Comunicar 39-ingles - Revista Comunicar

83Imagine a student with the power to visit any place onearth at any time in history. Imagine a screen that candisplay in vivid colour the inner workings of a cell, thebirths and deaths of stars, the clashes of armies and thetriumphs of art... I believe that all this will happen notsimply because people have the capability to make ithappen, but also because people have a compellingneed to make it happen» (Ambron & Hooper, 1990:7).It is very interesting, to notice that the differencesbetween both beliefs in thepedagogical power of themedia are almost non-existent.However, this reveals moreabout how intensive and constantthe industry’s expectationsto penetrate the educationalmarkets have been over theyears, than it shows somereally tested perspectives forthe different media within differentpedagogical contexts.Nevertheless, we have toadmit that these perspectivesare now much more realisticthan ever before, because ofthe new technological multimediacontexts. This meansthat we can no longer dismissthem as a bunch of new/oldprophecies based on theindustry’s best wishes. In fact, some of them are alrea -dy happening – Youtube being a good example. Thus,we must deal with them, trying to discover what arethe new facts that characterize the media, their materials,their languages and their real implications, mainlyfrom a pedagogical point of view, upon the communicationprocesses that can be developed towards differentaudiences, even if the audiences consist of oneonly receiver at the time, within a formal educationalcontext or any other possible context.Some comparative studies of different pedagogicalexperiences done with multimedia materials whichwere based upon the educational use of cinematographicsequences and their reception conditions, providedthe opportunity to observe some main tendencies,with regard of broader intertextual aspects suchas the multitude of cinematic facts and hypertextualinformation that usually follow along with a given filmicmultimedia material, such as different spin offmaterials and devices. Those tendencies were:1) Filmic material on discs or in files, especiallyfeature films, is still considered, in general, very interestingand attractive pedagogical materials.2) The use of filmic materials is more effectivewhen it is registered upon a physical support.3) The related pedagogical processes are more stimulatingif the filmic materials and the manipulationsoftware are interconnected and compatible struc -tures.4) The filmic structure of the pedagogical materialsand their language and narrative systems seem toThe UNESCO Media and Information Literacy Curriculumfor Teachers (backed up by the Alexandria Declaration of2005) clearly places media and information literacy at thecore of lifelong learning as a means of acquiring the competencesthat «can equip citizens with critical thinking skillsenabling them to demand high-quality services from mediaand other information providers. Collectively, they foster anenabling environment in which media and other informationproviders can provide quality services».remain interesting and attractive devices especially ifthey are connectable to each other, or to other pedagogicaldevices, such as hypertext film comments, orother cinematic information and literacy facts.These tendencies may change with the nature ofthe end users aims and expectations, but in general wemay say that they reflect some of the most importantpedagogical implications that proceed from the mainstructural characteristics of the most common multimediamaterials that use filmic language devices.Specially, they show that the interconnections be -tween different levels of reality, fiction and virtual realityappear to have a rather complex nature assuming,consequently, a rather complex system of pedagogicaleffects. In turn, the use of filmic language within a multimediacontext reflects with particular sharpness someof the problems that occur in different environments ofmultimedia users, either they are teachers, students, orother ordinary media consumers: the hyper-real characterof the filmic media; the substantial degree ofmutation that distinguishes the manipulation of thoseComunicar, 39, XX, 2012© ISSN: 1134-3478 • e-ISSN: 1988-3293• Pages 81-89