Category Archives: BTMM

Professor Hobbs: Digital, media literacy are essential life skills

The Knight Commission has released “Digital and Media Literacy: A Plan of Action,” a new policy paper by Professor Renee Hobbs, BTMM, and founder of the Media Education Lab. In it, a detailed plan positions digital and media literacy as essential life skills and outlines steps that policymakers, educators and community advocates can take to help Americans thrive in the digital age.

Coming the day after U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan released the National Education Technology Plan, “Digital and Media Literacy: A Plan of Action” provides four broad strategies and 10 specific recommendations on how to provide students and adults with the knowledge and critical thinking skills to sort through the overwhelming amount of digital information they receive every day in our media-saturated society.

“Full participation in contemporary culture requires not just consuming messages, but also creating and sharing them,” writes Hobbs. “To fulfill the promise of digital citizenship, Americans must acquire multimedia communication skills and know how to use these skills to engage in the civic life of their communities.”

This is why the commission recommended that digital and media literacy be integrated as critical elements for education at all levels through collaboration among federal, state and local education officials, and that public libraries and other community institutions be funded and supported as centers of digital and media training.

The paper focuses on steps to ensure that citizens are equipped with the analytical and communications skills they need to be successful in the 21st century.  It also proposes the integration of digital and media literacy into advocacy campaigns, education curricula, and community-based initiatives. From parents concerned with online safety issues, to students searching for information online at home, schools and libraries, to everyday citizens looking for accurate and relevant health care and government resources, all Americans can benefit from learning how to access, analyze and create digital and media content with thoughtfulness and social responsibility.

(The Knight Commission press release)

Professor Postigo awarded National Science Foundation grant

Broadcasting, Telecommuncations and Mass Media Professor Hector Postigo and Professor Tarleton Gillespie of Cornell University’s Department of Communication were awarded a $237,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for the project titled “Cultural Production in the Digital Age: Defining a New Research Agenda.”

For the research project, Postigo and Tarleton are convening an international research group composed of 15 to 20 leading scholars and graduate students from communication, science and technology studies, sociology and anthropology in order to advance inquiry in the field of cultural production and digital media. With the generous support of the Science, Technology and Society division of the National Science Foundation, they will hold two workshops (one at Cornell and one at Temple), support graduate student research assistants and maintain an online research database. At the first workshop, invitees will develop a yearlong research agenda addressing issues of technological design and participatory practices among media consumers.

Specific questions they seek to answer include:

• Will the traditional concerns for media concentration diminish as the diverse blogosphere and a “see for yourself” mindset among information consumers challenge the journalistic “authoritative voice?”

• Is the structure of the public sphere changing, given the rise of wikis, blogs and social network sites that allow users to participate in discourse?

• Will alternative voices from groups typically marginalized in media find a place within the unlimited spectrum of the Internet?

• How does technology facilitate, impede or enforce these emerging cultural dynamics?

• In the age of open source and networked collaboration, can users build their own systems of production to “circumvent” obstacles to unfettered user-centered cultural production?

• Will the public discourse taking shape online come to resemble these venues, for better or for worse?

Throughout the year, between the first and second workshop, participants will contribute to ongoing discussions via an online public knowledge project, where their developing thinking and research on the issues central to project will take shape and accept feedback from the larger academic and practitioner community. At the second workshop, participants will convene to present the findings of the yearlong collaboration, compiling these into book format for publication or research proposals for further funding.

Six SCT faculty members receive provost seed grants

Of the 21 seed grants awarded this year by the Office of the Provost, six of them involve faculty members from the School of Communications and Theater.

“The seed grants continue to encourage new university collaborations and expand the depth and breadth of our interdisciplinary research and creative works, helping us advance Temple’s goal of ‘Research Excellence’ that benefits society,” said Senior Vice Provost for Research and Graduate Education Ken Blank. “These grants are important vehicles for helping faculty bring additional grant funding and recognition to Temple.”

The SCT projects are:
“Queer, Get Used to It”
Peter Reynolds, THEA
Scott Gratson, COMM

“GRID + Flow: Philadelphia and Beyond Mapping and Reimagining Urban Ecologies through the Arts and Humanities”
Alan C. Braddock, Tyler
Peter P. d’Agostino, FMA
Andrew Isenberg, CLA

“Community Collaborations: Temple University and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania’s PhilaPlace Project”
Christopher Harper, JOUR
Christine Woyshner, Education
Edward Trayes, JOUR

“Assessing Informality: Understanding Informal Settlements Using Participation Post-Occupancy Evaluation Techniques”
Scott Shall, Tyler
Nancy E. Morris, BTMM

“All the World is Urban: Planning in the Developing World”
Warren Bass, FMA
Howard Spodek, CLA

“Multimedia Reporting on Urban Centers in Asia and Africa”
Ron Carr, COMM at Temple University, Japan Campus
Irene Herrera, COMM at TUJ
Jean-Julien Aucouturier, CST at TUJ

Click here to see learn more about the Provost Office’s seed grants.

Professor Hobbs attends Aspen Institute forum

Professor Renee Hobbs, BTMM, participated in the 2010 Aspen Institute Forum on Communications and Society Aug. 16 to 18, 2010, in Aspen, Co.

The theme was “News Cities: The Next Generation of Healthy Informed Communities.” Also participating in the annual invitational program were FCC Commissioners Michael Copps and Julius Genachowski; Marcus Brauchli, executive editor of the Washington Post; Richard Gingras, chief executive officer of Salon.com; Lawrence A. Jacobs, senior executive vice president and Group General Counsel of News Corporation; Paul Steiger, CEO of ProPublica; Stefaan Verhulst, chief of research at the Markle Foundation; Vivian Schiller, CEO of National Public Radio; Tom Rubin, chief counsel for Intellectual Property Strategy at Microsoft; Tom Rosenstiel, director of Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism; and Ernest J. Wilson III, dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California.

This year, the forum engaged government officials, media and business executives, civic leaders, user representatives, and other thought leaders in roundtables and private working groups to arrive at specific action steps that communities can take to improve their information health.

Click here for more information.

Alumna, Professor Lombard have article published

An article by Melissa E. Markaridian Selverian, BTMM ’99, MMC ’05, and Professor Matthew Lombard titled “Telepresence: A ‘Real’ Component in a Model to Make Human-Computer Interface Factors Meaningful in the Virtual Learning Environment” has been published in the journal Themes in Science and Technology Education. The article appears in a special issue (volume 2, number 1-2) on Virtual Reality in Education.