One of the distinguishing features of attention to new media, and one of the key effects of the penetration of computers into the home, has been the renewed focus on young people as “writers” or producers.
-Julian Sefton-Green

How does new media’s “active” dimension lend itself to educative experiences?

We are the generation that was brought up on “new media”, that is: our current slew of digitally enhanced do-dads ranging from iPads and video games to this very website. Julian Sefton-Green raises the point that current research has yet to look at new media, especially video games, in a comprehensive way that would allow for inferences in its pedagogical effectiveness. Instead, academia around new media has bounced back and forth in a reactionary fashion first demonizing, then advocating for it as we entered the 2000’s. One of the most salient points that resonated with me was the dichotomy between old, passive media and new active media.

The internet, cellphones, and entertainment all blend into what is now an endless stream of interactiveness on a scale never seen before. This seems to reflect the current pedagogical trend of student-centered classrooms over teacher-centered. Yet the question remains on how to bring both worlds together. Sefton-Green, in a call for better research, ends the article by questioning whether we can even escape this binary state of mind – and it is a question worth asking. It is easy to accept the increasing need for a digital literacy as physical media waxes and wanes while digital means of communication have done nothing but rise. But how that literacy is developed is up to us as teachers to discover.