---

*Blog post from Liz Losh reviewing Mark Bauerlein’s The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future.

*Article, Virtual Swords to Ploughshares, about a simulation game developed at Duke University that aims to train international peace negotiators.

*Forum on Participatory Play hosted by the HASTAC Scholars, which also mentions the Virtual Swords to Ploughshares project. 

*Blog post from Cathy Davidson at HASTAC reviewing the recent Digital Youth Project report.

What have we missed?  Comment on interesting sites or stories you’ve seen in digital media and learning so far in 2009.

---

by Michael H. Levine and Carly Shuler

The most ubiquitous technology in children’s lives today are mobile devices — tools such as cell phones, iPods, and portable gaming platforms that traverse home, school, and play via the hands and pockets of children worldwide. While these devices are a source of fun and entertainment, they also offer new ways to stimulate breakthroughs in children’s learning and the quality of teaching. Our latest study, Pockets of Potential, documents the untapped potential of mobile learning and outlines a first-ever national mobile learning strategy. Based on interviews with mobile learning experts from around the world, the study found that just as Sesame Street transformed television into a revolutionary learning tool for preschoolers, mobile learning technology may represent the next frontier. Pockets of Potential includes an inventory of notable mobile learning examples, such as MIT’s Augmented Reality Games which use GPS technology to engage people in simulation games that combine real world and virtual experiences. PBS Kids’ Learning Letters with Elmo used video and text messaging to send literacy tips to parents of preschoolers, successfully engaging lower-income families. In the United Kingdom, Wolverhampton Local Authority’s award-winning Learning2Go initiative delivers 24/7 personalized learning to over 1000 students by giving them the choice to learn on their own schedule.

The report offers a blueprint for national action. Major recommendations include:

• New Investment in R&D - New government, philanthropic and industry investment is needed to assess and design educational mobile technologies for children.
• Establish a Digital Teachers Corps - The establishment of a digital teacher corps would prepare educators to use digital media to promote 21st century literacy.
• Create a White House Initiative on Digital Learning - A White House Summit and a digital investment fund can promote mobile innovation to help benefit the economy.

We welcome comments from the Spotlight community on ways to build powerful alliances to advance digital media such as games and mobile as key elements of a new day for learning.]]> 2009-02-13T21:01:00+00:00 http://spotlight.macfound.org/main/entry/anne_balsamo_tinkering_videos/ http://spotlight.macfound.org/main/entry/anne_balsamo_tinkering_videos/#When:13:00:01Z A professor at USC shares video from a recent meeting that brought together artists, educators, researchers, and technology experts to discuss “tinkering” for learning in the digital age.

A professor at USC shares video from a recent meeting that brought together artists, educators, researchers, and technology experts to discuss “tinkering” for learning in the digital age.

---

The Maker’s Movement, the return of “handicrafts,” tinkering—these are some of the most fascinating cultural practices making the news recently.  In early 2008, an article in the New York Times described the Bay Area Maker’s Faire as a gathering of “folks from all walks of life who blend science, technology, craft and art to make things both goofy and grand.”  In November 2008, the Los Angeles Times published a piece about the rise of “craft-making” among young artisans, noting that the burgeoning growth of “craft websites have fostered a global network based on cooperation rather than competition.”  Even as these cultural practices gather steam to take form as new cultural movements—DIY, for example—they also point out an important under-theorized consideration in discussions about the relationship between digital media and learning: the role of the hand and of the body in the process of learning and making culture.

