Spotlight on Digital Media And Learning

10.25.07 | The Need for a Critical Consumer

As peer-to-peer distribution mechanisms increasingly rival the reach and impact of traditional media outlets, one’s ability to contextualize and be critical of media is more important than ever. With unparalleled access to media and innumerable opportunities to publicly critique or further share these works, individuals today must position themselves to be more adept at properly synthesizing and providing informed responses to media they consume. If we are to prepare students to be the active media literate citizens of tomorrow, we need to be ambitious in exploring opportunities to develop this critical skill set today.

In designing a program to develop youth new media literacies in formal (in-school media arts courses) and informal (after school media programming) learning spaces, we’ve had the challenge of effectively developing consistent expectations around critique with our students. While structured instances of peer and mentor critique are consistent across all Digital Youth Network (DYN) in-school and after school programming, our relatively limited face to face time with students pushed us to explore extended opportunities to support this development.

Remix World

Remix World is the DYN’s contained new media driven social networking website. Remix World is a community of active media producers and consumers made up of DYN youth participants and select adult mentors. With a familiar interface and similar functionality to popular online communities, students are able to easily share and critique videos, songs, podcasts, graphic designs, and more. Users share perspective and create dialogue through regular blog postings and discussion threads.

While the basic skeleton resembles many existing social networking sites, customized adaptations to the infrastructure, targeted modeling of productive use and integration of the site in DYN’s existing activities has positioned Remix World as a promising tool for scaffolding media critique.

We’ve been able to leverage the affordances of traditional social networking sites to increase student engagement and extend youth and mentor collaborative opportunities. Less outgoing students have found it easier to share their voice online and all students are able to immediately share their projects with peers and experienced artists for immediate feedback.

Understanding that we needed more than just a gated version of Facebook, we have taken on extensive customization of the site’s interface and functionality through the provision of ‘Remix Dollars’ for participation as an active and informed consumer and producer in Remix World or DYN ‘real world’ programming. This virtual currency is exchangeable for real world artifacts such as dedicated studio time, tickets to special events featuring performing artists, printing of student’s work on t-shirts, etc.

At the end of the day are students who use Remix World better consumers and producers of media?

Do they use the Remix lens when they engage in other social networks?  Do they see media through a different lens when they hear it on the radio or see it on TV? More importantly, do they use this lens when creating their own media?  We don’t yet know the answers but through work with our partners at UIC (led by Kim Gomez) and Stanford (led by Brigid Barron) We are asking the questions.

Editor’s Note: See also here and here for more discussion of the Digital Youth Network.