Alliance for a Media Literate Europe

The ALLMEDIA project brings together a diverse alliance of schools, universities, companies, individuals and other formal and non-formal educational organizations, to create a pan-European non-profit network organization that will be a key force in bringing media literacy education to all pupils and students in Europe, their parents, their teachers, and others who care about youth.

Objectives

Media literacy is an essential life skill for the 21st century. It is the process of applying literacy skills to media and technology messages, learning to skilfully interpret, analyse, and create messages.

As communication technologies transform society, they impact our understanding of our communities, our diverse culture, and ourselves. This project empowers people to be both critical thinkers and creative producers of an increasingly wide range of messages using image, moving image, language,and sound.

Targets

To stimulate growth in media literacy education in the European Union by organizing and providing networking, and information exchange. To help all people to be able to critically analyse and create messages using the wide variety of technological tools now available in and out of school.

Bringing together a diverse alliance of schools, universities, companies, individuals and other formal and non-formal educational organizations, to create a pan-European non-profit network organization that will be a key force in bringing media literacy education to all pupils and students in Europe, their parents, their teachers, and others who care about youth.

Method

Based on the recent studies “Media Literacy and Image Education in Europe”1, the Unesco study “Youth Media education Global survey”, the white paper “21st Century Literacy in a Convergent media world”2, and the OECD report “The Well-being of Nations: The Role of Human and Social Capital”, we are building a pan-European network for media pedagogy and an international conference to confirm this Alliance for a Media Literate Europe, creating web resource framework to support the
network and produce scalable adaptable didactical media pedagogical Pilot content resources for audio visual presentations (web –TV) and web-based learning (e-Learning modules).

Through action research we are testing the use of the web resources and the Pilot content. Linking the web resources to the European users via the network, inviting users to be providers.

The project will be performed in liaison with a geographically widespread group of eight different types of partners from all over Europe.

Dissemination

The web resources and the ALLMEDIA concept will be presented at the International Conference “Alliance for a Media Literate Europe” to establish the future network co-operation in media pedagogy.

Also, the project result will be disseminated through all partners individual networks (for example London/U.K.: Virtual Action Zone, 16 upper secondary schools in network. Karlstad/Sweden: Compare, 100 IT and media companies). Jeaune reaches some 200.000 young entrepreneurs in Europe between 18-40 years old including media and IT companies, Media Desks reach some 100.000 audio visual and
multimedia professional producers.

European Schoolnet co-operates with around 20 European countries Ministries of education, as well as teacher training institutions. The Unesco International Clearinghouse on Children and violence on the screen who in many European countries work with organisations, associations, networks, councils, etc, focused on children, youth and media.