My interest in the corporeal (body-based) dimension of digitally mediated learning was an early inspiration for the grant proposal I submitted to the MacArthur Foundation to explore the development of the technological imagination as a 21st century literacy.  Tinkering, I argued, is an important set of practices for developing the technological imagination.  As I became more familiar with the other projects in the Digital Media and Learning Initiative, I focused my attention the role of “tinkering” in museums and libraries.  While the broader aim of the grant is to discuss the specific role that museums and libraries can perform within distributed networked learning environments, one set of possibilities that we are investigating focuses on the development of creative making spaces and tinkering protocols within these cultural institutions.  The argument, in brief, is that as specialized “nodes” within networked distributed learning environments, museums (especially science/technology centers) and community based libraries offer specific “learning affordances” that are not (currently) offered by formal schools or institutional learning programs.  The “learning affordances” made possible by museums and libraries include 1) the possibility of creating physical spaces for face-to-face social interactions that are based in communal “tinkering” practices, 2) the possibility of providing a community-level physical space for the development of embodied learning relationships between members of different generations (youth and adults); and 3) the possibility of serving as the context where digital creative practices (graphics production, video-making, etc.) are connected to the production of physical objects (i.e., through the acts of tinkering with various materials). 

In late October 2008, as one of the research activities supported by the MacArthur funding, I convened a meeting on the topic of “Tinkering as a Mode of Knowledge Production in a Digital Age.”  The purpose of this meeting was to bring together people from different cultural institutions (museums, libraries, university research centers) and from different sites of informal education (community arts programs, galleries, technology centers) to initiate a cross-domain discussion about the concept of “tinkering” as a paradigm for knowledge construction.  I began the meeting by presenting an overview of the aims of the Digital Media and Learning initiative in order to situate the discussion of tinkering within a context of learning in a digital age.  There were several questions I asked the group to consider in their discussions throughout the meeting:

1) Why is tinkering and “hand-making” important at this historical juncture?
2) What are the key sensibilities of a tinkerer?
3) How is an interest in tinkering stimulated or provoked?
4) What new tinkering practices are emerging in contemporary culture, especially in light of the rise of makers’ culture?
5) What is the relationship between tinkering and knowledge formation?
6) What research has already been done on tinkering as a mode of learning?  What research might be needed to understand it better?
7) How should we rethink the notion of tinkering in light of digital media?

In addition to my research team who are part of the Tangible Culture Investigation Project I run at University of Southern California, twenty-eight people participated in the day and half meeting.  The participants were specially invited because they each have experience and insight into these questions.  Several participants were asked to make presentations to the group on their research or programs.  For example:

Mitch Resnick presented a talk on the topic of “designing for tinkering” in which he described the work of his Lifelong Kindergarten research group at the MIT Media Lab.  Resnick and his research team recently developed a new programming environment called “Scratch,” which makes it easier for kids to create their own animated stories, video games, and interactive art.  He presented the design rationale that guided the creation of Scratch as a robust tinkering environment that would encourage youth and other users to develop the social habits of collaborative co-creation of digital experiences.

Sean Dockray and Fiona Whitten, the co-founders of Telic Arts Exchange in LA, presented their “Public School” project that links people who have a specific learning interest with other people who have the willingness and expertise to address that learning interest.  To do this act of community learning matchmaking, Telic supports a social networking application called The Public School that in effect provides a model of community-driven participatory education.

Every participant had important insights to contribute to the discussions.  Staff at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching interviewed five participants to record their thoughts on tinkering, public education, creativity and technology.  (In a recent Spotlight post, Foundation President Anthony Bryk and Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation President Arthur Levine describe the role of both organizations in convening meetings on the topic of Digital Media and Learning.)

John Seely Brown provided a nuanced description of the relationship of tinkering to creativity and learning.

Alison Clark, from the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, described her project called HITT:  Hip Hop Information Technology Tour—which is a project to create a mobile learning lab that engages African American youth in the production of music and sound.

Jaime Cortez, an arts educator based in San Francisco, discusses the real political impact of various technology initiatives that focus on under-served populations.

One of the two most gifted science/technology informal education designers in the country, Mike Petrich described the rationale behind the Exploratorium’s Learning Studio that brings artists, scientists, and educators together to collaborate on playful learning activities.

Eric Siegel is the director of education and community programs at the New York Hall of Science in Queens, New York.  He emphasizes the role of people and the involvement of peer instructors in inspiring museum visitors to engage in new technology activities.

A fuller discussion of the meeting, its conversations, and suggested research efforts will be included in a forthcoming MacArthur report that will include a section on “Tinkering as a Mode of Knowledge Production in a Digital Age.”

