Appendix: Selected Media and Information Literacy Resources
1. Media Education: A Kit for Teachers, Students, Parents and Professionals
This is published in Arabic, English and French by UNESCO. The kit is partly a product of the MENTOR project initiated by UNESCO and supported by the European Commission. It was a first attempt to develop a comprehensive tool kit in the field of MIL. This Media and Information Literacy Curriculum for Teachers complements and enhances the tool kit with a particular focus on teacher education. Questions addressed by the kit include: What should media education consist of? Who should provide it? How should it be included in a curriculum? Beyond schools, do families have a say in the matter? Can professionals be involved and how? What strategies can the public adopt to deal with the benefits and the limitations of media? The kit contains a Proposal for a Modular Curriculum, a Handbook for Teachers, a Handbook for Students, a Handbook for Parents, a Handbook for Ethical Relations with Professionals and an Internet Literacy Handbook.
View link at: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001492/149278e.pdf
2. UNESCO Media Development Indicators:
This is a set of internationally agreed indicators, translated into many languages, to asses the conditions needed for media and information services to perform their public service functions. The indicators should help examine the following five interlocking categories of conditions: system of regulation; plurality and diversity of media; media as a platform for democratic discourse; professional capacity building; and infrastructural capacity.
View link at: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0016/001631/163102e.pdf
3. International Meeting on Media
Education – Progress, Obstacles, New Trends since Grünwald: Towards New Assessment Criteria? This international meeting was organized in Paris (June 2007) by the French Commission for UNESCO in partnership with UNESCO, and with the support of the French Ministry of Education and the Council of Europe.
View link at: http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/fr/IMG/pdf/Synthesis_en.pdf
4. Empowerment through Media Education
This is a publication produced by NORDICOM, International Clearing House, Göteborg University with support of UNESCO. The book is based on the First International Conference on Media Education held in Riyadh in March 2007 (also supported by UNESCO) and on the International Meeting on Media Education: Progress, Obstacles, New Trends since Grünwald: Towards New Assessment Criteria, held in Paris, June 2007. When discussing issues regarding democracy and development, we often forget that media-literate citizens are a precondition. An important prerequisite for the empowerment of citizens is a concerted effort to improve media and information literacy – skills that help to strengthen the critical abilities and communicative skills that enable the individual to use media and communication both as tools and as a way of articulating processes of development and social change, improving everyday lives and empowering people to influence their own lives.
Media and information literacy is needed by all citizens, and is of decisive importance to the younger generation – in both their role as citizens and participants in society, and their learning, cultural expression and personal fulfilment. A fundamental element of efforts to realize a media and information literate society is media education. But when issues such as these are discussed, all too often the frame of reference is the media culture of the Western world. There is an urgent need for the agenda to open up much more to non-Western ideas and intercultural approaches than is the case at present. Internationalization is both enriching and necessary with regard to our common interest in broader, more all-inclusive paradigms.
View link at: http://www.nordicom.gu.se/clearinghouse.php?portal=publ&main=info_publ2.php&ex=258&me=3
5. Understanding Information Literacy:
A Primer Through this publication, UNESCO’s Information for All Programme (IFAP) defines media literacy in an easy-to-understand and non-technical manner. The publication targets a very diverse audience, from government officials, intergovernmental civil servants, information professionals and teachers to human resources managers in both profit- or non-profit organizations. An excerpt: ‘Over the course of your life, the more you learn and thereby come to know, but especially the sooner you master and adopt proficient learning skills, habits and attitudes – finding out how, from where, from whom and when to search for and retrieve the information that you need to know […] – the more information literate you thereby become. Your competency in applying and utilizing those skills, habits and attitudes will enable you to make sounder and timelier decisions to cope with your personal and family health and welfare, educational, job-related, citizenship and other challenges.’
View link at: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0015/001570/157020e.pdf
6. Towards Information Literacy Indicators
This paper provides a basic conceptual framework for measuring information literacy. The publication includes a definition of information literacy; a model that links information literacy with other adult competences, such as ICT skills; and a description of information literacy standards in education.
Information literacy is part of an integrated set of skills that adults need to acquire to be effective in all aspects of their lives. As derived from the Alexandria Proclamation of 2005, information literacy is the capacity of people to:
- recognize their information needs;
- locate and evaluate the quality of information;
- store and retrieve information;
- make effective and ethical use of information; and
- apply information to create and communicate knowledge.
The development of indicators of information literacy, through which achievements can be demonstrated and future efforts can be better focused, is a priority at both national and international levels. Information literacy underpins many of the Millennium Development Goals, for instance, combating diseases and enhancing employment opportunities.
Indicators of information literacy can help countries to identify the effect of policies to foster information literacy development and to know the extent to which their citizens are able to participate in a knowledge society.
View link at: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0015/001587/158723e.pdf
7. ICT Competency Standards for Teachers
Recognizing the need to provide standards to help national education sectors leverage ICT, UNESCO teamed up with Cisco, Intel and Microsoft, as well as the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) and the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), to set up the ‘ICT Competency Standards for Teachers’ (CST) project.
The goal of the CST project is to provide guidance on how to improve teachers’ practice through ICT and give a new dimension to their skills, regardless of where the classroom is located – resulting in better education and highly skilled students. The ICT Competency Standards for Teachers publication comprizes a set of three booklets including:
- A Policy Framework explaining the rationale, structure and approach of the ICT-CST project;
- A Competency Standards Modules’ Structure, which combines the components of educational reform with various policy approaches to generate a matrix of skill sets for teachers; and
- Implementation Guidelines, providing a detailed syllabus of the specific skills to be acquired by teachers within each skill set/module.
View links at: