School-context Online Television kOuluTV And Young Students In The Riptide Of Publicity – Learner-generated DV Production “Going Online”

Author(s):

Laura Palmgren-Neuvonen(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2014

Network:

06. Open Learning: Media, Environments and Cultures

Format:

Paper

Session Information

06 SES 01, Visual Cultures: Video Ethnography and Video Production

Paper Session

Time:

2014-09-02

13:15-14:45

Room:

B109 Sala de Aulas

Chair:

Petra Grell

Contribution

Media world has been changing in many ways. Whereas the adolescents’ media usage until recent years has been consuming-oriented (Lenhart et al., 2007) in individual settings (Uusitalo et al., 2011), young people of today are attracted by visual media, interaction and 24/7 participation in media environments (Ito, 2010). Interactive technologies enable them to produce and publish online (Lenhart, 2012). Online content is getting increasingly visual: in Finland, for example, self-made videos are currently being published by equally many 10–12-year-olds as written texts in leisure (Suoninen, 2013).

Having adopted a role of content creator in out-of-school contexts, many young people hunger to use their skills also at school. Nevertheless, tension can be seen between in-school and out-of-school forms of literacy. Despite the relative sufficiency of technology in Finnish schools, many teachers have been reluctant to include new media and content creation in the classroom curriculum (Luukka et al., 2008). Recently, a promising increase has been seen in the number of teachers enthusiastic to employ production of media content, such as digital stories and videos, in classroom curriculum (Henderson et al., 2010). Still, school-driven products seem to be rarely published (Kupiainen, 2013).

Dealing with the public is increasingly important among young adolescents, who, by publishing and sharing, create an online presence and gain visibility in networked publics, and thus reputation, validation, and recognition (Lange & Ito, 2010). At the same time, they should learn to understand where to draw boundary between things that should and should not be exposed to other users (Tuominen & Mustonen, 2007).

As evolving digital technologies enable publishing activities in schools, the option of publishing needs to be considered as part of content production and teaching digital or “new” literacies and, thus, an essential topic to discuss. Following the ideas of Jaakkola (2010), this presentation introduces education for online publicity that, contrary to restrictive media protection, refers to media education implemented from the perspective of production and media encouragement. Young students are provided with safe media environments to experience the online publishing process, permitting trial and failure, and thus learn what is allowed in media and what is not.

According to Laitinen (2007), understanding media can be learned by producing media content by oneself, guided by a supportive teacher. Adopting this thought, it can be argued that learners assimilate and construct shared rules on how to act in the networked media by producing, publishing and sharing media content in authentic media environments, in other words “going online” in guided and supervised practices.

An online school TV, a YouTube channel called ‘kOuluTV’, was launched for student-generated videos and digital stories as an effort was made to bridge the gap between the media used in formal and informal environments (Palmgren-Neuvonen et al., 2011). kOuluTV was expected to serve as an open learning resource to inspire other students and teachers, and to challenge schools to the activity involving the learners with families and peers, as well as the school and other educational instances in multilateral negotiation on media ground rules (Jaakkola, 2010).

This presentation examines an under-researched area of the school-based online publishing by looking at an explorative case study in the context of the online television kOuluTV. The study, constructed and conducted in the FSR Second Wave project funded by European Social Fund in 2011–13, aims to develop pedagogy for online publishing. We focus on the student perspective with the following research questions:

What kind of views do the primary and secondary students have about online publishing of learner-generated videos?
What kind of factors may promote and hinder the online publishing of learner-generated videos?

Method

To gain a rich perspective to explain the phenomena arising around the publishing-oriented video production, primary and secondary students of different ages, as well as teachers and parents were selected as research subjects. However, as it proved to be challenging to enlist a sufficient number of students and parents as informants, some persons were enlisted for interviews through the kOuluTV teacher network that also played a significant role in the planning of the study. The teachers organized opportunities to observe their students' DV projects, as well as to interview students and parents. It is worth noticing that to apprehend various opinions and perspectives on online publishing, also informants reluctant to participate in the kOuluTV activities were recruited. The data were collected during 14 months in 2012–2013 by means of video-recorded observations of media educational discussions in classrooms and teacher network meetings. In addition, semi-structured theme interviews were conducted with 67 informants in total. The interviewed adults included primary school principals (n=3), primary and secondary teachers (n=6) known to be interested in learner-generated DV production, media educators (n=2), and parents (n=8) of primary and secondary students. The parents, aged 34–50, were very highly educated. The students aged 8–15 years numbered 48, 38 of which were primary-aged and ten secondary-aged. The interview framework was tailored according to the informant group; further, it was developed to take into account data collection on the basis of collaborative reflection by the interviewing researchers. The interviewees were allowed to choose between a personal and a group interview. Most of the students attended the interviews in groups of 2–4 persons, which proved fruitful, as the children reported feeling more comfortable in group. The adult informants were interviewed individually. The teacher network meetings and video-recorded interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed by means of qualitative content analysis. The initial analysis phase following a data-driven method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) aimed to understand the reluctance that emerged to publish videos. After a literature review, the analysis was continued by searching for the elements of public(ity) and media encouragement in the data. Thus, some characteristics of the grounded theory approach (Strauss & Corbin, 1990) were adapted in the abductive analysis that was data oriented but also theoretically sensitive.

