Part VI
Responding

How do we assess the impact of new media on the ways we think and organize our intellectual and cultural lives? To test this question, the final part of the course examines the complexity of the cultural mix presented to children and young people today. This unit also asks you to consider the nature and complexity of the skills that children bring to bear on this range of cultural experiences.

Unit 11
Responding

This unit looks at some of the ways in which children’s responses to texts are organized by texts themselves or by marketing techniques. With enormous social, cultural, and technological changes in the creation and framing of texts, there is much we do not know about how children’s responses may be changing to match. This unit considers factors that alter the conditions of response: the increase in the number of available versions of many texts, the commercial framing that accompanies many texts, the new mixtures of form and content now available. Finally, Unit 11 explores some of the questions concerning how our thinking may be changing as the result of computers and other new technologies.

Learning Objectives

When you have completed Unit 11, you should be able to achieve the following learning objectives.

1. Understand how the conditions in which texts are created and presented affect how they are received.
2. Consider the questions which are arising over how our responses to new media affect how we think.