Edutopia Announces Digital Generation Project
Filed at 4:18 pm on May 29, 2009 • Leave a comment
Online video portraits chronicle the lives of today’s digital youth.
Edutopia’s Digital Generation Project is the culmination of a year-long investigation into the media-rich, networked lives of today’s digital generation. Youth video portraits aim to help educators and parents understand how digital media are changing how this generation of young people “create, collaborate and teach.”
In addition to the biographical video portraits, visitors to the project’s website can explore links to each student’s games, projects, websites and video creations.
The excitement of the youth, and their ease in navigating their digital worlds, not to mention what and how they are learning, are truly impressive—and inspiring.
- Eleven-year-old Cameron, for example, produces and edits music videos, short documentaries, and school announcements at home, at school, and on the road with his hockey team. He also films his own hockey swing, slows it down, and analyzes it.
- Thirteen-year-old Dylan collaborates with students from all over the world to make websites.
- Eighteen-year-old Luis teaches Lego Robotics to kids and helps his parents learn computer skills.
- Nafiza Akter, featured here, is a graduate of Global Kids’ Online Leadership Program, supported by the MacArthur Foundation. Nafiza works with other kids to make animated films on pressing social issues using Teen Second Life. Nafiza blogged about her work with Global Kids on Spotlight last year.
- Jalen Jackson is a participant in the Digital Youth Network afterschool program, also supported by the MacArthur Foundation. Jalen and his friends use the social networking site Remix World to critique their work before publishing on YouTube. Jalen also blogged on Spotlight last year.
Content also includes interviews with teachers, administrators, and parents who address the challenges and rewards educators face while striving to keep pace and support these digital learners. Interviews with “big thinkers” help frame the discussion. Visitors to the project’s website can watch MacArthur Grantees Mimi Ito, Henry Jenkins, Katie Salen, James Paul Gee, Howard Gardner and other leaders in the field discuss learning in the digital age.
“We wonder why, when kids leave the classroom environment, they run home and jump on these new media,” says Sasha Barab, a professor of learning and cognitive science at Indiana University and a MacArthur grantee. “But online, they have agency. They have consequentiality. They have people responding to what they’re doing.”
To hear more sign up to attend the upcoming webinar “Engaging the Digital Generation.”
Edutopia’s The Digital Generation Project was produced with support from the MacArthur Foundation. Edutopia is published by The George Lucas Educational Foundation. The foundation documents, disseminates and advocates for innovation and the redesign of K–12 learning environments, including how technology can transform teaching and learning.
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