NEWS: World Radio Day - Radio for Children

Children are good at radio. Radio is good for children and listening to children on the radio is good for everyone. They are articulate, interesting and funny.  So how is it that children have been forgotten in radio programming? In Canada, they represent roughly 20% of the population, yet less than 1% of broadcasting concerns them. In developing countries, children make up around 40% of the population, but there is practically no radio programming created for them at all. Everywhere radio is centred on the tastes of adult audiences. Programming addresses people aged 15 and older while children are ignored. Neither authorities nor the media have reflected seriously on the concept of radio for children.

Despite the declaration of rights or laws, we do not respect children in matters concerning radio.

Even in countries with progressive rights and legislation, children are often forgotten in radio. The Canadian Broadcasting Act is clear: “through its programming [it should] serve the needs and interests, and reflect the circumstances and aspirations, of Canadian men, women and children.” The indifference of the media encourages the authorities not to respond to the issue of compliance with the Broadcasting Act in respect to children. The question is completely ignored!

full article by  Michel Delorme - Radioenfant.ca

ARTICLES / OPINIONS: Rated G for garbage (AUSTRALIA)

Why our children refuse to watch the local TV shows made just for them.

AUSTRALIAN children are choosing 35-year-old American sitcoms over local programs specifically designed for them, including those on ABC2 and the children's channel, ABC3.

The policy initiatives that rocketed Australia to prominence as an international children's television producer in the '80s are still in place, yet today's children prefer to watch Here's Lucy, I Dream of Jeannie, Bewitched, Happy Days and Mork and Mindy.

This despite rules around program standards, specific Australian quotas, subsidised financing and a Children's Television Foundation designed to innovate and create ground-breaking concepts.

So why, as Screen Australia's Convergence 2011 report points out, don't Australian children want to watch the Australian programs that are being produced for them?

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/rated-g-for-garbage-20111008-1lf1h.html#ixzz1aJTF9QZm

ARTICLES / OPINIONS: "A Screen Is a Screen Is a Screen" Is a Meme

Children's television has been a playground for memes for as long as it's existed (much longer than "meme" has been a word!). Most are light and from pop culture -- from Davy Crockett coonskin caps to rumors of gay Teletubbies. Others grow from more dire murmurs about media's effects on children -- sit too close and you'll ruin your vision, short segments decrease attention span, digital kids can't write standard English.

Recently, I've noticed an emerging meme -- "a screen is a screen is a screen." This or similar phrases suggest that only total time matters in children's relationship with media, not what's being viewed or used by whom, nor how and why. As used, it's a facile way to tar all media and absolve parents or activists from doing the hard work of addressing specific content or context.

full article in the Huffington Post

ARTICLES: When Youth Own the Public Education Agenda

I've devoted my career to researching how young people take up new technologies like computers, mobile phones, and the Internet and make them their own. If we pay attention to what young people do when they are socializing and having fun with these new media, it's clear that they are both highly engaged and learning a great deal. For most young people, however, this is about learning how to get along with their friends, what it takes to get a date, or how to get to the next level in Halo, and not the kinds of academic learning and civic engagement that schools are concerned with. As a parent and educator who is also an anthropologist committed to appreciating youth perspectives, I stand at the cusp of two different learning cultures--one that is about youth-driven social engagement and sharing, and the other that is embodied in educational institutions' adult-driven agendas. My biggest challenge has been to find what it would take to get alignment between the energy that kids bring to video games, text messaging, and social network sites and the learning that parents and educators care about. I have been on a quest for examples of educational institutions and programs that can bridge this cultural divide, and I'd like to share an example that has come out of collaborations I have had with some of my colleagues in the MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media and Learning Initiative.

full article

ARTICLES: Online youth need critical thinking skills

Online youth need critical thinking skills

by Larry Magid

I both envy and worry about young people who are growing up in the age of the Internet.

I envy them for their lifelong access to a media that's diversified enough to bring them news, information, and opinion from an enormous number of sources.

There's something to be said for having access to thousands of media outlets. Unlike those of us who grew up in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, young people who smartly use the Internet to consume news today don't have to worry about everything being filtered by a small, elite, and typically white male cadre of journalists working for one of only three broadcast networks or one or two local newspapers. And it's no longer a one-way street. Today's news consumers can also be producers thanks to blogs, social-networking sites, YouTube, podcasting, and microblogs like Twitter.

full article