Media Literacy Lab “Kinderzimmer Productions”

The second edition of the Media Literacy Lab (MLab) of University of Mainz in Germany took place in February and March. This time the open online course "Kinderzimmer Productions" (www.medialiteracylab.de) focused on digital creativity and (online) productions by children and teenagers. It is all about what young people make in the digital world: What do they build, produce, create or design? What kind of tools and services do they use when they produce videos, music clips, pictures or drawings and to express themselves? Hackasaurus, Scratch, Minecraft, MakeyMakey or 3D printing are only some of the tools which were tested and discussed. More than 200 participants joined the open and free of charge online course, among them students, scholars, media educators, providers of online content, services and apps, industry and parents. 

The participants were able to work within three different sections: collector space, maker space and reflector space. Each space had a different focal subject: The collector space aimed at collecting and systematising tools and services to get creative as well as examples and descriptions of how to use them. People got to test and use popular and upcoming tools and services within the maker space. The reflector space invited to discuss and evaluate tools, services and productions especially regarding their impact on creative possibilities in an educational context. Working groups were formed according to individual interest and wish or possibility for involvement (see list of all groups http://wiki.medialiteracylab.de/index.php?title=Arbeitsgruppen and the course community https://plus.google.com/communities/110663979727411675817).

The Makergallery www.makergallery.de was developed as an online gallery showing all exhibitions and results of the course. All three spaces are present in three different levels: the gallery of tools and services (collector space), the gallery of examples (maker space) and the gallery of reflections with presentations, brainstorming results as well as discussions with experts.

 

  

The video talks with experts from all over the world within the section #mlabtalk are especially fascinating for an international audience (see youtube playlist www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUymajA6PlKAYPSUsCJKY2DzZs-pWUs41), some of them were held in English.

#mlabtalk on MaKey MaKey (www.makeymakey.com)

Eric Rosenbaum (@ericrosenbizzle, http://web.media.mit.edu/~ericr/) and Jay Silver  (@wakeupsilver, http://web.media.mit.edu/~silver/) from Massachusetts talked to the MLab team about MaKey MaKey and other of their inventions. The video offers a glimpse of their breathtaking creativity that striving to change the world for a better: 

#mlabtalk on LA Makerspace (www.lamakerspace.com) 
What does a kid friendly hackerspace in LA look like? Tara Tiger Brown (@tara, http://taratigerbrown.com), co-founder of LA Makerspace speaks about eTextiles, DIY LED Laterns and how makers and tinkerers come together in a community space to create and collaborate: 

#mlabtalk Digital Makers - Digital Literacy. A talk with Julian-Sefton Green (www.julianseftongreen.net) Dr. Julian Sefton-Green is an independent scholar, Principal Research Fellow at the Department of Media & Communication, LSE, and research associate at the University of Oslo. He is also Honorary Professor of Education at the University of Nottingham, UK and at the Hong Kong Institute of Education. Julian Sefton-Green talks about maker education and comments on media education in the 1980s to digital making in the 2020s. He maps the current digital makers’ landscape and explains why digital literacy is important and what digital literacies young people need:

#mlabtalk The Digital Producers of Tomorrow - A talk with Øystein Gilje

Øystein Gilje, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Education at the University of Oslo, Norway, talks about digital production practices among young people. What's the point of producing, making, tinkering and editing online? He talks about digital literacy, schools and learning and why a digital remixing youth is basic for society:

About Media Literacy Lab 

The Media Literacy Lab is a pro-open project which takes the learner and the learner’s group into consideration, while at the same time it tends to put lower priority on instructional aspects for conveying subject matters. The organizing team is attempting a didactic media approach in dealing with digital options for peer-to-peer learning, interest-driven learning, collaboration, problem-oriented learning, and the consideration of the different approaches and paths to learning. For more information see http://medialiteracylab.de/english/ and http://makergallery.de/impressum.

Twitter: @_MLAB (https://twitter.com/_MLAB)

Expert presentation: Accessibility of Online Content and Services for People with Disabilities

The network of POSCON will be working on recommendations concerning the needs of disabled children when they use online content and services during the coming weeks. As an introduction into the topic we invited two expert speakers in Germany to a core group meeting and hereby want to share their in-depth knowledge and experiences in a short summary.

The speakers Benjamin Grießmann (WEB for ALL http://www.webforall.info/) and Anna Courtpozanis (Agentur Vielfalt) spoke about opportunities and disadvantages for people with disabilities whenever they use online media. Mrs Courtpozanis later demonstrated how a blind person such as herself uses a screen reader with Braille keyboard to surf online, which gave astonishing insights into how web content can be accessed through such a tool, but also how it is perceived.

Generally, the internet offers huge opportunities for people with disabilities, but there are a lot of barriers making usage difficult or sometimes even impossible (e.g. accessing flash websites or reading PDFs). Accessibility efforts do not seem to have a strong lobby, many providers of online content and services appear to be not very motivated to engage.

Computer and internet were described as media of support and communication for people with disabilities; they offer the possibility to connect technological tools for help and support. Different forms of disabilities have to be distinguished: limited visual skills, ablepsia, limited hearing skills, deafness or disadvantages in regard to movement capabilities. There are various technological tools to support people with these kinds of disabilities:

• Movement capabilities/motor skills: special mouse operated by mouth or air, special keyboards (braille, special small/narrow keys, special large keys), operation by eyes
• Hearing skills, deafness: sign languages on websites (videos)
• Visual skills, ablepsia: enlargement programs / technologies, reduce resolution

Websites as well as other online content and services can be tested with special tools which detect accessibility difficulties and barriers, these can be manifold and include for example:

• No (or incorrect) alternative texts and attributes for images/graphics, flash animation, links, forms etc.
• No (or incorrect) headlines which should convey the structure of the site
• No (or difficult) keyboard functionality (e.g. tabulator cannot be used properly)
• Hard to define contrasts, too similar colours (yellow/green)
• Website hard to be scaled, cannot be enlarged without loss
• Accessing PDF files

Actually the WCAG standards are internationally accepted and supposed to be binding; some countries implemented these standards into their legislation. But reality shows that many websites do not meet these standards, accessing them for example as a blind person can be frustrating, confusing and sometimes even impossible as the screen reader demonstration showed.

Consequently, the network of POSCON wants to raise awareness to this issue and more importantly aim at improving the quality of online content and services regarding their accessibility for people with disabilities, especially for children and young people, so that they are not discriminated in any way and can make full use of all the positive opportunities.

Within the thematic expert network of POSCON we will now begin to work on concrete recommendations for online content and services with very practical tips and advice which are meant to complement our recently published “Checklist and concrete Criteria for Positive Content”. Furthermore we will strive towards a greater public awareness for accessibility for all internet users including people with disabilities.