Media literacy in the AI era
Media literacy for young and older, smartphone policies in schools, what AI images reveal about our world, a rabbit hole of sound effects to play with and much more....
What’s been happening
We’re thinking about all things media literacy this week. Sarah took part in a meeting of the Early years digital media literacy review advisory group. The project is led by Parent Zone and funded by the Nuffield Foundation and explores how digital literacy interventions can be improved for families of under-fives and early years educators in the UK. Sarah is also preparing for a digital literacy project meeting in Delft with teachers from across Europe.
A few key issues in this space the meetings highlighted were the gap in terms of media literacy support for parents and carers of young children, with so much of the focus on pre-teens and teens. There can be a tension between education and health messages for this age group, as the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child notes in its strategy paper: educators encourage young children to be proficient users of digital technology use to enable them to thrive in a digital world, while health authorities, on the other hand, discourage very young children from using screen-based digital technology at all due to concerns for physical, cognitive, emotional and social wellbeing. The current emphasis on the risks of smartphones can also undermine critical information literacy: a narrow focus on screen time for children instead of examining the context of activities using digital technologies doesn’t support children’s media literacy competencies. And media literacy also risks falling between subject areas – where in the curriculum should it sit?
Meanwhile, Michelle got stuck into some research from the Behavioural Insights Team, which surveyed 2,000 adults and found that while 59% were confident they could spot false information online, only 36% thought that others could do the same. The problem, says Chris Stokel-Walker, is that “if you think you’re better than others at spotting fake news, you’re actually more likely to have lower defences – and fall foul of it when you (inevitably) encounter it online.”
However, we have also come across a couple of very useful tools this week. The media literacy competency model from Belgian group Mediawijs looks at knowledge, skills and attitudes and helpfully suggests ways to use the model in education. We also like Ofcom’s new outcomes bank for evaluating the impact of media literacy initiatives, with its sensible five-step criteria.
AI roundup
Reasonable assessment
Mike Sharples takes a look at OpenAI’s new ‘reasoning’ model (covered previously) and comes up with some use cases in education, such as adaptive assessment where the AI explains to the student why their answer is incorrect by breaking down the process that leads to a correct solution. However, like most commentaries on this model he warns that it is still at the early stages – it can reason about topics in more detail but it still can’t visualise the world.
EU Code Week
What do AI tools mean for the future of coding education? How is AI influencing the coding pedagogical approach? Which skills are getting more and more important, and which are becoming abundant? Just some of the questions under discussion on this webinar exploring the impact of AI on teaching of coding with Lidija Kralj, education analyst and expert in AI and data. It’s on 21 October at 15:00.
After the gold rush
Rose Luckin’s latest The Skinny is out and she urges us all to “breathe, think, learn, and be wise if we want to shape this post-gold rush landscape to ensure human flourishing and thriving”.
A technology paradigm shift
Yes, another one of those. This week it’s AI companions. At least according to Microsoft’s AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman, who is terribly optimistic about their future in general and (of course) Microsoft’s “dynamic, emergent and evolving” Copilot in particular.
Quick links
Microsoft Teams for Education has 11 new features, including various AI add ons, and this video goes through them all
Raspberry Pi has revamped Code Club, its network of free coding clubs
Smartphone policies in schools: what does the evidence say? Find out in a new Digital Futures report from authors Miriam Rahali, Beeban Kidron and Sonia Livingstone
STEM Learning is offering a 90-minute online cyber security in your primary school CPD session, providing advice on the best methods for ensuring a safe and secure online environment in your school
There are conflict of interest concerns about MIS fees for councils
Modern foreign languages consultant Joe Dale has made a Google doc that uses dropdown menus as a prompt scaffold for a lesson plan
We’re in a golden age of geeks, thanks to the rise of YouTube sites like Numberphile and their influence on maths and science.
We’re reading, watching, listening…
‘I see AI as born out of surveillance’: the FT takes Signal’s Meredith Whittaker out to lunch and discovers why the head of the encrypted messaging service is a privacy absolutist [paywalled but the FT often offers gift links if you Google the headline].
Hidden traces of humanity: this Guardian long read on what AI images reveal about our world suggests that “From here on out, it’s safest to assume that any image you encounter might be generated. What differentiates these images is not their lack of humanity, but their intense abundance of it: all the alienated intelligence, historical strata and linguistic tics embedded and reproduced within them.”
The linguistics of social media: in this week’s BBC Radio 4 Word of Mouth, the always-entertaining Michael Rosen talks to linguist Dr Andreea Calude about her research into how language is used on Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn and Twitter/X.
Give it a try
BBC Sound Effects
We love this! BBC sound effects are now available online for non-commercial use and you could lose hours exploring the wealth of weird and wonderful clips, from hooting owls to dialling modems.
Connected Learning is by Sarah Horrocks and Michelle Pauli
