What is DIY Media

The phrase “do-it-yourself”—or “DIY” for short—has increasingly become the new watch-word when describing the wide variety of self-driven activities that individuals are now capable of with the assistance of Web 2.0 technologies. The combination of the economic recession and the proliferation of innovative, affordable technologies have resulted in more and more individuals and businesses opting to complete projects themselves. On the K-12 landscape too, DIY learning is also playing an ever-increasing role in the way students acquire and transmit information. Kids now have ready access to websites and software applications that make creating and sharing digital media a seemingly routine process, and youth often enter the classroom with a far more vast knowledge of how to manipulate media than the teachers in front of them. However, rather than ignore or even condemn such innovation, educators are best to view them in terms of opportunity. This topical article investigates the social and economic origins of the DIY movement and explores how innovative school leadership alongside the latest digital technologies can increasingly promote a DIY environment within schools and make learning a more self-driven, perpetual process.