DIY Media: Creating, Sharing and Learning with New Technologies (New Literacies and Digital Epistemologies)

Schools remain notorious for co-opting digital technologies to «business as usual» approaches to teaching new literacies. DIY Media addresses this issue head-on, and describes expansive and creative practices of digital literacy that are increasingly influential and popular in contexts beyond the school, and whose educational potential is not yet being tapped to any significant degree in classrooms. This book is very much concerned with engaging students in do-it-yourself digitally mediated meaning-making practices. As such, it is organized around three broad areas of digital media: moving media, still media, and audio media. Specific DIY media practices addressed in the chapters include machinima, anime music videos, digital photography, podcasting, and music remixing. Each chapter opens with an overview of a specific DIY media practice, includes a practical how-to tutorial section, and closes with suggested applications for classroom settings. This collection will appeal not only to educators, but to anyone invested in better understanding – and perhaps participating in – the significant shift towards everyday people producing their own digital media.

The Editors: Michele Knobel is a professor at Montclair State University. She has worked within teacher education in Australia, Mexico and the U.S. Her research interests focus principally on young people’s literacy practices, and the study of the relationship between new literacies and digital technologies. Her books include Everyday Literacies; Handbook for Teacher Research (with Colin Lankshear); and A New Literacies Sampler (co-edited with Colin Lankshear).
Colin Lankshear is adjunct professor at James Cook University in Australia and at McGill and Mount St. Vincent Universities in Canada. His current research and publishing focus mainly on literacy and other social practices involving new technologies. Recent books include two editions of New Literacies (with Michele Knobel), and Digital Literacies (co-edited with Michele Knobel).