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In June, our board met and approved a set of grants in our Digital Media and Learning portfolio.  Following on our previous announcement of grants, this was the seventh such quarterly round since we announced in October of 2006 this program and blog.  Several of the new projects examine a question central to our program - how, if at all, might learning environments change as a result of digital media?  Support to Professor David Birchfield at Arizona State University will enable he and his colleagues to develop a flexible, interactive, mixed-reality (i.e., both virtual and physical) learning environment called Smallab (Situated Multimedia Arts Learning Lab) that may represent the classroom of the future.  Arizona State University is also home to Our Courts, a new project on civic engagement.  In partnership with former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, Professor James Paul Gee and his ASU team are integrating social networks, virtual worlds, and games to engage youth in social studies, civics and history as they deepen their understanding of the role and importance of the judiciary in our democracy.

I am also pleased to announce that the Foundation is renewing support for the open-call Competition in Digital Media and Learning.  Under the leadership of HASTAC, two more years of the competition will ensure that dozens of new and promising digital media and learning projects are supported from a wide pool of national and international applicants.  HASTAC, led by David Theo Goldberg and Cathy Davidson, expects to publish details on the next call by mid-August at http://dmlcompetition.net.

To continue the Foundation’s exploration into the role of philanthropy in virtual worlds, a grant was awarded to Professor Doug Thomas and his team at the University of Southern California.  Building on their work over the past year, the team will investigate how philanthropic institutions can advance the public good and democratic engagement through a variety of activities in virtual worlds including events, discussions, and competitions.  Additionally, Professor Thomas’s research team will investigate how public health information can be communicated and understood through virtual worlds like Whyville.

Finally, to continue to support the emerging field of digital media and learning, two projects will advance the sharing and communication of research findings and media literacy to teachers, parents and school administrators, and a third project will support convening and collaborations. Common Sense Media will engage parents and teachers in a broader discussion of the implications of the emerging research findings on digital media and learning and effective practices in media literacy.  Similarly, the Consortium for School Networking will explore strategies for engaging school administrators in discussions of the diversity of learning opportunities that are increasingly available digitally to young people and the implications of research findings.  Both of these projects will pay particular attention to balancing the new opportunities of digital media with its unintended consequences for learning and society. Finally, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching will facilitate a series of conversations to build the field of digital media and learning in ways that set the stage for further developments and bring coherence to a diverse range of efforts and findings.

Over the next several weeks I invite you to join the principal investigators of these projects as they post previews of their upcoming work to this blog. We look forward to the important work to come, as well as the collaborations and research findings that continue to emerge. 

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Consistent with the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning (DML) initiative, research by members of the International Communication Association (ICA) often focuses on various dimensions of how digital technologies are changing the way young people learn, play, socialize, and participate in civic life.  To publicize the DML initiative among ICA members, in late May the MacArthur Foundation sponsored a reception at the ICA annual conference in Montreal.  The reception, hosted by myself and Miriam Metzger also from the University of California, Santa Barbara, was attended by representatives from the MacArthur Foundation and MIT Press, representatives from recent DML supported work, and approximately 300 ICA members.

ICA is an academic association for scholars interested in the study, teaching, and application of all aspects of human and mediated communication.  ICA currently has an active membership of more than 4,300 individuals in 70 countries who teach and conduct research in colleges, universities, and schools.  Other members are in government, the media, communication technology, business law, medicine, and other professions.  Through its 23 Divisions and Interest Groups, various publications, annual conferences, and its relations with other associations, ICA promotes the systematic study of communication theories, processes, and skills.  Despite its diversity, ICA represents a coherent discipline in which all different aspects of communication are linked by common processes, structures, theories, and methods.  Since 2003, ICA has been officially associated with the United Nations as a non-governmental association (NGO).

