This chapter is to challenge the research opportunity of media literacy in the twenty-first-century learning environment. Different technologies with human-computer interaction are addressed in this section as two different main structures. The relationships between these two structures are constructed as matrices. One of these structures is constituted by the educational technologies of the twenty-first century. The second is the learning framework of the twenty-first century. The research will be done using content analysis of the technologies used and learning frameworks. Based on the data obtained, this study will attempt to demonstrate that teachers can provide more effective and productive instruction using human-computer interaction. This section will hopefully provide information to teachers and students about suitable learning environments designed for the use of and in conformance with twenty-first-century skills with the use of innovative technologies, and technologies they should use in these environments.
TopIntroduction
Human beings have made efforts to communicate since the beginning of history, conveying their feelings and thoughts and passing information to each other using all available opportunities. Technological developments have enabled audio-visual communication tools such as radio, TV, newspaper, and Internet to affect the masses, and consequently different aspects of interpersonal communication have arisen (Walter, 1992). Having facilitated mass communication, these tools rapidly became widespread in the 1980s, and they have gained power over time—coming to be collectively referred to as “the media” (Karataş, 2008). Thus, “the media” is defined as any communication tool that includes all kinds of verbal, written, printed, digitally visual text, and images used to reach the masses. That in turn has led to the emergence of the concept of media literacy: the ability of individuals to access different forms of media, to understand the messages the media carry, to create their own messages, and to critically evaluate messages (İnceoğlu, 2006; Kellner & Share, 2005; Buckingham, 2003). Using the media, individuals can now send messages to intended receivers whenever they want (Barut & Koç, 2016); for their part, recipients should analyze and interpret all messages because media messages can be fictionalized and placed strategically for individuals’ point of view. Regarding the media, the published literature includes statements such as: messages should be correctly understood and handled from a critical perspective; reality should be distinguished from fiction; it’s possible that the world as presented by the media may not be real and the recipient should comprehend that; the directing and governing functions of the media should be taken into account; and the senders may endeavor to impose their own opinions. Media literacy trains persons who can evaluate and properly use information, whatever its origin (RTÜK, 2014).
The concept of literacy has changed along with the necessities and the technological and socioeconomic movements of the age. Literacy has been referred to in various fields throughout history and defined in different ways for its validity at a given time (Odabaşı, 2000). With the invention of writing, literacy was accepted as the ability to analyze written texts (Murray, 2008; Wecker, Kohnlet & Fischer, 2007). Today, literacy has blended with other functions and has introduced new concepts such as information literacy, media literacy, technology literacy, to name a few. These concepts can usually be combined: an individual’s ability to code and analyze a message indicates literacy in the field of the message (Potter, 2005; Livingstone, 2004), which can be evaluated through its subject (Waetjen, 1993).
Behrens (1994) defined information literacy as the ability to access information to solve a real-life problem, or through various resources to ensure continuous information and to determine the strategies on how to obtain information. Doyle (1994) stated that individuals evaluate and organize information and integrate it with their existing information. Information literacy also involves ethical and legally acceptable use of information. Information literacy leads to other areas of literacy, and it has been expressed as an umbrella for other areas of literacy (Savolainen, 2002). Media literacy can teach ways to learn and to properly access information to solve the problems people encounter throughout their life. As in a constructivist approach, information literacy requires learners to access and learn the information by themselves. Learners must have good information literacy to sort the correct information from a mass of information (Bruce, 1999). As technology should be used to access the right information, technological literacy is important.