Moscow Declaration on Media and Information Literacy

Just released is a declaration from the meeting sponsored by UNESCO and other bodies, in Moscow, held in June: the Moscow Declaration on Media and Information Literacy. I was invited to this meeting, but was unfortunately unable to attend, though I did prepare a video which was presented at the meeting.
The Moscow Declaration is an important document: it starts by asserting some fundamental, first of which is:
"Media and Information Literacy (MIL) is a prerequisite for the sustainable development of open, plural, inclusive and participatory knowledge societies, and the civic institutions, organizations, communities and individuals which comprise these societies."
It then goes on to make some robust proposals for heads of state etc. about what should be done.
The declaration is here: http://www.ifla.org/en/publications/moscow-declaration-on-media-and-information-literacy

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UNESCO Media & Information Literacy: report 3

This continues my report from the meeting, held on 11th August in San Juan, Puerto Rico, about developing Media and Information Literacy indicators (the meeting was organised by IFLA and UNESCO).

Jesús Lau (Instituto de Ingeniería, Universidad Veracruzana, Veracruz, México) gave the main presentation before our small-group discussion about the UNESCO Media and Information Literacy (MIL) Indicators which are under development. Lau (who I am pleased to say got his doctorate in my own department, at Sheffield University) has led key information literacy initiatives with UNESCO.

He started by identifying some initiatives that provided a rationale for UNESCO being interested in MIL. Examples are its own Education for All (EFA) and Information for All (IFAP) programmes, and action lines from the World Summit on the Information Society C 3 “Access to information and knowledge”, C 7 “e-learning” and C 9 “Media”. Lau felt that “Inclusive knowledge societies require tools to measure media and information access and especially use” and there was currently a lack of data for decision making in this area. Some of the related statistics (e.g. number of books borrowed in libraries) were not good indicators for MIL.

Lau introduced a cycle which he felt that applied to bothIL and ML: an iterative cycle with Creation/ availability; Distribution/ supply; Information supply; Distribution/ use MIL skills. Lau also presented a “contellation” of info-communication skills (including onformation literacy, ICT and media literacy, literacy, oral communication, and reasoning). He saw the core skills of MIL as being: Access; Evaluation/ understanding ; and Use. Media Literacy (ML) has a mediating role in active citizenship (e.g. governance), public health (e.g. as regards risky behaviours) and aesthetics (e.g. creativity and self expression). Information Literacy (IL), on the other hand, he viewed as focusing more on the “Information Quality” elements (such as data/information reliability).

Lau felt that “both literacies aim to develop the same skills” (which he illustrated with a slide depicting convergence of IL and ML) but IL has in the past tended to focus more on academic side of things (as opposed to everyday behaviours). He also identified that some cultural factors will be more important than others, or will define attitdes to MIL, in different countries.

Lau moved on to talk about some principles of indicator development, and the practical options for developing MIL indicators. The first two options he presented were: independent survey specifically for MIL (expensive); and as a set of questions in an existing survey (for example PISA, national education surveys etc.). The remaining two options meant collecting no data specifically about MIL, but using existing statistics: either combining index of international indexes and international surveys; or index of secondary international indicators (e.g. statistics about creating/distribution of information like books).

Lau mentioned a number of pieces of work which the current MIL work is building on, some of which UNESCO has sponsored itself. These are some of those items (I’ve blogged most of them at some point, I think, some of them more than once!).

- Catts, R. and Lau, J. (2008). Towards Information Literacy Indicators. Paris: UNESCO.http://www.ifla.org/en/publications/towards-information-literacy-indicators

- Horton, F. (2007) Understanding Information Literacy: a primer. Paris: UNESCO. http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=25956&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

- ITU (2010). Measuring the Information Society. Geneva: ITU. http://www.itu.int/dms_pub/itu-d/opb/ind/D-IND-ICTOI-2010-U2-SUM-PDF-E.pdf (ITU is the United Nations agency for telecommunications)

- Lau, Jesus (2005). International Guidelines for Information Literacy for Lifelong Learning. The Hague: IFLA. http://www.ifla.org/en/publications/guidelines-on-information-literacy-for-lifelong-learning

- Partnership for 21st Century Skills. http://www.p21.org

- Thompson, S. (Ed)(2003). Prague Declaration: Towards an Information Literate Society. http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=19636&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

- UNESCO (2005). Beacons of the information society: Alexandria Proclamation on Information Literacy and Lifelong Learning. Alexandria: UNESCO. http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=20891&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

Photos by Sheila Webber: The first picture shows the tiny straw baskets which our Puerto Rican hosts gave us (on a printout of the presentation) and the second shows some of the participants coming from lunch, Lau is second right.

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Media and Information Literacy Indicators: Bangkok report

A booklet has just been published which provides a summary of the outcomes of the Bangkok meeting which discussed Media and Information Literacy (MIL) indicators, organised by UNESCO, as well as introducing the concepts of MIL. I haven't had time to look at it properly and I may blog again when I have read it. The meeting I attended on Thursday (which I'm still posting about) was a follow-on from thr Bangkok meeting.



Moeller, S., Joseph, A., Lau, J. and Carbo, T. (2011) Towards Media and Information Literacy Indicators: Background Document of the Expert Meeting 4-6 November 2010, Bangkok, Thailand. Paris: UNESCO.

http://www.ucm.es/BUCM/boletin/doc17043.pdf

Photo by Sheila Webber: La Rogativa (statue group) San Juan, Puerto Rico, August 2011

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Media and Information Literacy Curriculum for Teachers

The Media and Information Literacy Curriculum for Teachers was published in July 2011. "This UNESCO model MIL Curriculum and Competency framework for teachers is intended to provide teacher education systems in developed and developing countries with a framework to construct a programme for turning out teachers who are media and information literate." At the moment it is just in English, but it will be translated into other key languages.



