Brussels, 30 June 2023

HERMMES conference explores holistic media education

On the 29th of April 2023, 200 parents, teachers, researchers, and school leaders met at Scuola Novalis in Italy to discuss uses and misuses of media in education.

Meeting to improve media education in schools and at home

The high turnout at the first HERMMES mul­ti­pli­er event under­pins the need for a devel­op­ment-ori­ent­ed approach to media edu­ca­tion in Europe. Such an approach requires a well-defined pur­pose of media use, and a clear rea­son­ing on the tim­ing and for­mat of intro­duc­ing and using media in an edu­ca­tion­al con­text. In a nut­shell, this approach pri­ori­tis­es the devel­op­ment of ana­logue media skills in ear­ly child­hood and the first years of pri­ma­ry school, and grad­u­al­ly intro­duces dig­i­tal media use as chil­dren grow and devel­op in mid­dle and sec­ondary school. The aim is to achieve full ana­logue and dig­i­tal media matu­ri­ty of young peo­ple by the end of their sec­ondary education.

Empowering talks on raising children in the digital age

In the pres­ence of region­al politi­cians, aca­d­e­mics and the local school com­mu­ni­ty, key mes­sages were deliv­ered by Már­ti Domokos as the HERMMES project coor­di­na­tor, by Prof. Dr Paula Bleck­mann from the Alanus Uni­ver­si­ty, Dr Robert Neu­mann from the Freie Hochschule Stuttgart, and Christo­pher Cloud­er from ENSWaP. Look­ing back at the his­to­ry of tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ments, they remind­ed us that not all that is new is bet­ter. Dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy should serve as an exten­sion of our human­i­ty, and only when achiev­ing that pur­pose does it bring addi­tion­al val­ue to our lives. Par­ents and edu­ca­tion pro­fes­sion­als are to recog­nise and teach chil­dren the ways to use dig­i­tal and ana­logue media for that purpose.

12 workshops to deepen the understanding of the HERMMES project

Deliv­ered by the HERMMES part­ners, the 12 par­al­lel work­shops aimed to show the diverse steps towards achiev­ing dig­i­tal media lit­er­a­cy and more impor­tant­ly, towards becom­ing media mature. These work­shops includ­ed top­ics such as graph­ic design, audio pro­duc­tion, bod­i­ly move­ment, bina­ry sys­tem, weav­ing, print-mak­ing, emoti­cons, QR-codes, ICT unplugged and parental involvement.

Further reading