Abstract:

The XXI century society is changing the route from information worker towards concept maker (Pink, 2005; Huitt, 2007; Eberle, 2009; McWilliam, 2014; Klich, 2020). For this reason it may be regarded as the society of creators, pattern recognizers and meaning consumers, in other words, influencers' society. Being an effective influencer is one of the most relevant future teachers’ competences inevitably based on values and creativity. A teacher – influencer has to be empathic, what must be accompanied by logic and critical thinking; he/she has to be perfect in story telling rather than just present an argument, to give priority to the design over utility and function, to be able to demonstrate acting ability and conatability, possess the ability to feel the connections between things, to construct, to feel the symphony of the environment (Pink, 2005; Huitt, 2007; Eberle, 2009). Since Media literacy is described as a skill set that promotes the “active inquiry and critical thinking about the messages we receive and create,” (Hobbs & Jensen, 2009), it becomes one of the most relevant skills for the future teacher – influencer. Here emerges a problem question: how can the teacher – influencer develop vitally important media literacy skills? This perspective resonates with pedagogical theory, and particularly Constructivism. It states that the best learning happens when students demonstrate and apply their knowledge in the form of learning artefact creation (Kukulska‐Hulme & Viberg, 2018) i.e. production of media, in this particular case - creating a video report. Thus, the main task of the research: to reveal the impact of the video reporting towards the development of media literacy. The object of the research: video reporting process. The research strategy was the design - based research. Research data were collected from 25 extended reflexive essays, where research participants told their video making experiential stories. The analysis of qualitative content analysis revealed 4 major themes: “learning to engage“, “learning to participate“, “learning to produce“, “learning to present“. The major themes are represented by 9 qualitative categories and 18 subcategories. The research findings allow to conclude that creating a video report empowered students to feel ownership as creators. that students met the challenge of different emotions while travelling via labyrinth of writing for an authentic audience by combining a range of modes (with language playing an important role) to develop an effective rhetorical “Ariadne thread” and appropriate discourse identity in their efforts to appeal to their audience and become teachers – influencers.

Keywords:

The conceptual age, media literacy, video reporting, teacher - influencer.