Spotlight on Digital Media And Learning

11.23.11 | A mini PLAYBACK for a shortened holiday week.

- The application deadline for the Digital Media and Learning Research Competition has been extended to Jan. 6, 2012. Here are the questions for consideration:

Online networks, digital resources, and gaming environments provide rich opportunities for learning that is demand-driven and learner-centered. More and more people are turning to networked knowledge communities, online tutorials, and other digital resources for wide ranging learning needs. While learning is migrating to these more informal and non-institutionalized kinds of contexts, we still have little research that examines how people assess, recognize, and display the learning that happens in these settings. What are the emerging techniques and practices for managing reputation and recognizing learning? What are the broad historical and structural understandings of how accreditation operates in our changing social and cultural environment? What systems exist for recognizing learning outside of formal degree and training programs? How do credentials and other displays of achievement operate in the digital and networked world? What kinds of skills and experiences have not been well captured by existing credentialing and recognition systems? How is the landscape of credentialing changing (or not) with the shift to digital and networked society?

Continue reading for more details. Visit dmlcompetition.net for information about all of the competition tracks.

- Barry Joseph has compliled a nice mix of resources on digital citizenship, new media literacies, and games and learning, including this link to sixth-grader Thomas Suarez’s TEDx talk. Suarez builds apps and has started an app developers club at his school.

“In this clip from his TEDx talk, you hear him discuss the importance of having a space for kids to learn how to create games and his methods of collaborating with educators,” writes Joseph. “Global Kids has always emphasized the power of game design within digital youth media programs (such as our current NYC Haunts project) but it is another thing to hear the argument made directly by a youth.

- Audrey Watters reports on how some of the libraries and museums that received grant money from the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the MacArthur Foundation to create digial learning labs will use those funds.

The labs are inspired by YOUmedia, an innovative digital space for teens at the Chicago Public Library (see Spotlight’s coverage), and innovations in science and technology centers. A second round of grants will be available in spring 2012.

- Some well-known and respected universities are attaching themselves to online high school programs, reports The New York Times. The move may blur the line between secondary and higher education, as well as between virtual and classroom learning, writes Aan Schwarz, but not everyone is an enthusiast.

“From my perspective, colleges, concentrate on what you’re good at,” said Ronald A. Crutcher, president of Wheaton College in Norton, Mass., who added that he had recently declined an offer from a for-profit education company to join other small liberal arts institutions in forming an online high school in their image. “Be consultants, but don’t contribute to a trend that I think has some real problems.”

- Meanwhile in Idaho, high school students will soon be required to pass two online learning classes as a requirement for graduation, reports School Library Journal.