STUDENT’S DIGITAL-MEDIA LITERACY IN MATHS AND SCIENCE HIGH SCHOOL “SERGEY KOROLYOV’’, BLAGOEVGRAD

Abstract

The mass-media communication plays an important role in humans’ lives especially in the modern society we live in today. A really huge influence they have on the personality and young people’s world view. They start to be active Internet users at the age of 8. They are on-line as frequently as they are off- line, namely outside it. The media childhood is obvious. That is why it is necessary basic changes in educational system to be made. It has more and more adequately to be compatible with the needs of new generations and brings up competency for safe and useful collaboration and communication . Family and school considerably think that serious changes and measures should be taken concerning behavior ,bringing up and supporting children in the digit era. Parents and teachers have the most important obligation-to keep and protect children’s interests. The willing to change the educational system in the “help for life” direction should be their serious task. Schools are the most appropriate institutions for developing skills of being safe, evaluate and solve problems very precisely. This leads to the bigger importance of the media, education and higher media literacy is expected in the end. Media literacy is a skillful way to understand the reality and life more intelligently. It is the main reason for protection of children rights and for rising their citizen activity. In recent times the question ’’What do media do with children” has lost its importance. There is another question arising “What do children do”. The digital-media literacy is very often discussed .It shouldn’t be limited only in the terms of technological competency but it should include realization ,acceptance and rules of ethics ,principles by which children are taught to be responsible and to react adequately to the risks of on-line interference. Are children born in digital era digitally literate ? The answer to this question is in analysed research of digital-media literacy of students in Maths and Science High School ‘Sergey Korolov” in Blagoevgrad. The report makes research and analyses three fields in digital –media competency of students at the age of 18 - information literacy, creating content and evaluation of the content. A great attention is paid to the role of the parents and friends and the importance of their support in the field of on-line safety and the development of digital skills. Despite not being very detailed, it gives some recommendations to teachers and parents to effectively support children in order to cope with the risks and to take advantage of the on-line communication opportunities.