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The Citizen Media Law Project (CMLP) this week announced the launch of its Online Media Legal Network (OMLN), a new pro bono initiative that connects lawyers and law school clinics from across the country with online journalists and digital media creators who need legal help on issues ranging from copyright and fair use to access to government information and representation in litigation.

From the press release (pdf):

“Unlike established media organizations that have the resources to pursue important reporting in the face of legal challenges, many online ventures lack the expertise and financial resources to protect themselves and thrive in an uncertain legal environment,” said David Ardia, director and co-founder of the CMLP. “In order for these new media ventures to survive and flourish, they need a legal safety net, and OMLN aims to provide that safety net with the help of lawyers interested in promoting a vibrant online media environment,” Ardia added.

Jay Rosen, a blogger, professor of journalism at New York University, and CMLP advisory board member, concurs: “This network is trying to level the playing field for independent online producers. That’s why it matters. That’s why I support it.”

Here’s how it will work:

OMLN will make it as easy as possible for participating lawyers and law school clinics to identify appropriate clients. OMLN staff will pre-screen prospective clients and prepare matter summaries so that network lawyers can quickly decide whether they are interested in taking on a question, case, or transaction. These summaries will be sent out to network lawyers via a bi-weekly email newsletter and will be available at any time on the password-protected OMLN website (beta), where members can search and filter client and case information based on client location, type of assistance needed, and legal expertise required. For more information on how the network matches lawyers and clients, see the How OMLN Works page.

Continue reading here (pdf). The Citizen Media Law Project is a joint project of Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society and the Center for Citizen Media at Arizona State University.

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The National Council of Teachers of English kicks off its annual conference today in Philadelphia. This year’s theme is Once and Future Classics: Reading Between the Lines. A look at the full program is available here.

Educators interested in learning more about blogs, wikis and Ning community sites can visit the New Media Gallery all day on Friday. Sponsored by NCTE’s Commission on Media, the gallery will showcase teachers and students who are working with new media in innovative ways. Sessions are ongoing throughout the day, while presentations and installations will spotlight “teachers who are promoting critical literacy, while also expanding their repertoire of texts to include such new media as podcasting, blogging, videomaking, web publishing, and text messaging.”

Anyone interested in the conference discussions can follow along on Twitter (hashtag #ncte), or check in at the NCTE Ning community.

Documents at the NCTE website that may be of particular interest to educators using digital media in the classroom include a Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education and Beliefs about Technology and the Preparation of English Teachers.

The conference comes on the heels of the JEA/NSPA Fall National High School Journalism Convention in Washington, D.C., which featured dozens of digital media sessions, including Creative Commons and the Future of Sharing on the Web, Social Media and Sports Reporting and The Media World You Will Inherit. The conference blog includes all the student awards.

Jeff Stern and Jordan Michnoff, students at Ward Melville High School in New York, turned a camera on conference participants and produced this time lapse video, which was shot entirely in the elevator at the convention hotel. It’s a unique way to introduce some of the students and their hopes for the conference.

NSPA Elevator Video from Jeff Stern on Vimeo.

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A public forum, The Power of Youth Voice: What Kids Learn When They Create With Digital Media, is taking place in Philadelphia on Nov. 18. But if you’re not in Philadelphia, not to worry. The event will be simulcast on the Internet and in Second Life from 6 to 8 p.m. EST.

Get answers to the many questions around what it means for young people to be widely involved in digital media today—whether they’re playing video games, using the Internet for research or social networks, or using mobile devices. 

Experts from the Media Education Lab, the Digital Youth Network and the National Writing Project are scheduled to speak. Program information is available here.

The event is presented by the National Writing Project, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation. 

You can register online.

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The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released a public notice (pdf) earlier this month seeking comment on broadband needs in education.

The agency is asking for data on various issues related to broadband access in education and the E-rate program, which provides discounts to eligible schools and libraries for telecommunications services, Internet access and internal connections.

From the notice: “We are specifically seeking data, reports, and case studies regarding pre-kindergarten through graduate school students and schools working with broadband connectivity and online, application service provider (ASP)  and cloud-based solutions. We welcome data and case studies from public, private, charter, and religious schools.”

Comments are due to the FCC by Nov. 20. Reply comments are due Dec. 11. Learn more from reading the detailed public notice.

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Global Kids, the New York City-based nonprofit organization, is hosting a Roundtable on Virtual Worlds and Nonprofits on Thursday, Nov. 12, from 12-1:30 p.m. PST. The roundtable will take place on MacArthur Island in Second Life. Here’s the teleport link.

