Living and learning in an age of knowledge abundance isn't just about technological tools: making meaning in complexity requires Media & Information Literacies (MIL) for a new, participatory ethos. Part I of a 2-part MIL session in London, January 2014.

1. The New Ethos:
Media Information Literacies
Part I
Bonnie
Stewart
University
of
Prince
Edward
Island
@bonstewart

2. What does it mean to be literate
in the 21st century?
h:p://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelheiss/2871996129/

3. UNESCO Definition of
Media Information Literacies (MIL)
Knowledge, attitudes, skills, practices
required to
access, analyse, evaluate, use, produce,
communicate
information knowledge in
creative, legal, ethical ways
Extend beyond information communication
technologies to encompass
learning, critical thinking interpretive skills

4. Backdrop: Changing Culture
public, institutional
values
closed systems
knowledge scarcity
open systems
market values
knowledge abundance

5. INTRODUCTION
• Information abundance = context of MIL
• Networks = structure of MIL
• New Ethos = key to understanding MIL
LEARNING IN THE NEW ETHOS
• Identities = pathways to MIL
• Learning as participation

6. Literacy, 400 BCE = Threat to Knowledge

7. Literacy, 1500 CE = Control of Knowledge

8. Literacies, 2014 BCE = Management
Synthesis of Knowledge

9. Information Abundance
h:p://www.flickr.com/photos/silaHx/9886617776/sizes/c

10. Channels of Abundance = Networks

11. Oh good.
So technology is the answer to
everything?

12. NO.

13. Networks are not about online/offline
binaries
h:p://www.flickr.com/photos/zigazou76/5824384001/sizes/z/

14. Technologies do not necessarily
change the ways we approach learning
h:p://www.onlineuniversiHes.com/blog/2012/08/teaching-­‐with-­‐tablets/

15. New tech + old approaches
new literacies

16. Participatory culture = new ethos
“Paradigm cases of new literacies have both
new “technical stuff” (digitality) and new
“ethos stuff”…what is central to new
literacies is not the fact that we can now
“look up information online” or write essays
using a word processor rather than a pen…
but rather, that they mobilize very different
kinds of values and priorities and
sensibilities.”
- Knobel Lankshear (2007)

17. It’s not tech but what we DO with it –
and each other – that makes us literate
h:p://www.flickr.com/photos/rofi/2647699204/

18. Being ‘of’ the web = literacies of networks
Institutions
Networks
product-focused
mastery
bounded by time/space
hierarchical ties
plagiarism
authority in role
audience = teacher
process-focused
participation
always accessible
peer-to-peer ties
crowdsourcing
authority in reputation
audience = world

19. So.
How do we learn
Media Information Literacies in this
new ethos?
Hang tight.
Part II is on its way.
J