Over recent decades the field of communication research has grown rapidly all over the world, reflecting the need to seek answers to urgent social problems involving communication.  To provide these answers, ICA members conduct academically sound research that often results in policy-related solutions.  A cross-cutting concern of ICA members is the relationship between digital technologies and youth, reflected by the sessions, papers, and topics at this year’s ICA conference, which included research on the learning effects of interactive media, media literacy and the health and well-being of children, the perceived credibility of online information, the social impact of online games, and managing online acquaintances, among many other topics.

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Most agree that building a field like digital media and learning is an interdisciplinary effort informed by a variety of perspectives.  This series documents several recent conferences important to the emerging field, including the second annual conference of the Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Advanced Collaboratory (HASTAC), and the annual meeting of the International Communications Association.  In the following posts, Cathy Davidson of HASTAC reflects on inspiration, curiosity and awe; and Andrew Flanagin reports on a successful digital media and learning reception at the International Communications Association conference.

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What does it mean to build a field, catalyze a new industry, or develop a new profession? Philanthropic foundations have been involved in creating new domains of work throughout the last century. The Rockefeller Foundation helped build the U.S. public health system, Ford helped spark new academic departments such as women’s and ethnic studies programs, and philanthropic support has played a significant role in creating medical subspecialties, such as field of palliative care.

Blueprint Research & Design is working with the MacArthur Foundation to synthesize what is known about field building, contextualize it for the specific challenges of Digital Media and Learning, and deploy that knowledge to best effect. Here is just one example of what we have learned:  Infrastructure matters. The examples above of public health, academic disciplines and medical subspecialties all relied on philanthropic partnerships with institutions that can attract other financial support for the continuation of the work. The infrastructure challenge for the Rockefeller Foundation in building public health was to create academic departments and public systems.

Ninety years later the infrastructure challenge for building Digital Media and Learning is different - it is a question of working across existing institutions in the right ways. The Digital Media and Learning Initiative’s infrastructure challenge is to capitalize both existing institutions and new ones, draw in unaffiliated individuals, and unleash the power of networks, the global nature of ideas, and the dynamic nature of innovation and production across sectors, regions, and cultures. In addition to lessons from prior philanthropic efforts, we are also drawing insights from the history of capital markets, the creation of venture capital as an industry, and breakthroughs in design, the nonprofit sector, media and the science of learning.

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One of the salient characteristics of the learning environment for many youth today is that it is no longer fixed to a specific physical location-the formal school classroom, or even the after school program. While this may have always been true to some extent, with the use of digital media (devices, tools, and applications), the “learning environment” is now better understood as a networked environment that can be accessed from within different physical locations including in the home, on-the-move (with mobile devices), and in informal cultural sites.

I am leading up a new project called “Inspiring the Technological Imagination: Libraries and Museums as Networked Learning Sites” that will investigate how these cultural institutions might incorporate new digital media for the purposes of enhancing their informal learning objectives. The aim of the project is to contribute to a collaborative exploration of the future of libraries and museums in a digital age. One of the key topics the research team will investigate concerns the role of tinkering in the learning process. The project will examine a range of tinkering practices, from those that involve the use of physical materials to those that involve digital tools and applications. Over time, the research team will design and prototype examples of evocative learning objects that meld the physical and the digital that could serve as creative platforms for informal learning experiences within museums and libraries. The broadest aim is to consider how these important cultural institutions contribute to the cultivation of the technological imagination as a 21st century literacy. 

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by David Theo Golberg and Mimi Ito

As the Digital Media and Learning (DML) Initiative enters its second year, there is an impressive and diverse array of projects under its umbrella, including qualitative and quantitative research, and a range of technology and program design projects. The various researchers, practitioners and collaborators are coalescing into a loosely knit but robust intellectual network that reaches across a wide range of disciplines and domains of practice. Various meetings, public forums, publication efforts, and events--what we saw at AERA in March, for instance--are forging connections between those doing supported work, new collaborators, and the broader public.

To promote and facilitate this networking and collaboration between the DML initiative’s supported projects, and to extend the reach of this work into new areas, communities, and geographic regions, we are developing a “research collaboratory” on digital media and learning. 

Through the remainder of this year, we will be working together to conduct background research with the view to developing a plan for a hub of research and design activity, to be coordinated through the University of California Humanities Research Institute at the University of California, Irvine.

