Open All-day As A Better Media Education Partner: The Project “KidSmart Goes Open All-Day School"

Author(s):

Gudrun Marci-Boehncke(presenting / submitting)Sarah Kristina Strehlow(presenting)

Conference:

ECER 2013

Network:

05. Children and Youth at Risk and Urban Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

05 SES 14, Parallel Paper Session

Paper Session

Time:

2013-09-13

15:30-17:00

Room:

D-313

Chair:

Neda Forghani-Arani

Contribution

Nearly all German schools operate as half-day schools. The Open All-day School (Offene Ganztagsschule or OGS) is a childcare and support offering after the normal German school day and supplementing it. It seems to be more effective than school even, especially with regard to the “computer” area (cf. IGLU/PIRLS 2011). However, the “computer” category does not yet entail any literacy – media literacy education clearly is about more than the ability to use a computer.

The project “KidSmart Goes Open All-Day School – Media-literate at School Transition” is an attempt to carry out a broad, integrated expansion of the OGS: inspired by the expectations for “Media Passport NRW,” based on the education agreements of the state of North-Rhine Westphalia and geared to literacy promotion requirements, the children work collaboratively on joint media-supported projects and thereby experience holistic development. The attempt is thus made in a multi-support learning setting to win children and staff over permanently to integrated media use.

The project “KidSmart Goes Open All-day School – Media-literate at School Transition” tries to establish a new, innovative project structure within OGS, in order to improve the pedagogical practice of educational institutions.

In order to do this, to begin with, we intervene by making computers, printers and scanners available to the participating schools during and beyond the project phase, thus augmenting, in line with Bourdieu’s theory of capital forms and habitus, the economic capital represented by the institutions’ media equipment.

Further, the OGS teaching staff takes part in training designed to build up the teachers’ cultural capital by addressing topics related to both teaching and using media. Following this, the staffers conceive and implement curriculum-related projects that integrate media and are specifically attuned to the needs, interests and competencies of the participating children and the school’s parameters. Mentoring by students accompanies both phases, so that the staffers receive continuous support (social capital) and can rely on a designated contact as they do the work, which often will be new for them. Beyond this, the intention is to build better networking between school in the morning, childcare in the afternoon as well as the parents by setting up a moodle platform.

In these interventions, the foremost question is to what extent it will be possible to develop, through such structural and organizational changes in the OGS, a new and above all conceptually well-prepared project structure in primary education that aids in improving the quality of educational institutions for the long term. In order to be able to answer this, the intervention will be linked with a broad-scoped, parallel evaluation.

Method

The proposed project uses a triangulated, qualitative and quantitative methodological design in the sense of the between-method (Flick 2008). — Questionnaire: Both the OGS personnel and the parents of children taking part in the pro-ject will be queried in writing both before project start and after its end. The focus here will be on three aspects that sketch the media habits (media attitudes, perceptions, etc.) of those questioned. In addition, the OGS personnel will provide information about their set up: economic and media-related parameters, cooperative arrangements with external educa-tional partners, etc. — Guided interviews: In addition, we will interview the participating pupils both before the project implementation and afterward. Our focus will be on the children’s everyday media world, also addressing the gratification they derive from media use. — Participant observation: of the pupils as well as staffers in the individual media projects. The observation times will be spread evenly over the project period, permitting the pro-ject’s progress to be analyzed as well.

Expected Outcomes

The one-year intervention proposed here is the third and final phase of an overall three-year project, whose first two phases took place in kindergartens. Based on those results, we expect that the competencies as well as motivations of the OGS staffers with regard to planning and implementing media-integrating projects will clearly improve. We also assume that their me-dia teaching attitudes and approaches will improve and thus will lay an important cornerstone for enduring, creative and productive media work tied into the educational institution’s cur-riculum. The creativity of staffers, children and the students (as future teachers) was enhanced by the projects.

References

Livingstone, S. & Haddon, L. (2009). Opportunities and Risks for European Children. In Young People in the European Digital Media Landscape. A Statistical Overwiew. Published by The International Clearinghouse for Youth and Media. – Göteborg: Nordicom. Marci-Boehncke, Gudrun; Müller, Anita; Strehlow, Sarah Kristina (2012): Das Ypsilon in der Astgabel – Wie Kita-Kinder mit digitalen Medien die Welt und die Sprache erkunden. In: Brinkmann, Erika; Valtin, Renate (Ed.): Lesen- und Schreibenlernen mit neuen Medien. Berlin. S. 102-121. Marci-Boehncke, Gudrun; Rath, Matthias (2011): Skypen mit der Oma in der Ukraine. Neue Medien im Kindergartenalter. In: ProJugend 3/2011, S. 4-7. McNamara, D. (1995). The influence of student teachers' tutors and mentors upon their classroom practice: An exploratory study. Teaching and Teacher Education 11(1), S. 51-61. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0742-051X(94)00014- W.Mikos, L. (2012). Mediengenerationen, Mediennutzung, Medienkompetenz. In S.Gaguin & D. Meister (Hrsg.), Digital native oder digital naiv? (S. 41-54). München: Kopäd. OECD (2006). Starting Strong II. Early Childhood Education and Care. Paris: OECD Publications. OECD (2011). Bildung auf einen Blick 2011. OECD-Indikatoren. Bielefeld: W. Bertelsmann Verlag, Sarah Kristina; Marci-Boehncke, Gudrun (2013): „Am Computer lese ich viel ger-ner“ – Medien- und Lesekompetenzförderung in medienintegrierenden Projekten in Offenen Ganztagsgrundschule. In: Barsch, Achim; Gätje, Olaf (Ed.): Jahrbuch Medien im Deutschunterricht 2012 (in Druck) Media in Teaching German 2012 Yearbook Strehlow, Sarah Kristina (2013): Lesekompetenz? Medienkompetenz? Medien-Lesekompetenz? Wie mit medienintegrierenden Projekten in Dortmunder Offenen Ganztags-schulen Leselust geweckt und Lesekompetenz gefördert wird. In: DoLiMette. Online-Zeitschrift des Lehrstuhls für Neuere Deutsche Literatur/Elementare Vermittlungs- und Aneignungsaspekte der TU Dortmund. Ausgabe 1/2013. http://hdl.handle.net/2003/29867 (Stand: 16.01.2013). S. 12-24.

Author Information

Gudrun Marci-Boehncke (presenting / submitting)

Technical University of Dortmund, Germany

Sarah Kristina Strehlow (presenting)

Technische Universität Dortmund

Dortmund

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