Abstract
By way of introduction, I would like to let a female student have her say, whose comment exemplifies a core element of media learning within the framework of the model project "New Media in Educational and Psychosocial Fields of Action", to which this lecture refers. "Men obviously," the student finds, "have more of a clue about computers or think they do, or it is part of the cliché that if you are a man, you must know about computers." The male superiority in relation to ICT technology is addressed by the 23-year-old as a social construct, "it is part of the stereotype". In the eyes of the student, ICT has replaced the car as an artefact with masculine connotations: "In the past, we had this thing with the car, that women supposedly have no idea about car engines and are always terribly helpless when they have a flat tyre, and now we have it with the computer". She laughs. Laughter is an expression of having seen through something. Whether car or computer, both, she discovers for herself, serve to establish the relationship between the sexes as a hierarchical one. She deconstructs a social consensus she assumes. The learning of young adults with and through new media proved - according to the main thesis gained from the evaluation of the model project - to be a complex process of construction, deconstruction and reconstruction. Before I continue with this thesis, I want to introduce the model project.
