by King Peter The Just & Little Miss Sunshine
How do you teach 11 year olds about the web? Do they know what cookies are? Are they on Facebook? Is online gaming still the hype? And how do you go about a project with a group of people who cannot be part of the UCR community? These were the many questions we had when we, anonymous* UCR students, set out to teach group 7 of primary school De Burcht Rietheim in Oost-Souburg as part of our Media Literacy project for the ACC361 Media Literacy class. After being taught about media literacy for eleven weeks, the final part of the semester was about spreading our knowledge and teaching others. We set out to teach eleven-year-olds, and found out along the way that things have changed quite a bit since we had left primary school.
Our project consisted of tackling topics like cyber bullying and online privacy with schoolchildren. The aim was to see how much the children would know about the risks these topics pose online, and consequently to try and teach these children a little about how to solve those problems.
Interacting with eleven-year old children is something completely different than interacting with fellow UCR students; how to address them, how to figure out if there are any problems regarding the selected topics, and how to do it all in an orderly fashion is miles away from what we do in our regular classrooms. While spending time there, it once again becomes clear how much UCR seems to move within its own little bubble.
Stepping out of the bubble seems well on its way of becoming the new UCR credo. Although there are successful events such as Resto van Harte and Going Glocal, it looks like not merely enough people are actively involved in stepping out of the oh-so-cozy UCR comfort zone, and into the local community. This became clear once again during our Media Literacy class, where it turned out that almost no one had ever read the local newspaper (PZC) or had watched the local news (Omroep Zeeland), and where starting a project that reaches into this local community seemed like an impossible task.
During the three teaching sessions, we learned that even though the new generation spends most of their time online, the actual knowledge they have of the web is rather limited. They know how to make an account on MovieStarPlanet, but have no idea that their Google hits are connected to the advertisements they see. It was rewarding to see that the children enjoyed learning about ways to increase their privacy on the web. Besides, we found out that cyber bullying is quite a problem on online platforms. We tried to create exercises that encouraged the dialogue between children who experienced the same kind of bullying problems on the web. Our take-away message was that sharing your bullying problems with others can lighten your burden. We challenged the learners to help one another if they knew one of their classmates was being bullied.
Teaching young children about cyber bullying and online privacy was a lot of fun. We did not only get the chance to share our knowledge with others, but in the process also learned about struggles the new generation has with the Internet. Above all, it made clear to us how the theory we learned during our Media Literacy classes can be put to practice for the new generation.
Stepping out of the UCR community can help you to refocus on the question why? Why am I studying this particular subject? How can I use the things I have learnt in real life?
King Peter The Just and Little Miss Sunshine are two students who wish to remain anonymous for this issue of TR.