Part 1 provides the MIL Curriculum and Competency Framework and Part 2 outlines 9 core modules for the the curriculum for teachers plus some optional modules. There seems to be rather more that could be specifically designated media literacy than could be specifically designated information literacy: "Information Literacy and Library Skills" is just module eight of nine, though evaluating information critically is a thread that runs through all the modules. ML is also rather more prominent than IL in the "MIL competencies". I haven't pondered this in depth yet, but I wonder whether one issue is of having been too successful in presenting IL as something "straightforward" that has "steps", since the modules seem to engage with ML at a more complex level than they do with IL.



Some time, and an international team, were involved in production of this curriculum, and since getting teachers to understand about IL is (everyone seems to agree) vital, then this initiative is to be welcomed. Also, since it comes from UNESCO, it will get international attention. Finally, there is good material in it!



I think a worthwhile effort would be to aim to devise some further modules that introduce teachers to more complex IL issues (e.g. IL in different cultures and contexts) to match the challenge and detail of some of the ML modules.



The page with the link is

http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/resources/publications-and-communication-materials/publications/full-list/media-and-information-literacy-curriculum-for-teachers/ and the actual pdf is at

Wilson, C. et al. (2011) Media and Information Literacy Curriculum for Teachers. Paris: UNESCO. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0019/001929/192971e.pdf

Photo by Sheila Webber: Sculpture on the Unversidad Politecnica de Puerto Rico campus

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UNESCO Media & Information Literacy: report 2

This continues my report from the meeting, held on 11th August in San Juan, Puerto Rico, about developing Media and Information Literacy indicators (organised by IFLA and UNESCO).

There had been a meeting of both Media and Information Literacy (MIL) experts in Bangkok in November to discuss MIL indicators: the report from that is just published & I will do a separate post on that. Then there were two follow up meetings, for IL experts (the one I attended yesterday) and for ML experts. The second presentation on 11th August was a short report, via videolink, about this meeting of the Media Literacy experts, held in Istanbul in July. This meeting had been linked to the conference of The International Association for Media and Communication Research. The programme for the event is here: http://www.univ-paris3.fr/73959597/0/fiche___actualite/.



The Media Literacy participants at the Istanbul meeting had welcomed the initiative, but with some caution and qualification. They called for a period of constructive critique and felt that developing the MIL indicators should be a long term strategy, rather than rushing things through. They thought there should be in-country adaptions of the indicators (recognising cultural differences), though without compromising principles such as free speech. It was noted that there was a tension between intellectual property rights and notions of freedom of information. Other points to emerge from this media literacy experts meeting included:

- Ethics tied to citizenship (that was the note I made yesterday during the presentation: I think it was stressing the ethical aspects of media literacy in relation to citizenship);

- Criticality was an essential part of MIL;

- Media Literacy had a political dimension.

In the short question period at the end I picked up on this last point. It was confirmed that this was one of the messages from the media literacy experts meeting, and indeed it is my perception that this is more explicitly a theme with ML experts than with IL experts. Personally I think that IL also has a political dimension, and it is a good idea to surface this, rather than pretending that IL is "neutral".

Two other colleagues raised questions:

- Whether countries would really pay attention to any MIL indicators. The answer was that by putting on UNESCO's agenda, it would get attention, even if not from all countries.

- Whether UNESCO could articulate why ML and IL are joined and also why other literacies are not being addressed. The response from the UNESCO side was that these two literacies are most linked with the remit of communication and information. Therefore it seemed (to me) that there was a certain pragmatism, and inclusion of other literacies in the future was not ruled out.

Photos by Sheila Webber: Sculpture on the Unversidad Politecnica de Puerto Rico campus, and a poster with the University's mission, that I saw posted up in several places.

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UNESCO Media & Information Literacy: report 1

On Thursday (11th August) I participated in the meeting organised by the IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions) Information Literacy Section and UNESCO IFAP (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Information For All Program) on Media and Information Literacy Indicators and Government Action Recommendations. It was held at the Universidad Politécnica de Puerto Rico, in San Juan, Puerto Rico. I will do several separate blog posts about it.



The day started with a presentation via video link from Mr Janis Karklins, Assistant Director-General for Communication and Information at UNESCO. The picture above shows the video feed. He identified reasons why UNESCO is working on literacy issues. Namely, in order to succeed in fast changing societies, and tackle the challenges of the knowledge economy, people needed various literacies. These literacies should support diverse people to succeed. Information Literacy was still seen as part of people’s basic human right which helped people achieve their personal and professional goals.



UNESCO felt that they needed to look at a combination of literacies, and felt that it would be “interesting from a conceptual point of view” to link the two essential literacies: media literacy and information literacy. They had already done work in both these areas. Mr Karklins presented a diagram which showed overlapping circles: information literacy, media literacy, digital literacy, computer literacy and “other types of literacies” (the examples given for "other" were financial and health literacy).

The strategy for Media and Information Literacy (MIL) includes the Teachers’ curriculum for media and information literacy (published in July: I was sure I had blogged this, but I don't seem to have done so. I wil put this in a separate post), establishment of an international clearinghouse for MIL, strategy statements for MIL and developing indicators for MIL.

The point of the indicators would be to use them internationally. It was hoped that the MIL indicators would be a tool for countries’ self-assessment and a benchmark or standard for MIL. The main challenges include:

- Finding a balance between IL and ML;

- Getting agreement on definitions;

- Identifying the indicators themselves!

The process started in 2007 with the publication by Lau and Catts: Towards Information Literacy Indicators, then in November 2010 there was the first meeting of MIL experts, then some further conceptual work, and now two separate meetings (one with media literacy experts, held in July, and one with IL experts i.e. the one I just attended).

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