Children Go On-line: New Technologies and Internet Literacy

by Narine Khachatryan

Nearly 60 per cent of Armenian parents consider cybercrime a risk in their everyday lives and are convinced that media literacy, taught at school from the early grades, can help children be better protected from this and other risks encountered in their online lives. Sixty per cent of parents believe that media literacy should be taught as a separate subject at school. Those who oppose this view (27 per cent) nevertheless agree that media literacy education must become an indispensable part of ICT classes.

These are the initial results of a survey on e-safety and media literacy issues conducted by the Media Education Center in Armenia—an organization advocating media literacy and innovative pedagogy, cooperative learning in the new media environment, and the safe and responsible use of digital technologies in the classroom. 

“Media education incorporated into ICT classes could become the most successful model in our environment. Such a model would help overcome the still negative perceptions of mass media held by teachers and parents, while building on the very positive attitudes toward ICT and ICT education in our society,” said Haykaz Baghyan, a founding director of the Media Education Center. 

Experts at the Center insist that media education helps children and youth develop not only up-to-date technological skills and production techniques, but also new social and communication habits that enable them to adapt more effectively to a rapidly changing environment, in which the boundaries between online and offline worlds are becoming increasingly blurred.

In general, protective approaches do not dominate in a country where Internet use is rapidly expanding. With 100 per cent mobile Internet penetration and nearly 90 per cent of schoolchildren connected to the Web through mobile phones, alongside a growing demand for high-speed communication, people are becoming increasingly interested in the positive aspects that the Internet and social networks can bring to their everyday lives. “New technologies and media stimulate children’s creativity and critical thinking. The use of smart boards during our classes has brought many positive changes to our lessons. Overall, children have become more independent, and some of them even perform better,” said Mari Nazaryan, a mathematics teacher and expert at the Media Education Center.

One of the most successful projects of the Media Education Center was the development of a model school website, complete with Regulations and a Memorandum, operating as a creative environment for children’s media production. Within a year, the number of pages on this school mini-portal—which united websites and periodicals produced and updated by students from elementary through high school—surpassed the total number of web pages of all Armenian educational institutions combined. 

“Of course, technology-savvy children are more self-confident, and sometimes they believe they possess significant power. They may even feel superior to their teachers,” Mari Nazaryan noted.

A recent survey conducted by the Media Education Center demonstrated that “empowerment leads to increased protection.” "Monitoring showed that active media production in the classroom resulted in a significant improvement in the quality of Internet resources consumed by children: they generally shifted from entertainment-oriented content to educational websites, and overall Internet traffic volumes were reduced accordingly," Haykaz Baghyan explained.

Nevertheless, he continued, national statistics show that the majority of Internet resources consumed by the population can still be described as ‘improper content’. “We believe that parents should also be educated, and that some adults are eager to learn from young people’s experiences”. As the survey revealed, the vast majority of parents (82 per cent) believe that the intergenerational knowledge gap regarding Internet use should be bridged.

At present, 624 out of 1,420 Armenian secondary schools are computerized and connected to the Internet. By the end of 2011, all schools are expected to be connected to the Web, and the government has already announced plans to integrate most of them into a unified network by next year.

While schools are being computerized, media education remains largely experimental and has not yet reached the necessary scale. State agencies raise funds to purchase equipment but continue to adhere to conservative approaches to curricula, limiting pedagogical innovation and preventing media education from being fully integrated into school programs.

“I love my computer. I can play my favorite games. Every day I go to my Winx Club on Google to meet and play with Musa and Stella,” said seven-year-old Sona, who is also fond of drawing with Photoshop and is a winner of a recent drawing competition in Yerevan among elementary schoolchildren. “My mom doesn’t allow me to go on Google when I am home alone. She told me there are many dangerous witches and dwarfs there who can break my computer and ruin my pictures.”

Only 17.7 per cent of parents believe that the government bears responsibility for safety and security on the Web, while 10 per cent think that in the digital age it is the responsibility of every citizen—and every parent—to ensure that the online environment is secure and safe.