Reflections on learning with and about media in the age of digitalisation

Abstract

Even though Media Education as an educational discipline has only existed since the 1970s, questions about learning with and about media have been discussed much earlier. School as an institution of learning has always been connected with media, which linked the direct vividness of the world via text and reading books with the cognitive structures related to it and thus made “learning” possible. Reading and reading aloud are based on media with which experiences with the world can be verbalised and thus made “abstract”. The Abacus as a didactic tool is, for example, a medium to make the concept of numbers vivid and to support the learning of numbers. The development of Media Education as a discipline, however, only emerged with technical media – initially on an analogue basis such as film, radio, television, children’s cassettes, etc. This paper will show how the situation of Media Education has changed again in the context of digitalisation and what new concepts and perspectives are associated with it. In doing so, it will become clear how some of the old considerations, such as programming, reappear in a new guise, and how Media Education must change in the age of digitalisation if it wants to have a future.