Teens in a Digital Desert: Digital Media Literacy in an Arizona OST Program

The education landscape, both in and out of school, has shifted dramatically, during the COVID-19 pandemic, to digital learning. This shift has compounded the need for digital media literacy, a wide-ranging and often-changing concept that encompasses the competence to use technical equipment, intelligently consume and process information, and create and share digital media (Heitin, 2016). Even as young people spend more hours in front of a screen than before, they are subjected to more media applications and outlets, from podcasts to videos, pictures, and infographics. These diverse media options are a rich digital landscape for youth to navigate and to which they can potentially contribute. The program SPOT 127 in Phoenix, Arizona, fosters digital literacy through multimedia production. SPOT 127 facilitates semester-long courses twice a week, offers summer boot camps and continuing courses over the summer, and provides in-school workshops. This article describes how SPOT 127 helps fill the void left by most schools' inability to teach digital media literacy by empowering participants to create their own digital media products.