From Holy Meatballs, the Global Kids’ blog:

“Representatives of five leading nonprofit organizations will give brief presentations on their initial explorations of Second Life and other virtual worlds, and how they are thinking of integrating these virtual tools into their organizations’ respective missions. Afterward, there will be an open discussion about the applications of virtual worlds for various public good purposes. The event will close with a casual mixer / dance party!”

Who would want to miss that?

The event will feature presentations by organizations who have recently completed the Global Kids’ Virtual World Capacity Building Program, a four-week intensive exposure to virtual worlds for nonprofits.

Learn more at Holy Meatballs.

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“When you think about what the teenagers are doing on ‘World of Warcraft,’ they are building worldwide virtual teams,” a vice president at IBM said in a recent “Frontline” interview. “Very sophisticated teams with very sophisticated skill levels in a very complex teaming environment. …That’s exactly what we try to do when we work with our colleagues in India and China.” 

Constance Steinkuehler, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has been making this very same argument in her work - that participating in these virtual communities can help kids learn how to collaborate, ask critical questions, make arguments, build social skills and even learn math.

The IBM interview is part of Frontline’s Digital Nation, an open-source PBS project that explores what it means to be human in a digital world. Scheduled for broadcast in winter 2010, the Digital Nation team has been posting rough cuts online. Watch great interviews with authors Henry Jenkins and James Paul Gee. In another video, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan talks about cell phones in the classroom.

Plus: More evidence kids are picking up skills online they’ll need to be competent citizens can be found in a book out this week from the Digital Youth Project. “Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out” reports on how young people are living and learning with new media and finds that through self-directed learning, young people are picking up the social and technical skills they need in the digital age. (Download the free online version [pdf].) Authors, including danah boyd and Mimi Ito, blogged about the project’s findings on Spotlight last year.

Photo by: king2009_12

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Change in Perspective: Technology journalist Larry Magid describes a “watershed moment” that occured last week in online safety education.

The third annual conference of the Family Online Safety Institute, writes Magid, “was different from previous years in that young people were viewed less as potential victims of online crimes and more as participants in a global online community.

“That’s not to say that participants didn’t worry aloud about youth safety, but instead of focusing on real and imagined dangers, we focused on how adults can work with young people to encourage both ethical and self-protective behavior. It’s all about media literacy, digital citizenship and critical thinking.”

Magid is co-director of ConnectSafely.org with Anne Collier (read her take on online safety) and founder of SafeKids.com. Continue reading Magid’s conference assessment at Mercury News.

Organizing or attending a conference?: Consider how you might provide coverage for people who can’t attend. Christopher Harris, coordinator of the school library system of the Genesee Valley (N.Y.) BOCES, explains how the recent School Library Journal Leadership Summit took the conference online using free technology tools, including Twitter, Flickr and CoverItLive.

Picture This: Özge Karaoğlu, an EFL teacher from Istanbul,Turkey, presents 25 digital storytelling tools that you can use in the classroom or to tell your digital story.

New Education Technology Leader: Karen Cator has been named director of the Office of Educational Technology at the U.S. Department of Education. The announcement was made earlier this month at the 2009 Leadership Summit and Ed Forum, hosted by the State Educational Technology Directors Association in Washington, D.C. The office is responsible for coordinating the development and implementation of the Department’s educational technology policies, research projects and national technology summits.

Cator was previously director of education leadership and advocacy at Apple. In this video, produced as part of a 2008 PBS series on America’s schools, Cator discusses the stakes involved if the U.S. doesn’t raise the bar.

Photo by: ryanocerosk

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You’re invited to spend an interactive hour with Henry Jenkins and Steve Hargadon discussing popular and participatory culture on Tuesday, Nov. 10, at 8 p.m. EST.

The event is part of the Conversations.net series—live conversations on the impact of internet culture and society. Recordings of past events are available on the website.

Hargadon is the social learning consultant for Elluminate, which provides learning collaboration solutions, and founder of the Classroom 2.0 social network. A regular columnist at School Library Journal, you can also find him blogging at SteveHargadon.com.

Jenkins (pictured) was until recently the director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program. He is the author and/or editor of nine books on various aspects of media and popular culture, including his most recent, “Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide.” You can read Jenkins’ blog and learn more about his work at HenryJenkins.org.

