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to express themselves. Otherwise people will be limited in their opportunities to
solve complex problems in the future. Current research in education has repeatedly
emphasized that contemporary literacy concepts cannot be restricted to individual
skills of reading and writing static texts, tables, graphs, but must now be extended
toward complex visual media (e.g., Stahl, Zahn, Schwan, & Finke, 2006). These
skills can be summarized as visual literacies (Messaris, 1994, 1998) for visual
communication (Messaris, 1998), on the one hand, and new media literacies for
participatory cultures and for community involvement (Jenkins, Clinton, Weigel,
& Robison, 2006), on the other. The
visual literacies
model defined by Messaris
(1994) refers to four skills levels, ranging from simple understanding of audio-
visual content to sophisticated critical film analysis. Analysis is accomplished by
using general film analysis methodology to de-compose and to evaluate the source,
thereby developing a critical stance and aesthetic appreciation of visual communica-
tion. Visual literacies include productive communicative skills, too (Baacke, 1999a,
1999b). According to Jenkins et al.'s (2006) notions of
new media literacies
, empha-
size active participation and include the abilities to interact meaningfully with media
content and advanced cognitive tools (“appropriation” and “distributed cognition”),
skills to interact and collaborate with others, and skills “to pool knowledge and
compare notes with others toward a common goal” (“collective intelligence”, p. 4)
among other abilities.
However, such advanced skills of understanding and working creatively with
(audiovisual) media need to be developed. They provide new challenges for school-
based education, and for both students and teachers alike. Schools—especially in the
sectors of history, politics, ethics, language, and media education—are challenged
to provide opportunities for students to participate and to develop such visual and
communication skills. This, in turn, requires radically changing the role of digital
video and computers in classroom learning.
Digital Video in Education
Video has long been acknowledged in school-based education as a didactical means
to pursue a variety of learning goals in many domains. However, empirical findings
on its effectiveness for knowledge acquisition is somewhat inconsistent (e.g., Park
& Hopkins, 1992; Salomon, 1983, 1984; Wetzel, Radtke, & Stern, 1994) with clear
positive effects only for interactive video (McNeil & Nelson, 1991). Also, empirical
findings on the use of video in the classroom show a limited variety and limited goal
orientation among the teachers (Hobbs, 2006).
The pedagogy associated with educational media is in a way prefigured in the
technical properties or the “affordances” (Norman, 1988) of the technologies in
use. Audiovisual media, which are in the focus of this chapter, underwent dras-
tic changes in their educational potential and in their technological “evolution”:
When films had to be mounted in projectors and played for a large public, edu-
cation could not be achieved by having learners interrogate film-as-data, much less