---

by Marsha Semmel, Joyce Ray, Dan Lukash, and Kevin Cherry.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) is an independent federal agency that helps to build the capacity of museums and libraries to serve their communities. We do this through a variety of grant programs, targeted research, and leadership initiatives that include conferences, publications, and other communications.  Our goals are to sustain heritage and knowledge, enhance innovation and learning, and build the skill sets and leadership potential of library and museum staffs.

WebWise has been one of our annual “signature” events since 2000.  Every year, IMLS works with a distinguished partner organization to bring together leaders including grantees and experts from within and beyond the cultural heritage, education and information technology communities to share research findings, demonstrate exemplary projects, and highlight trends with the potential to significantly impact library and museum services.  The gathering includes representatives from museums, libraries, archives, computer and systems science, education, public policy, and other fields who explore opportunities and challenges posed by the digital realm.  While admission is free, registration is limited to approximately 350 participants in order to maintain a plenary format.  With so many diverse communities represented, we think it is important for this one event to keep everyone in the same room!  Many past participants have commented that they meet like-minded people at the WebWise Conference whom they would never meet anywhere else, so we think WebWise is a great “mashup” that helps stimulate ideas, encourage collaboration, and promote good practice. 

Our 2008-2009 partner is The Wolfsonian-Florida International University. The enthusiasm, vision, hard work, and boundless energy of director Cathy Leff and her staff have been inspiring!  With the good ideas and dedication of the Program Committee, we think the 2009 conference will be a stellar one.

Our nation’s 17,500 museums and 122,000 libraries exist to foster learning, access to information, and strong and vital community connections.  Today, when these institutions, like their non-profit and for-profit peers, are searching for the most effective, strategic, and achievable uses of digital technologies, we hope that WebWise provides a valuable arena for discussion, discovery, and debate.

Editor’s Note: For more information about the upcoming WebWise conference see recent post by Cathy Leff and Susanna Temkin.

---

by Anthony Bryk and Arthur Levine

Over the past several years, the MacArthur Foundation has stimulated and supported a truly impressive array of projects in the area of digital media and learning. The resulting body of work creates an unprecedented opportunity to ask what lessons are emerging and where those lessons lead us, and we are pleased to announce that The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation will partner with MacArthur to facilitate a series of conversations to begin answering those questions.

Specifically, this partnership will support a set of interactive convenings hosted at our respective offices in Stanford, California and Princeton, NJ, to explore emerging issues in digital media and learning. The aim of these get-togethers is to build this field of work in ways that set the stage for further developments and bring coherence to a diverse range of efforts and findings. Over the next two years, we will organize approximately twenty small-group meetings, and two large conferences, comprised primarily of current MacArthur grantees and focused on topics suggested by them and informed by their work. Our hope is that attendees will benefit from interacting with others who share their interests, dilemmas, and questions. In addition, we will share the fruits of these events with a larger group of practitioners, scholars, and policy leaders by developing video interviews, extracting meeting highlights, and catalyzing broader engagement around the growing universe of explorations in digital media and learning. Both Carnegie and Woodrow’s programs span the full spectrum from K-12 education to graduate and professional schools, and running through all of them are issues about the character and quality of learning in a changing society. We’re eager to learn from and contribute to the terrific work that MacArthur grantees have underway.

---

In her three-part post Cathy Davidson discusses the Twitter/ MIcroblogging session, “Digital Media and Learning and Twitter at MLA,” and reprises her presentation on “Humanities 2.0: Participatory Learning in an Age of Technology” which featured three winners of the MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Competition. The session was chaired by by Zita Nunes and featured Howard Rheingold (Social Media Classroom), Todd Pressner (Hypercities), Greg Niemeyer and Antero Garcia (Black Cloud).

“I do not believe that the dreary decline in English majors that the MLA duly reports on every year is inevitable. But I do believe it is inevitable if we, as a profession, refuse to go through the work that so many of our peers in the arts, social sciences, and natural and biological sciences have gone through of carefully examining our assumptions, our goals, and our decline in light of the Information Age that should be our finest hour, the moment which, as a profession, we are trained to attend to most sensitively, acutely, historically, rhetorically, and critically.