The ultimate goal is to develop an infrastructure for research communication and collaborative work that supports the DML initiative in a way that redefines research, paradigm building, and the role of philanthropy in a networked, digital era. How is networked knowledge created, organized both epistemologically and institutionally, and shared in appropriate ways to diverse, networked publics? How do we organize a distributed collaboratory of researchers, scholars, designers, computing experts, engineers, and end users for a rapidly changing field? These collaborative and field-building efforts need to recognize that important innovations are happening at the edges and outside of formal institutional structures. Approaching these issues requires new forms of interdisciplinary conversation and collaborative engagements that bridge academic institutions, industry, learning institutions, and a variety of networked publics. 

Our proposed infrastructure-what we are tentatively calling The DML Studio-will offer a networked forum for prompting and purposing, guiding and reflecting upon learning in, through and with digital media.

For the planning period, we will be conducting background research on the state of international research across this field, and on relevant efforts in industry as well as in various learning institutions. We will also be seeding a small series of pilot collaborative research conversations, and gathering input from individuals who are part of the extended DML effort. We look forward with considerable anticipation and excitement to learning what we can do to help catalyze and extend the research and innovation emerging from the DML initiative and consolidate the field.

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Last week I joined professor Doug Thomas and other members of USC Annenberg’s Network Culture Project in Second Life to announce “Second Life and the Public Good: A Community Challenge.” It was a great kick-off meeting, with over 100 avatars in attendance on Annenberg Island and many interesting questions, but this was only the start.  Over the next month, participants will have in-world meetings to brainstorm with the judges and to submit their proposals.

Why a Challenge?

Second Life residents have a long history of mixing the real and the virtual, from the earliest fundraising to the myriad discussions around the current US Presidential campaign, so the timing was right to challenge them to think more broadly.  By challenging the community to generate public good for the world around them, the Network Culture Project has the chance both to generate new approaches to public good and to help philanthropic institutions better understand opportunities in virtual worlds.  User generation combined with broad participation, when focused, can lead to innovative and impactful solutions to real-world issues.

Creation and Advocacy

A panel of judges brings broad expertise to public good and collaborative activities within virtual worlds, however another goal of the challenge is that it will be the Second Life community that ultimately decides which projects become finalists and receive a L$100,000 monthly stipend to develop their projects prior to being showcased at the State of Play conference in October.  After the June 1st deadline for submissions, the panel of judges will select up to 5 semi-finalists.  Those semi-finalists will have two weeks to advocate for their projects within Second Life during an open, community voting process.  The challenge allows the Second Life community to both create the public initiatives and to decide on those most worthy of additional funding.

Only the Beginning

Ultimately, the challenge, stipends, and showcases are all intended to seed further action.  Based on the turnout and energy at the kick-off meeting, the next several months leading up to State of Play should prove to be an exciting chapter in user-generated ideas, projects, and advocacy.  Visit the project site and join the process in-world!

Next Event

• May 15th Noon PST. Information Session for Europe/Americas (Annenberg Island)

Proposals Due

• June 1st 5PM PST. Send proposals to networkculture@gmail.com

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This blog post is a follow-up to the wonderful Stanford Public Forum held April 23rd at the Hewlett Teaching Center at Stanford. 
Organized by Common Sense Media, the presentations from the Digital Youth Research Project were both thought provoking and inspiring.  Thanks to all who participated and to those who attended.

An additional thank you goes out to Global Kids who helped provide access to this event to those who couldn’t attend in person through simulcast and webcast.

The video coverage, in three parts, begins with Julia Stasch, Vice President of the Program on Human & Community Development at MacArthur, introducing the event, and continues with coverage of the research presentations and panel discussion.

danah boyd has posted about the event and her talk on “Teen Socialization Practices in Networked Publics.” Kevin Marks also provided some interesting comments on the ideas surrounding “digital publics.”

