Youth interests as vehicles for the acquisition of technological competence: Insights from two participatory projects

This work-in-progress paper will provide insights into two educational research projects that are currently conducted by a research group at IFZ. Both projects use youth interests as a vehicle to the acquisition of technological competence [1, 2, 3]. One of them - useITsmartly - seeks to make adolescents aware of the environmental consequences of IT-use. The other one - transFAIRmation - aims to encourage critical media reception and political participation through media analysis and remixing. Technological applications thereby act as carriers of potential for (political) media participation or creative tinkering to save energy. The aim of this work-in-progress paper is to outline the underlying ideas and current stages of the two projects and to discuss their methods and implementation of the vehicle theory.