Comunicar 39-ingles - Revista Comunicar

82Comunicar, 39, XX, 20121. IntroductionThe UNESCO Media and Information LiteracyCurriculum for Teachers (backed up by the Alexan -dria Declaration of 2005) clearly places media andinformation literacy at the core of lifelong learning as ameans of acquiring the competences that «can equipcitizens with critical thinking skills enabling them todemand high-quality services from media and otherinformation providers. Collectively, they foster an enablingenvironment in which media and other informationproviders can provide quality services» (UNES-CO (2011: 16). To this end the UNESCO MILdocument describes aspects of the major pedagogicalapproaches that form the main strategies, or guidelines,for the use of the MIL Curriculum, such as theTextual and Contextual Analysis of different mediaobjects, such as films (UNESCO (2011: 37).These guidelines urge a reflection on the necessarytraining of teachers in order to acquire the requiredcompetences to develop those approaches.The increasing development of multimedia materialsas supporting vehicles of filmic language hasraised some new questions and problems withinmedia studies and within different pedagogical approaches.One of the most important problems enunciatedin those contexts is one that questions the extent ofthe media limits of the different vehicles supporting theoriginal works. That is, up to what point are we stillwatching a given film when it is shown, no longer ona big screen projected from a celluloid reel (the presentationform for which it was conceived) but on asmall television or computer screen beamed from afile, a DVD or laser disc and controlled throughsequences of computer commands, each involving differentpedagogical effects? This problem is not entirelynew and we can recognize some parts of it in formerdiscussions about the differences between cinema andtelevision, or cinema and video for educational purposes.Never theless, there are some new aspects thatconfer a more pluridimensional character on the problemwhen in a multimedia network context. Toapproach some of those aspects is an attempt to contributeto the global reflection on the increasing developmentof the multimedia information and communicationtechnologies, their real nature and pedagogicalvalue for a higher degree of media and film literacy.2. From the moving image to the moving mind intimeSince the very beginning of film, history film enthusiastsof all kinds, but especially industrialists and otherfilm entrepreneurs, have been rather optimistic aboutthe large possibilities of using films in educational environments.Thomas Edison, for example, is supposedto have said in the early twenties, according to LarryCuban (1986: 9): «I believe that the motion picture isdestined to revolutionize our educational system andthat in a few years it will supplant largely, if not entirely,the use of textbooks».As we know today, it did not happen exactly thatway. But, in spite of the failure of the prophecy, thereare many other links and connections that have beenestablished between motion pictures and education toour day, and I think that this process is far from beingcompleted. Those connections are not always clearenough or so well known in the media and educationalfields, whose agents are, generally and intuitively,aware of the existence of some dimensions of mutualinfluence, but who do not act so often, at least consciously,in consequence of their presence and implications.Some of those dimensions present quite a numberof really specific and almost palpable characteristicsthat assume great importance for the global communicationprocess, and therefore educational process,going on in modern societies, of which, cinema, television,video, books, pictures, texts, sounds, computers,records and other media devices are integratedparts. To research and study this complex media bodyis a task of great importance in general and of specificrelevance in what concerns film and its languages.In fact, Edison was not the only one with ratheroptimistic visions for the development of the field, andwe could think that at least some of the more obviousstructural connections should have been normallyestablished between the fields of audiovisual communicationand education. There are, indeed, many linksbetween both fields, but we cannot say, in a generalway, that there are many stable institutional links be -tween the different nations’ communication industriesand their educational systems, though a few exceptionscan be noticed.Travelling in time and technology, since theEdison epoch to our own epoch, we could turn ourattention to other industrialists, or technology traders,and notice their beliefs, not only concerning film as apowerful pedagogical medium, but regarding multimediaas global phenomena, in which cinema and filmsare taking continuously a growing part. John Sculley,a former chief of Apple Computer Inc., wrote in hisforeword to «Learning with Interactive Multimedia»:«Imagine a classroom with a window on all theworld’s knowledge. Imagine a teacher with the capabilityto bring to life any image, any sound, any event.© ISSN: 1134-3478 • e-ISSN: 1988-3293• Pages 81-89