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“In a new, nationally representative poll from Common Sense Media and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center (JGCC), American parents agreed by a wide margin that digital media skills are important to kids’ success in the 21st century, but they also expressed skepticism about whether digital media could contribute to the development of skills like communicating, working with others, and establishing civic responsibility.” Read more.

I’ll be attending the Joan Ganz Cooney Center Symposium in New York City today where the full results of this new poll will be presented. The symposium, “Logging into the Playground: How Digital Media are Shaping Children’s Learning,” will explore how digital media can improve children’s literacy, learning and development.

You can watch a live Webcast of the symposium here starting at 9 a.m. Eastern time.

Additionally, a slideshow with the poll results is available here.

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I live on a ranch outside San Antonio Texas.  If you ask a native Spanish speaker in San Antonio: “where in Mexico do you come from?” the answer is often “San Antonio!  What part of Mexico do you come from?” It turns out, the border crossed them, they didn’t cross the border.

I feel the same way about virtual worlds and learning/education.  We launched Whyville in 1999 as a learning community, based on 17 years of research (while running the Caltech PreCollege Science Initiative) on how to most effectively use computers and networks to engage kids in learning.  We were identified as a virtual world later.  We believed at the time that this structure of Internet space would be particularly effective in engaging kids in learning.  We believed if we were right, they would come and stay. They did and have.

In my view, it is wonderful that an organization as significant as the MacArthur Foundation has been able to engage the considerable abilities and expertise of researchers like Doug Thomas, Yasmin Kafai, Constance Steinkuehler and others in the study of virtual worlds and learning.  This is important and interesting work.  I also believe that many of the comments by Doug, Yasmin, Constance and Connie (the Director of the MacArthur program) are right on.  The issues raised in these blogs are interesting and thoughtful, and probably I could write a book in response (perhaps I will).  However, I really want to cut to the chase - and identify what I think is the most remarkable feature of Whyville, and not incidentally what I personally believe to be the most important measure of the effectiveness of virtual worlds for learning or anything else. 

How many users are REALLY there, and how much are they REALLY engaged and for how LONG?

Connie mentioned that the Kofi Anann event attracted almost 200 Whyvillians, many of whom activily participated in the discussion (which BTW continues on Whyville).  But broadcast videos aren’t the way we most effectively engage our kids.  When the CDC launched their virtual vaccination campaign the end of last year and kids could protect themselves from the much dreaded ‘Why-Pox”, 134,000 children participated in 6 weeks (and invited 6,000 of their grandparents to get virtually vaccinated too).  5% of Whyville’s users in 2007 visited the Virtual Getty Museum (and 3/4s of Whyvillians surveyed know the Getty is in LA).  Our citizens made 587,000 requests of the site’s dietitian on how to stay healthy eating virtual food.  Many citizens have stayed healthy eating virtual breakfast, lunch, and dinner for more than a year.  In 2007, our citizens published almost 2,000 original articles in the Whyville Times, made more than 500,000 entries on internal discussion boards, sent 3.6 million Whymail messages to their friends, and generated 585 million chat phrases.  Oh yes, and our kids have contributed 700 videos about Whyville on their own on YouTube (an order of magnitude larger than for Teen Second Life).  Overall, of the 3.4 million users who have registered in Whyville since April 1999, 1.7 million re-logged into Whyville in the last year, including 10% of the users who registered in the year 2000. 

So, I am happy to leave it to the academics to place a larger frame around why Whyville works (until I write my book J ).  In fact we have an open door policy for academics.  But for certain, one key to whyville’s success has been our focus, from the outset, on building a community of learners, supported by a sophisticated community management system that involves our citizens too, and YES we designed Whyville to be our kids first life (not their second life), and YES our children love Whyville and want to be involved.  We know they also believe that Whyville is “their world” managed by benevolent adults (which they also apparently regard as increasingly rare in their real worlds).  But most importantly, if they keep coming and engaging, we are doing our job, because learning and education is the most engaging thing we do as humans.  It’s what we care about first and foremost in Whyville - and our kids know it.

As they say in Texas “if they ain’t there, you can’t learn-um.”