Adventures in Media Literacy

This project was started in Adult Learners' Week - May 2007 to explore Media Literacy. It works from the point of view of people who have a go at making their own media and have had a go at publishing it online.

The project was based on three 'Internet radio' workshops run in collaboration with Hope Foundation in Middlesbrough, residents of the village of Margrove Park and Destinations UK online centre in Saltburn.

The whole project is a collaboration between NIACE and University of Teesside Department of Academic Enterprise (Community Media).

This was the first of the three workshops. It was attended by Eddie, Stephen, Mel, Paul, another Paul and Kev.

After a very short introduction, everyone got down to making a test recording using a microphone and some computer software called Audacity. Once everyone had done that successfully, the participants had a chance to make their own podcast.

Click here for Podcasts produced in the Hope Foundation workshop.

After the podcasts and had gone live to the world wide web, the group interviewed each other about what they had achieved and what they wanted to do next.

These interviews are here:

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

Life never works out quite as you expect! At the due time for the Margrove Park workshop to begin there was only one person there (Marian) and not even the organiser! However, within about 30 minutes piles of media equipment was unloaded and set up and three key members of the community had arrived.

The workshop went very well indeed but not at all according to plan!
Click here for Podcasts produced in the Margrove Park workshop.

As this workshop had not exactly gone to plan, we abandoned the original idea to ask participants to interview each other and instead we conducted one wide ranging interview with the whole group at once! We think it worked - what do you think?

INTERVIEW

Destinations is a UK online centre right in the heart of Saltburn. There is a cafe at the front where they serve wonderful coffee and enormous sandwiches!

There is drop in computer access and an IT learning centre just behind the cafe. This is where the final workshop took place. Again the 'team' represented quality if not quantity (there were three people) but the products were impressive.
Click here for Podcasts produced in the Destinations workshops

This bit did go to plan and at the end of the session each learner was interviewed by another learner. The participants were asked to talk about what they had learned and what they planned to do next. They were also asked how being a 'media producer' might influence their attitude to the 'professional media'.

One

Two

Three

Four

This was a small pilot project which recognised the range of learning activities associated with Media Literacy. However, within the limited time available, a small and tightly focused initial action research study was set up.

The study was based on Internet Radio training workshops. In these, the participants were developing skills of media creation becoming 'citizen publishers'/'citizen broadcasters'

Right click here to download the full report (PDF format)