Expected Outcomes

Many of the interviewed students of all ages were active digital content publishers in leisure. The boys produced and shared videos dealing with computer gaming, skateboarding and other forms of physical exercise, whereas the girls shared their videos mostly in blogs related to hobby horsing and lifestyle. Primary-aged students, highly excited about making movies, accepted school-context online publishing despite asserting that they recognized the nature of online platforms. Contrarily, few videos produced by secondary students were published on kOuluTV. Attitudes toward school-context online publishing seemed to vary interestingly: whereas primary students were proud of their online videos, secondary students appeared to be more reluctant to publish. The finding is consistent with previous studies (Gibbons, 2013). As the conceived quality requirements for videos to be published seem to rise with age, secondary students may worry about the quality standard that has, in fact, not been set at all. The informants expressed increased self-criticism, and considered publishing on kOuluTV to influence negatively on their reputation and street credibility among peers or even to harm their perhaps carefully constituted online image. School-context online publishing may be an area that teenagers want to leave as an option for themselves, probably due to a perceived feeling of control or power relation. It can be speculated that teenagers, requiring to be entitled to have own privacy in relation to parents, do not to want the school to enter their ‘media territory’. Furthermore, the lack of publishing at secondary school can be explained by some teachers’ choice not to employ DV production as a teaching method. This, in turn, is partly due to the strict timetables, curriculum content and goals, and thus the textbook-based instruction that many Finnish schools still adhere to. Publishing-oriented DV production could be promoted by conducting joint integrative projects across teachers and subjects.

References

Gibbons, D. (2013). Developing an Ethics of Youth Media Production Using Media Literacy, Identity, & Modality. Journal of Media Literacy Education: http://digitalcommons.uri.edu/jmle/vol4/iss3/6 Henderson, M., Auld, G., Holkner, B., Russell, G., Seah, W.T., Fernando, A., & Romeo, G. (2010). Students creating digital video in the primary classroom: student autonomy, learning outcomes, and professional learning communities. Australian Educational Computing - Journal of the Australian Council for computers in education, 24(2), 12–20. Ito, M. (2010, May 13). Peer-Based Learning in a Networked Age [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://www.itofisher.com/mito/publications/peerbased_learn_2.html Jaakkola, M. (2010) Uuden julkisuuden sääntöjä luomassa [Creating rules for new publicity – dialogical relationships as a method to bridge the digital gap between the generations], in M. Meriranta (Ed.) [The Handbook of Media Education]. Helsinki: Unipress. 37-62. Kupiainen, R. (2013). Young people’s creative online practices in the context of school community. Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace, 7(1). doi: 10.5817/CP2013-1-8 Laitinen S (2007) [Understanding images – teaching visual media sense and skills], in H. Kynäslahti, R. Kupiainen & M. Lehtonen (Eds.) [Perspectives for Media Education]. Publications of The Finnish Society on Media Education 1/2007. Helsinki, 61–72. Lange, P.G. & Ito, M. (2010) Creative production. In Hanging Out, Messing Around, Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media. Lenhart, A., Madden, M., Rankin Macgill, A. & Smith, A. (2007). Teens and Social Media. The use of social media gains a greater foothold in teen life as they embrace the conversational nature of interactive online media. Available at http://www.pewinternet.org/~/media/Files/Reports/2007/PIP_Teens_Social_Media_Final.pdf.pdf. Retrieved 15 January 2013. Lenhart, A. (2012). Teens & Online Video. Shooting, sharing, streaming and chatting – social media using teens are the most enthusiastic users of many online video capabilities. Available at http://www.pewinternet.org/~/media//Files/Reports/2012/PIP_Teens_and_online_video.pdf. Retrieved August 14, 2013. Luukka, M.R., Pöyhönen, S., Huhta, A., Taalas, P., Tarnanen, M., & Keränen, A. (2008). Maailma muuttuu – mitä tekee koulu? [The world changes – what does the school?]. Jyväskylä, Finland: University of Jyväskylä. Palmgren-Neuvonen, L., Mikkola, H. & Kumpulainen, K. (2011). FutureStory – Digitarinat yhteistoiminnallisen oppimisen edistäjänä. In H. Mikkola, P. Jokinen & M. Hytönen (Eds.) Tulevaisuuden koulua kehittämässä: Uusi teknologia haastaa ja inspiroi. Oulu, University of Oulu. 73-90. Suoninen, A. (2013) Lasten mediabarometri 2012. 10–12-vuotiaiden tyttöjen ja poikien mediankäyttö. [Children's media barometer 2012: The Use of Media among 10–12-year-olds in Finland.]

Author Information

Laura Palmgren-Neuvonen (presenting / submitting)

University of Oulu

Faculty of Education, Department of Educational Sciences and Teacher Education

Oulu

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