The ‘Road map net children 2020’ was a two-day conference held in Berlin a few days ago during which policymakers, academics, industry members and NGOs deliberated on children’s protection, living with and learning through new media with the aim of setting the European agenda on such matters for the next five years.
The conference was important on a European level in that its results – with contours forming from past research conducted across Europe – will give a direction for current and future policy set-up across European governments, Malta included.
With the prevailing presence of EU Kids Online research project coordinator, Sonia Livingstone, not to mention the German participation as the perfectly-organised host, the event delivered little beyond what was already known.
To begin with, the appeal for more research was clearly made. Specifically, the two-day workshops in which attendees discussed challenges and opportunities with regard to children and new media identified the need to acknowledge diversity among children and to research narrower age groups (an 11-year-old differs greatly from a nine-year-old in terms of internet use, needs and knowledge).
Efforts should be made to establish a strong relationship between the Maltese academia and industry
Cross-national comparisons were also set as a necessary target for future agenda; research equally necessary for Malta, especially because after 10 years of EU Kids Online project, the island has only participated in it sparsely. In fact, the need for cross-national studies is ever more necessary for the reason that the online world comprises businesses that come from virtually everywhere. In this regard, media learning will also challenge policymakers in their efforts to build educational strategies with cross-national standards.
The conference shed light over the need for researchers and academics to voice out their work, concerns and suggestions to those from industry. Similar efforts should be made to establish a strong relationship between the Maltese academia and industry now that education is ever more reliant on input from both worlds.
What did the conference aim?
Firstly, the efforts were to discuss children’s protection in the online world and to find ways, across the borders, to achieve security without limiting the young to access, opportunities and learning.
Policy protection took central place on the EU agenda. Protection, however, as much as it is key in the debate of kids online is also a matter that is deeply ingrained in the human spirit.
Research has often emphasised on children’s underestimated resilience. This is not to say that one should deregulate internet access and leave kids to their own devices (although most Scandinavian countries “only support risky explorers” on the premise that children have to toughen up).
The point to make here is that protection is an objective that can be formulated without much creative input from the decision-makers. Systems like the National Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Children’s Net Aware guide to “the social networks your kids use” work well because of how straightforward they are. Similar efforts are made in Malta through the Be Smart Online! project. More of these do make a change and will continue to take the public to be a better-informed new media consumer.
With a new domain as the internet come new threats and identifying those – thanks to a wave of research, a lot of it under the EU Kids’ Online wing – has helped in taking protective measures across Europe. However, here one should not speak of protecting children’s vulnerability only but all users - those lacking critical thinking and media literacy. This brings us to the conference’s second objective: identifying the challenges and opportunities to building a road map to media literacy.
On the subject of media education, the conference suggested little more than a fairly new proposition – that of training teachers, changing their attitudes to children’s use of new media and also acknowledging that informal media learning is just as important as formal instruction itself.
Questions on creative teaching, creative learning and creative methods of media use in the classroom remained unanswered.
There was also little, if at all, mention of the parents’ role in children’s media learning. The knowledge of and the attitude of parents towards new media reflects upon their children’s. Further, too much restriction or lack of communication could lead to a child’s risky online behaviour. Technologies that support education should act as the bridge between parents and their children if families cannot meet at the dinner table anymore.
Furthermore, while governments generally begin to accept the idea of technologies entering mainstream education, as reflected during the conference, one should ask whether this will not just play the same old tune by focusing instruction on the logical-mathematical and analytical thinking – what traditional education covets – disregarding the existence of multiple intelligences.
As David Buckingham puts it in his Beyond Technology, “we need to do more than adorn teaching materials with computerised bells and whistles”.
What also seemed to slip away during the event was the fact that once media technologies enter the realm of education the very idea of what is considered ‘heavy’ media user will have to change. While heavy media use carries with it concerns, as research has shown, what is considered ‘heavy use’ or even ‘addiction’ will need to be re-evaluated.
Finally, the understanding is that EU Kids Online is a great endeavour since it puts children’s new media use well on the European map. And, now more than ever, governments and industry need to keep a sound relationship with academia to stay tuned on what is happening in children’s lives. This is not to say that academics should have a dictatorial power over the future of education or internet security and media learning, rather, conferences like ‘Net children 2020’ should take place more often and even at a more informal national and international level.
Velislava Hillman is reading for a PhD in media technologies and children at the University of Westminster, London.