The next conversation—“Howard’s Brainstorms!” with Howard Rheingold—is scheduled for Nov. 19. Rheingold is author of “Smart Mobs,” among other books, and creator of SocialMediaClassroom.com.

It’s a busy week for Hargadon, who also hosts discussions through the Future of Education.

On Wednesday, Nov. 11, Richard Halverson and Allan Collins will join Hargadon to talk about their book, “Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology: The Digital Revolution and Schooling in America.” Learn more about how to join in here.

And on Thursday, Nov. 12, educator and researcher Larry Cuban will discuss school reform and classroom practice. Cuban’s blog on the subject is LarryCuban.wordpress.com.

Jenkins, Halverson and Rheingold have received support from the MacArthur Foundation.

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Pocket Guide to Social Media & Kids: “To adults, cell phones are a communications device. To children, they are a lifeline.” That statement, from a Nielsen article on teens’ use of social media and technology, should come as no surprise to anyone within sight of a teenager. The article, however, is filled with numbers on usage that may impress you. Consider these stats:

“By age 10, roughly half of children own a mobile phone. By age 11, six in ten own a mobile phone. By age 12, fully three-fourths of all children have their own mobile phone. [...] Two-thirds of tween mobile phone owners took pictures with their camera phones in the last year. Half spent time playing the pre-installed games. Four in ten activated the speakerphone feature. Twenty-eight percent filmed a video clip, and 24% listened to the MP3 capability.”

Read on for more information about kids’ use of technology and parental controls.

Think Globally, Learn Locally: Students around the world are using virtual education programs alongside books that promote social justice, reports School Library Journal.

In one example, students are logging in to Google Earth to follow the trek of Greg Mortenson, author of the adult bestseller, “Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace ... One School at a Time” (Viking 2006), which has been adapted for younger audiences.

“These Google Lit Trips, as they’re called, allow students to map Mortenson’s travels, build wikis to share what they’ve learned about the countries the author has visited, and discuss his work as a virtual book group using Skype,” writes SLJ’s Lauren Barack.

Google Promotes Online Safety: To help parents and educators become more involved in kids’ online activities, Google and the Internet Keep Safe Coalition have teamed up for a safety tour, writes Google policy analyst Dorothy Chou.

Kicking off the tour, Google sponsored a panel discussion on Capitol Hill this week “to address some of the key issues around digital media literacy, including how to talk to kids about maintaining their online reputations.” Google has also posted instructional videos about how to stay safe on the web.

Plus: At a conference on online safety, National Cable & Telecommunications Association President Kyle McSlarrow said digital media literacy should be a focus of broadband stimulus funding.

“Congress should direct that the agencies managing distribution of broadband stimulus funding allocate $500 million during the next two years for the development of digital media education tools,” McSlarrow said in a speech to the 2009 Annual Conference of the Family Online Safety Institute. “With a substantial portion of stimulus funding yet to be allocated, and with the broadband adoption rate continuing to increase from coast to coast, we must vigorously renew this call to acknowledge as a national priority digital literacy for children and families.”

Behind the Scenes at Breakthrough: Nafiza Akter, one of nine students who attended last month’s Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age forum at Google headquarters in California, writes about her experience. Besides the wonder of Google snacks and the campus T-Rex, Akter offers her impressions of Google co-founder Sergey Brin (he’s smart) and describes a skit in which “Misunderstood Media Teens” talk about adults not understanding how teens use technology in their lives.

It’s a very detailed post, and Akter, who takes part in the New York Cityafter-school program Global Kids, delivers a great behind-the-scenes account. Unfortunately, one of her souvenirs didn’t make it back home, but Akter keeps it all in perspective:

“The only sad part of the entire thing was that we got Lava Lamps that we couldn’t bring back to New York City due to airport restrictions on carry-on luggage. But hey, physical things can’t compensate for experience and knowledge [...] The experiences we came back with definitely outweigh the ‘stuff’ we came back with, since stuff will eventually get thrown out or lost, but the experiences contribute to who we are and have/will become.”

Previously at Spotlight: Read Akter’s blog post about her work in Global Kids’ virtual video project, and watch her in action in her Digital Generation Youth Video Portrait.

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The work builds on successes students have had playing the computer game “Urban Science,” whose development was supported by the MacArthur Foundation.

In the game, middle- and high-school students learn about mathematics, science and technology by working as urban planners. Watch principal investigator David Williamson Shaffer and students discuss their experiences playing Urban Science here.

For more details on the planned work, read University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate student Elizabeth Bagley’s blog post on virtual mentoring and assessment.