Why is Media Education Critical in Today’s Attention Economy?
Today, in 2018, being media literate is fast becoming an essential skill to have. Although propaganda and the shaping of opinion is not something new, the current media environment makes the process of influencing people’s mind and behaviour much more effective and works on a larger scale using sophisticated tools such as surveillance machinery […]
Preparing African Youth for a Post-Truth World
The Internet has changed the process of information gathering and dissemination around the world. Young people in Africa, like their counterparts in other parts of the world, have been impacted by this new phase in the evolution of communication. The Internet revolution has created opportunities and problems – “fake news,” hate speech, online radicalization, […]
Media Literacy: A Key to Digital Citizenship
Mass media play an increasingly significant role in today’s society. Even when one is not searching for information, mass media permeate everyone’s environment, influencing their world view and decision-making. Therefore, young people need to consciously and critically analyze and evaluate mass media messages and only then decide how to respond. Otherwise, they will not […]
What is Media Literacy and How Should We Teach it?
Although we in the media literacy field are delighted that we are receiving long-overdue recognition and movement towards more implementation of media literacy initiatives, the true mission and character of the global media literacy movement is in danger of being drowned out with uninformed noise. Let me be clear: media literacy is NOT just: […]
What Happens in a ‘One Subject for the Entire Day’ Classroom?
My schooling experience in an education system that taught through rote learning convinced me that Mark Twain was right about not mixing his schooling with his education. Like me, most students from different parts of the world who went through such a system would agree that learning in schools can be boring, mostly irrelevant, stressful […]
Quality Affordable Schools Lift Up Marginalized Children
Joseph Barak, a 14-year-old from Koru, Kisumu County, western Kenya walked five kilometers through sugar plantations every day to attend his low-cost school. His parents, a small-scale farmer and a domestic helper, shared in Joseph’s struggle to get him to a high-quality school. Their efforts have paid off. Joseph’s high score in the Kenyan national […]
Higher Education is Getting Digital
There has been “digital” in higher education for a very long time. From the earliest computers to the beginnings of the internet, higher education has always found ways to use technology to capitalize on the power, scale, and efficiency of digital. When I was an undergraduate student at university, email was an emerging digital technology. […]
How Do We Make Higher Education More Equitable?
Higher education should be at the forefront of attempts to navigate a route through the confluence of disruptive forces affecting the world in the early 21st century. There are numerous examples of how higher education contributes to the common good – from innovative ways in delivering higher education that are reaching those displaced by the […]
We Have to Rethink What It Means to be “Educated” in a Post-Truth World
It used to be fairly easy to explain what it means to be educated. Education involves schooling, and as a general rule, the more schooling you have, the better educated you become. Unfortunately, as I will argue below, that answer may no longer be sufficient; there is evidence to suggest that the causal link […]
Bringing the Power of Play to Refugee Children
As part of the WISE Learners’ Voice Program, our team volunteered with Metadrasi and Organization Earth, both of which are organizations in Athens. They are working tirelessly to meet the needs of refugees living in camps and housing accommodation. As volunteers, we were often tasked with engaging the children who constitute approximately half the […]