Arts Teachers' Media and Digital Literacy in Kindergarten: A Case Study on Finnish and Chinese Children using a Shared Blog in Early Childhood Education

Children live in a media oriented world, and media skills need to be taught already starting from the early years. Practicing media production can be seen as a core activity for media education in early childhood. The idea is linked to the 21st century definition of media: instead of thinking of media and digital culture as a simple, one-to-one way communication, it is better to consider media as parts of systems of actions and activities. In other words, it should be seen as a form of social processes. In this case study, the authors investigated children's shared blogging in a kindergarten in two different countries. The public blog was operated between Finland and China in order to build communication between those countries and get children's viewpoints from a different culture and shared communication. Arts education (visual art) was used as a tool for the online communication and blog's content production. On the basis of this study, a shared blog could be a pedagogically functional way to teach children the social media use and interaction as a part of their early childhood education. Pedagogically organized use of social media is also the way to give young children own voice in digital media culture, and to connect other children around the world.