations of parents who have little clue how to navigate the digital landscape, or the fact that the digital cosmos needs continuous learning and practice.

#5 Much of user-generated content is fun only for anthropologists

To us, educators, the ultimate question remains: how to exploit the presence of digital media in the life-world of youth in a meaningful way? How to bring a little depth into the skateboarding dog and the subtitled cat video on youtube?

I think being curious is a fantastic human value. Taking risks in life is a basic survival instinct. If we just let young people explore and take control of their own digital learning environment, the results are more connected to their life, more sincere.

There exists an element of personal growth in the creation of all media. The transformation of digital illiterates to new literates is a glorious journey, definitely worth documenting for the digital annals of human history.

Miki Ambrozy is a documentary filmmaker and media educator, based in Thessaloniki, Greece

For some of the educational projects on digital media literacy with marginalized youth groups visit http://globalsoma.org and www.vimeo.com/channels/birthofimage

* I refer to and highly recommend Sonia Livingstone’s body of research and publications on media literacy, especially Engaging with media – a matter of literacy? Communication, culture & critique, 1 (1), 2008 and Youthful participation: what have we learned, what shall we ask next? In: First Annual Digital Media and Learning Conference: Diversifying Participation, 2010
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How does the combination of Media and Personal Development look like?

by Caterina Tiveron

Ask to any of the participants of the CORE Media Literacy Exchange (“Training”), held in Greece, in May 2010 or to any of the participants of the local workshops, held in each country partner of Birth of Image. They would probably say that we are a bunch of crazy people and that they had the time of their lives!

CORE is a new-11-days training based on the experience gathered in the International Synergy Group. The project was supported by a team of experienced co–trainers, ready to play and to serve the training. It has been the second (after the Kick Off meeting held in The Netherlands, March 2010) of the International activities planned for the coming 18 months.

The structure of this action

3 days of individual and group activities, during which participants have the chance to look at how they do things in both contexts; 3 days of workshops where Media tools are given and participants are asked to grab their audiovisual equipment and create things; 2 days of outdoor production, meaning that the training moves outside the training room and participants are asked to simply go and do; 2 days of closing during which time is given to reflection, sharing within the group and the local community, feedbacks and lots of love!

Workshops follow the same line. Longer, or shorter, in bigger or smaller groups, while photo shooting or video making, the difference is in each and unique result. What remains is a powerful experience for youngsters within the partner countries, most of whom come into contact with international youth work and media education for the first time in their lives.