New Literacies as a Challenge for Traditional Knowledge Conceptions in School: A Case Study from Fifth Graders Digital Media Production

Abstract

New literacies children practice and learn in their everyday life, and these concepts have challenged school's traditional knowledge conceptions as certain facts, principles or techniques. Schools have also more broadly struggled with the question of how to deal with digital media in terms of access, technological support, teacher agencies or fundamental structures of school culture. Digital media production as a common media education practice brings new literacies inside classrooms as children engage collaboratively with creative and multimodal tools. This article introduces a case study from fifth graders digital media production with software called Kar2ouche, and describes what kinds of production practices related to new literacies are emerging in this kind of media work. Further, this article discusses how these practices challenge the traditional conceptions of knowledge in school. It is argued that the first step in order to challenge a school's knowledge conceptions are to recognize the knowledge embedded with the new literacies, and make space for them despite the traditional culture of schooling that still seems to frame digital media production practices in classrooms.