Spotlight on Digital Media And Learning

PLAYBACK: Students Embark on Google Lit Trips to Follow Authors & Stories ...

Plus: Behind the Scenes at Breakthrough; Nielsen Numbers on Young Mobile Phone Users; Google and Online Safety ... Check out Spotlight’s new Digital Media and Learning News Round-Up.

Games and Learning Research Going to Scale with New Federal Dollars

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin, Madison will develop technology to allow computers to teach complex real-world problem solving, thanks to a large grant from the National Science Foundation.

Online Safety 3.0 Calls for Teaching Media Literacy, Digital Citizenship

Anne Collier writes in the School Library Journal that we need to get beyond outdated notions of online safety and focus on new media literacy and digital citizenship.

Public Forum on the Power of Youth Voice - Web and Second Life Simulcast Available

What do kids learn when they create with digital media? Experts will come together for a dialogue with parents, educators, community members and researchers in Philadelphia later this month for a public forum presented by the National Writing Project, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation. 

Games for Self-Directed Learning; Your Self Improvement Playlist

BettrAt blog highlights a number of interesting quotes from a response paper cultural anthropologist Mimi Ito delivered at a recent workshop.

PLAYBACK: Teens in Trouble Over MySpace; Media Literacy Goes Digital ...

Plus: Online Conference Aims to Bridge the Divide; Happy Birthday, Internet ... Check out Spotlight’s new Digital Media and Learning News Round-Up.

Putting Kids’ Passions for Video Games to Good Use

The New York Times looks at educational video games that kids are engaging with either at school or on their own time during after-school programs or at home.

Digital Media and Learning Research Hub Launches

A new center and website will support research about the impact of digital media on young people’s learning and its potential for transforming education.

WBEZ Profiles Digital Youth Network Founder Nichole Pinkard

Chicago Public Radio this morning profiled Nichole Pinkard, founder of the Digital Youth Network, which gives middle school students on Chicago’s South Side tools to become media designers, builders and innovators.

Google Hosts Forum on Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age - Webcast Available

Google’s California headquarters is hosting 200 leaders in science and technology, informal and formal education, entertainment media, public policy, and philanthropy for a two-day leadership forum—“Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age”—that aims “to advance a new paradigm for learning by harnessing the untapped potential of digital media.”

HASTAC Scholars: Learning the Future Together

A university scholarship program encourages students to use technology to communicate across disciplines.

$10 Computers Spread the Benefits of Games

The Playpower Foundation is using open-source technology and $10 computers to build communities of kids and parents worldwide who share the benefits of gaming.  Kids not only learn new things as they play video games, but they can learn to become game designers themselves. Playpower is a winner of the 2009 Digital Media and Learning Competition. Derek Lomas of Playpower talks to Spotlight about their goals and results of this effort.

Laptop Learning in Rural Mexico

The Tecnno-Tzotzil project brings new laptops to indigenous students in one-room schools in Chiapas, Mexico. Most have no electricity or internet access. Tecnno-Tzotzil is a 2009 winner of the Digital Media and Learning Competition.

YouMedia Teens Take Part in the U.N. World Habitat Day

YouMedia teens flew to Washington, DC, to accept an award as the best digital urban planners at the United Nation’s World Habitat Day Oct 6 and 7. Kudos to the winners—and all the teens at YouMedia! See their winning videos and thoughts about the experience at the new YouMedia blog. Spotlight will cover the story in full next week. Stay tuned.