It cannot be said that placing a ‘smart’ tablet in the hands of children is purely commercially driven. Photo: Matthew Mirabelli

The debate is an ongoing one: whether the new millennials, who spend, on average, up to eight hours every day engaging with new media, will turn out just as any other generation before them or, as some pundits lament, into the ‘dumbest generation’ of ‘narcissists’ who are unable to keep eye contact, are incapable of deep compassion for another and lack depth of knowledge and expertise in any given field.

And while both arguments have proven to trigger a long-term research agenda, either spectrum of the debate is speculative in nature than a fact.

The panic over the future of the new generation has recently settled to a steadier pace (panic but we are able to reason) thanks to a wave of research that has looked on the how and what of young people’s new media use.

In fact, now concerned parties – parents, educators, policymakers – are slowing coming to terms with the special place new media take in young people’s lives. This has shifted the focus from panic to the issue of ‘literacy’.

This newer debate gains popularity not only among academics and researchers alike but among policymakers, educators, business leaders and parents. Today everyone speaks of digital literacy, new media literacy, computer literacy, etc., encouraging policymakers and educators to build strategies to incorporate media technologies into the educational system under the pretext that ‘media literacy’ will enhance future success.

Yet, questions arise whether such direction was inevitable and what advantages and disadvantages media literacy will bring to children who already deal with an overloaded curriculum.

The objective of this article is not to discourage any efforts of building strategies in bringing up a society that is media literate. The aim is to ask to what extent media literacy entering compulsory education was inevitable and natural; to touch upon the contentious debate about the definition of ‘media literacy’; and, while respecting the possibility that, on the one hand, tablet/mobile apps can empower its ‘user’, to raise awareness that such tools can also create dependencies and, therefore, limitations.

The construction of the computer as an “educational device”, as Neil Selwyn explains, was by no means inevitable. Steve Jobs, the Apple founder, aimed to create the personal computer. More than that, he aimed to sell his product to everyone. Targeting everyone was by no means educational in its own regard.

However, as an educational credibility was established – because, to be employable and competitive in the so-called ‘knowledge economy’, one must be media literate – this has put pressure on parents, and now also on politicians and educators, to invest in media technologies and ensure that children become digitally skilled.

That does not mean that placing a ‘smart’ tablet in the hands of children is a purely commercially-driven decision.

Behind such broadly economistic discourse lies the correlation between education and business where education needs to establish means to bring employable people while businesses provide the software and the hardware to fulfil these means.

In one instance, this is well reflected in the Maltese government’s tablet-per-child strategy; in another, the recent Microsoft’s objective to achieve a ‘lighthouse’ for innovative educational technologies “that go beyond the introduction of hardware in schools”, whatever this ‘beyond’ entails.

As Roger Dale et al maintain in a study, such strategies are driven from the supply side rather than as a result of educational demands.

Defining media literacy will shape the framework of the educational strategy and the research agenda

As evident, seeking ways to digitally educate society’s (future) workforce to ensure its employability easily becomes part of a political agenda, too.

If that were a satisfactory argument to allow new media to go at par with compulsory education, then one should argue that the real urgency here should come from the more pressing matter: that of defining media literacy.

Defining media literacy will shape the framework of the educational strategy and the research agenda whether in Malta or elsewhere.

Definitions of what media literacy is abound. According to Malta’s national eLearning strategy, it entails “collaboration, communication, critical thinking, creativity, citizenship and character education”. This puts a lot of responsibility on the audience/user. What about the provider/owner?

Ignoring the origin and the ownership of the content/tool, as the LSE’s Sonia Livingstone points out, can skew the debate by seeing the user as incompetent and naïve, failing to recognise that the provider/owner may be deceptive or manipulative to begin with.

Furthermore, what about traditional media literacy (audio/video and print)? While still relevant and valuable, can these be adapted to help defining new media literacy?

Beyond the range of panics from those about cyber bullying and children’s possibility of accessing pornography sites and content inciting extremism, beyond the concerns of children’s commercialisation from using media technologies at an ever younger age, beyond the politics of what will make a child successful tomorrow that requires of him to learn today, the debate about the educational goals relating to media literacy remain dubious.

On the one hand, among members of governments and the corporate world, the argument is that employability requires a set of 21st century skills, among them digital skills, creative and critical thinking, collaboration and community.

On the other, mainly among educators, the insistence is on sticking to traditional methodologies of learning and assessment – something that has been tried and tested.

This polarised discontent has brought about a plethora of arguments which are supporting new media learning.

For example, Howard Gardner and Katie Davis, in their The App Generation, mention the quality of apps in that some of them allow the learner to be his own ‘creator of knowledge’.

The app world has come to support a wide variety of learning styles, or, as Gardner has made known, the multiple forms of intelligences.

The traditional form of education has always focused on the main two: the linguistic and the logical-mathematical.

On the other hand, one could argue that in order to become good at something one still needs to go through rote learning and exhaustive practising – a person cannot just become a violinist by playing with an app or simply dreaming.

To that effect, many an argument has come to criticise the effect of such digital tools entering the realm of compulsory education in that they are “poorly constructed, consisting simply of a mishmash of images, sounds and video that offer little more than light entertainment”, as Aldrich et al. assert.

Finally, it is hard to say what educational philosophy media technologies will take on. Whatever the learning outcomes, they will essentially demand innovative ways of assessment, yet another important matter to be considered prior to setting off course to media learning along with the compulsory one.

As Liz Beastall puts it, ‘enchanting a disenchanted child’ by incorporating media technologies into the school curriculum needs more thorough evaluation and analysis before such efforts of enchantment are put into practice.

Velislava Hillman is reading for a PhD in media technologies and children at the University of Westminster, London.