Children and Media Outside the Home : Playing and Learning in After-School Care

Karen Orr Vered demonstrates how children's media play contributes to their acquisition of media literacy. Theorizing after-school care as intermediary space, a large-scale ethnographic study informs this theory-rich and practical discussion of children's media use beyond home and classroom. This new study looks at what children are doing with media in the fastest growing sector of the childcare industry, after-school care. Drawing on groundbreaking ethnographic research, Karen Orr Vered shows how children's media play in peer-group, recreational settings is collaborative, creative, and integrated with more traditional forms of play. Arguing that the intermediary space of after-school care has links to both home life and classroom activities, Vered shows how the informal learning experienced in play contributes to children's acquisition of media literacy. Increasingly used outside the home and beyond the classroom, electronic games, computers, television and media production activities are fundamental to children's culture. Children and Media Outside the Home provides a fresh look at children, media, play and learning Front Matter....Pages i-viii Introduction....Pages 1-4 Informal Learning and Media in After-School Care....Pages 5-28 Childhood and Childcare in Australia....Pages 29-60 Intermediary Space....Pages 61-76 Pokemon on the Playground....Pages 77-90 The Place of Media in Children’s Leisure....Pages 91-107 TV and Video in OSHC....Pages 108-123 Digital Games and the Internet in OSHC....Pages 124-145 Making Media....Pages 146-164 Practice and Play....Pages 165-179 Back Matter....Pages 180-200