World children’s day: The right way to deal with digital media

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Digital media develop at a rapid pace. In his book, “dumb media,” says media scholar Roberto Simanowski: schools and universities are not prepared enough for it.

 

Deutsche Welle: It is always claimed, it was important that the schools “media literacy”. But that can be totally interpreted differently. Some prefer to speak of “media literacy”. How do you define that?

Roberto Simanowski: The schools practiced the concept of media literacy is mostly for teaching students how to correctly on the “data highway” as the Internet used to be called, behavior. It comes to the effective, error-free, creative use of the new media.

The responsible view of the media developed a sensitivity to it, which changes in society and technical developments. Since then the competence to generate a lot of Likes on Facebook and YouTube or the ability to detect false positives and to avoid filter bubbles.

Since it is also the realization of the extent to which the business model of Facebook promotes bubbles phenomena such as false positives and Filter and what are the covert society are in addition to costs, if the infrastructure of the digital age – so the communication and knowledge structures of social networks like Facebook and search engines such as Google, which are listed in stock market, profit will not be dominated-oriented companies, whose natural interest is the emancipated citizens but the satisfied shareholder. You realize, when you think of media literacy in media literacy, is a political thing and more critical.

How good the society is prepared, in your opinion, on the digitalisation and its consequences?

The policy, education policy and the education institutions have slept through it a long time, to deal with digitization and a discussion of the process of serving our neighbours, the society, mentally and reflexively, on the level of development of their technologies. Now the policy has, apparently, afraid to miss economical connection to the digitisation and is trying to put it all on the “digital map”, and without If and But, as the economy requires it of her.

In 2013, German Chancellor Angela Merkel described the Internet as “Neuland”

The policy is apparently overwhelmed by the digitalization of society completely, and also avoids to get involved, because the established politicians of this subject usually have no idea and instinctively want to avoid, as a technophobe modernisation opponent.

What is the Vision for the education you have?

I am Convinced that the company needed in addition to the use of media skills as media reflection skills need to be developed in the spirit of scientific disciplines in a systematic way. My Vision is that at the universities the Humanities to record systematically and sustainably address those issues in their research and teaching, which are specifically associated with the digital media.

The aim of the subject-specific extension of the object of Research is the mediation of the knowledge produced on digital change in the corresponding courses, and also within the Teacher training is ultimately. It is clear that the transfer of knowledge from the University is needed in the school, the cooperation of the media and technical science with the media education and the educationists, in order to clarify what is, how to best convey in the classroom.

Smartphones as a research aid? Some schools allow this

The answers of the schools range from the cell phone ban to teaching with Tablets. Where do you see the ideal way?

I allowed my students in Hong Kong, to use in teaching their Laptops and phones, because they read the texts and annotate, make notes and certain aspects of the problem dealt with immediately research. Of course, one can not exclude, that you can watch while also giving your messages in the social media. This price does not have to pay if you throw out the baby with the bathwater, and any meaningful use of the new technologies in the learning context wants to ban. I have tried to the attention of the competition by a very interesting lesson guide instead of a General ban on repel. But I do not see that this procedure works for all and not everywhere.

How would you train your own children?

I would not be aware of how Steve Jobs and many CEOs of Silicon Valley to the fact that you have to spend early lot of time with the new media, but first of all those cultural skills that humans developed prior to the new media and which is now in question. I am of course thinking of the book and the concentrated reading is not constantly interrupted by incoming text messages and not on the next-best Link to click when it is difficult or weird. But I also believe in the patient reception of images and movies, the not inject every half Minute, a new attention to pathogens.

Read: an ancient culture, technology

You can see the “Digital Immigrants”, so here’s most of the time the parents and teachers, compared to the “Digital Natives”, children and students, in a Central point in the advantage. Why?

If you take the metaphor seriously, it is the basic experience of immigrants concerns, consider the context in which they immigrate, often critical, because they were not born into it – as you look at the grammar of a learned language better than the mother language. Immigrants know how it is elsewhere (or earlier) (or), and by comparison more sensitive to the differences than those who grew up unbroken and innocent with the customs of their environment.

Behavior of reflected – and perhaps nostalgic – for E-Mail, if you wrote even more letters; you can see the transparency culture of Digital critical, if you protested once against the census as a Symptom of the surveillance state.

Demonstration against the census in Berlin, 1987

One is alerted to the shortness of Hyper texts that if you developed the culture of technology to read books. You can see better the cost of the Free, if you don’t remember a political article, and change of advertising, and goods. It’s the culture-historical classification, and the culture of scientific reflection of media development, with the help of the teacher in the classroom in terms of new media. It is this strand of media education, the Older the Younger, the immigrant have the natives ahead and give.

The founder of the largest IT group of companies in China (Alibaba) and former English teacher, Jack Ma, says: “We must all learn what the Computer can do that.” And the best-selling author Frank Schätzing says: “students should learn machine language, to be able to work with intelligent machines and to keep pace with the future to communicate.” Who is right?

Of course, we have to learn all the what not that computers can, or should, if we are interested in the continued existence of these things.

Frank Schätzings Roman “Limit” is 1300 pages long

This does not invalidate but Frank Schätzing Council, because, of course, it is also useful if you understand what is happening under the hood and how to possible errors or the manufacturer does not intended effects cause can fix.

The question is, what are the costs to operate. When programmers write today, programs that can write programs, and with “deep learning”Algorithms in the Status of artificial intelligence are advancing, with the result that Computer even for specialists to the black box, ask yourself, how far are you at all able to keep up with the development. In this respect, the priority of what people in any case – so far – better than the Computer would have for me: to reflect The culture of the pen function of the computer to examine the societal implications of technological developments, to discuss whether or not you want this, and find out what you can do, this should not be the case.

Roberto Simanowski is a trained teacher for German and history and a Professor of media studies at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro. His research areas of the post include modernism, multiculturalism, Aesthetics and digital media. The Interview was conducted in writing.

Roberto Simanowski: the silent media – The Disappearance of the Computer in education and society

Verlag Matthes & Seitz Berlin, 304 pages, Softbound, Published: 2018, ISBN: 978-3-95757-521-0

Price: 24,00 €