Media education goes digital: an introduction

This editorial introduction provides an overview of the challenges and opportunities presented to media educators by the advent of digital technologies. It argues that media education can provide an important critical dimension to the use of technology in education, that moves beyond a merely instrumental approach; and that it can help to bridge the ‘new digital divide’ between students' experiences of technology outside school and their experience in the classroom. The article then focuses on three ways in which media educators need to respond to new digital media: by applying and extending existing conceptual approaches to these new objects of study; by addressing the creative possibilities of digital technologies, and the pedagogic challenges they represent; and by exploring the potential of emerging forms of participatory media culture.