If we are missing the boat of the Information Age as teachers trained in the art of close reading, compelling writing, and critical thinking, then, well, sorry folks, we deserve to sink.

The three projects presented at this MLA session are thriving, not because of their digital affordances but because their participants are deeply engaged with the project of thinking and rethinking in this complex and changing world.”

Read the full posts here:  Part I, Part II, Part III.

---

When I look around and see the bias in the media, and the ignorance it is saddening, and unsatisfactory. Especially when I see kids like me buying into deceptions, it is harrowing.

But in this new age I can do something about it. That’s why I started a social network called Realm of New Thought (RNT). I made RNT specifically for kids. I wanted to create a platform for kids to talk about politics, world news, or anything else we might not normally talk about. It has already been quite successful. We have had visitors from over 50 countries around the world.

As of this month, we have launched our completely independent site at http://www.realmofnewthought.com. Since I first created RNT, I’ve had many opportunities to teach other people about it. For example I taught 15 CPS teachers for an hour at the University of Illinois at Chicago this summer on how to incorporate social networks in the classroom, as well as how to make one. RNT’s main goal is to basically have a positive and unbiased network for kids online.

Editor’s Note: For more of Mosea’s work watch him give the dedication speech for his Chicago middle school and interview game designer Eric ZImmerman for the iRemix Radio Podcast.

---

“The incredibly popular social networking website Facebook has taken the world by storm since it was founded by a Harvard student in 2004.

It claims to be the fifth most trafficked website in the world, and one wonders—just what is Facebook?; how are people using it?; is it productive or a waste of time?; and is it possible to become addicted to it?

We speak to John Palfrey, a Harvard University law professor and faculty director at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. He’s also author of the book “Born Digital”, and he’s conducted extensive research on Facebook usage in America and abroad.”

Palfrey also discusses recent research on digital youth from Mizuko Ito and her colleagues. Listen to the interview here.

---

I am Shani Edmond, a Jr. Mentor for the Digital Youth Network. Beginning in 7th grade with a project I, along with two of my classmates, decided to create a short documentary chronicling the history of the Ida B. Wells housing project for the history fair. Our documentary progressed from the school’s history fair to the City History Fair then to the State History Fair. Ever since, I have been determined to become a professional videographer/director/editor.

I am currently a junior at The University of Chicago Charter High School, Woodlawn Campus, where I continue to further advance my knowledge on film production. In addition to the film projects assigned to me by DYN, I have also videotaped, edited and produced numerous other film projects for people when requested. I have assisted my high school in documenting its history on film.

Most recently I participated in the creation of a short film, Division 201, as Head Editor and Assistant Director. Over the course of making Division 201 I feel that I have grown in many ways both as a filmmaker and as a person. I will admit that it had it ups and its downs however the experience as whole was worth it all! I believe that from the Division 201 project I have learned many things, such as how to keep an open mind to new ideas and how to work under a lot of pressure. One of the reasons I love filmmaking so much is because I feel that it is a powerful teaching tool and a great way to illustrate your feelings and ideas. After college where I plan to major in film production and cinematography, I plan to open my own production company.

---

Hello, my name is Terrence Thompson and i’m a junior at Whitney Young High School. The film I am about to post was produced by the Digital Youth Network after-school program which I have been apart of since the 7th grade. The film was a collaborative project amongst several high school students who all were a part of the Digital Youth Network. These high school students wrote, directed, filmed, edited, and documented the film. The film is called “Division 201.” I wrote the script and was cinematographer on production.

I have always had a passion for media and the Digital Youth Network has allowed me to explore and learn the process of creating it.

I have learned how to make films and express my environment and what I see through the media I create. Because of the Digital Youth Network I have access to technology and resources to hopefully pursue a future career path of film production.

Editor’s Note:
See Terrence’s recent interview of Arne Duncan. Duncan is the current CEO of the Chicago Public Schools and was recently chosen by President Elect Obama as the nominee for US Secretary of Education.