Our Mission

The LAMP (Learning About Multimedia Project) provides critical media literacy skills to the inter-related groups of youths, their parents and educators throughout New York City. Our media literacy workshops demystify the constant flow of media these three groups encounter, bridge the gap between generations, and provide workforce development skills for future generations. The LAMP’s staff learns and explores new media trends in order to properly steer the LAMP in the direction where it can provide the most benefit to the community at large.

Why is multimedia literacy necessary? Our economy, our communities, the information and entertainment we access, and even our personal relationships are ever more dependent upon the production and flow of information, and increasingly through digital means. This shift requires that we have new competencies and concepts for understanding and responding to different media, while also keeping the Internet experience for youth and adults both fulfilling and safe. Competency in multimedia (or multimedia literacy) allows us to make sense of our media-saturated environment, chart a course for navigating it, and especially to make use of the opportunities which media and the mediated environment bring. Here are some statistics to help us understand our state of multimedia saturation:

• According to recent Nielsen Corporation research, the average American home has more television sets than people (Article).
• While television sets tend to be turned on roughly eight hours per day on average, most people watch about four hours, 35 minutes of television per day (Study).

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) report on the electronic media and children under the age of 6:

• 66% of children from 6 months to 6 years watch television everyday
• 30% of these children live in homes where the TV is on during all meals
• “Background TV” - 32% of children under 6 years old live in households where the TV is on most to all of the time, even when no one is watching it.

From theTurnoff TV Network

• By the time they are 18, the average American child will have seen 200,000 acts of violence; of those, 16,000 are murders.
• The average American child under the age of 18 views over 40,000 commercials on TV.
• <97% of all children own some kind of toy or product based on characters from TV or movies.

Since we spend so much of our lives with media and using media, it makes sense that we ought to have as full a grasp of them as possible. This gives us a sense of empowerment where media are concerned, as well as a sense of freedom as we watch, read and listen to them, create with them, and move into the future with them.

Who needs multimedia literacy?Everyone needs to be multimedia literate, but most of the concern surrounding media use and media effects is centered on children. Because young people are growing up at a point in time when the multimedia industries are experiencing upheaval because of new digital technologies, and where computers are used at home and in the classroom on a daily basis, they are developing navigational and thinking skills that are very different from those of their parents and teachers. We all need to understand what sorts of changes are taking place for them, and for us.

What goals can be met through the LAMP’s multimedia literacy initiative? Efforts by The LAMP to encourage multimedia literacy directly correlate to larger concerns that have been raised by other groups including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the New York City Board of Education, and the William J. Clinton Foundation. For example, one such concern right now is with regard to childhood obesity; initiatives to promote the healthy child emphasize exercise and the development of healthy eating habits from a young age. The multimedia literacy curriculum developed by The LAMP includes a concentration on critical assessment of advertising, and focuses specifically on television, print and radio advertisements for food products. As students learn about message production across a range of media, increase their critical faculties and their production abilities, they can apply their newfound skills and knowledge to other efforts toward a healthier lifestyle.

Where are multimedia literacy initiatives already in place? There are national multimedia curricula in place in England, Israel, Australia and Canada. England has required that multimedia education be implemented in the elementary curriculum. In Israel the implementation has been voluntary. Australia was the first country to mandate media education in grades K-12. There are a number of states in the U.S. that have introduced multimedia literacy in some elementary and secondary schools such as California, Massachusetts, and Oregon. The multimedia literacy efforts are not unified in U.S. schools, but there are national foundations such as the Center for Media Literacy in California and the Media Education Foundation in Massachusetts that provide resources and information about implementing multimedia literacy programs for school-age children.