Comunicar 39-ingles - Revista Comunicar

85gogical point of view, one can only say that a multimediamaterial comprehends an interactive strategy whenit offers a real possibility to the user to act upon the originalwork, preserving his results. Such a procedurerepresents, indeed, a wide range of new pedagogicalpossibilities and although there is, in general, a ratherstrong charge of didacticism impregnating the mostcommon strategies of interactivity, this could tempt usto predict that the field is not too far from achieving avast line of materials well suited to the most differentof pedagogical aims. But, however it may be, we cannever forget that the individual aims of the user may bequite different in essence depending from the contextof his usage. He may just want to be entertained, view -ing the film and playing the game, not giving it anotherthought, or he may have some critical, pedagogical oraesthetical aims. The multimedia authors and editorsare certainly aware of the possible existence of allthose user aims. Thus, the certainty of this usage willnot depend only from the aims and strategies of thematerials and of their producing institutions, but also,and in a very high degree, more often from the rolethat the user will be playing, or at least from the rolethat he will be given to play. We know from therecent past that some television movies have beendesigned and produced according to specific languagepatterns that are well suited to television’s way of grabbingan audience, as for example, a large number ofclose up shots and highly fragmented redundantsequences synchronized with some easily identifiablepopular musical scores. We do also know that someactual examples of feature films have been screened inso-called interactive movie theatres. And the industry,naturally, will try to explore every technological andmedia novelty in order to grab larger audiences. But, ingeneral, any film that was made in the past, or that willbe made in the future within a normal film productioncontext, will do: westerns, comedies, science fiction,tragedies, horror movies, documentaries, etc. Any film,or genre, will easily fit in exciting multimedia packages,instructional or for pure entertainment, with differentaims and implying different utilization strategies, andconsequently with different pedagogical implications,aiming at different audiences. We run the risk, ofcourse, of finding ourselves playing video games in -stead of watching the film works of some of the majorprofiles in the history of film art, that will depend fromwhich point of view the user will be looking at it and,of course, it will depend from his degree of film literacy.From a pedagogical point of view, any filmicmultimedia material may become a very effectivematerial, although of rather complex evaluation, sinceit is, almost always, potentially incredibly didactic, butyet, still interesting as long as it preserves in its mutantstructure all the original language mechanisms intact,in order to keep on offering to its audiences the possibilityof a dramatic and exciting perceptive experience,no matter what kind of interactive strategy the audiencesmay choose. But the main problem will be to knowhow to train the teachers with adequate skills in orderto be able to approach, in a pedagogically effectiveway, those complex realities and virtual-realities thathave been enunciated above?5. Do we need Media Education to achieve MediaLiteracy?In fact, most of the times, we can become medialiterate just by being exposed to the media, withoutany formal media educational process, since all processesof media exposure contain some kind of mediapedagogy that forms and conforms the media users(senders and receivers) in many ways, developing production,reading, interpretation and reproductionmechanisms, of which, many times, the very same sendersand receivers are simply not aware. When thishappens (and it happens quite often) the media usersmaybe functionally media literate in some degree, butthey are, nevertheless, alienated in several ways concerningthe pedagogical processes that take place with -in their public and private media spheres. Then, somemore specific media education processes may reallybecome important in order to achieve some bettermedia literacy results, both for media readers andmedia makers.It was with this in mind that a group of independentscholars and experts from different countries andinstitutions gathered together to join their effortsaround the attempt to produce some kind of a MediaLiteracy common approach that became to be knownas «The European Charter for Media Literacy»,which was in fact a public declaration of commitmentto some essential Media Literacy factors, such as:«Raise public understanding and awareness of MediaLiteracy, in relation to the media of communication,information and expression; Advocate the importanceof Media Literacy in the development of educational,cultural, political, social and economic policy; Supportthe principle that every citizen of any age should haveopportunities, in both formal and informal education,to develop the skills and knowledge necessary to in -crease their enjoyment, understanding and explorationof the media». (www.euromedialiteracy.eu/about. php).Coming to this point, it means that we will have todevelop formal and non-formal media education stra-Comunicar, 39, XX, 2012© ISSN: 1134-3478 • e-ISSN: 1988-3293• Pages 81-89