Spotlight on Digital Media And Learning

10.19.09 | If you have not tuned in yet, you’ll be intrigued to see how 130 undergraduate and graduate students—this year’s class of HASTAC Scholars—are, to borrow the HASTAC motto, “Learning the Future Together.”

The HASTAC Scholars is a student-run program, led this year by Duke doctoral student Fiona Barnett. The program represents every discipline, from the arts to computer science.  The scholars blog, vlog, hold forums, network, collaborate and in general are an inspiring representation of next-generation digital-learning educators.

Four HASTAC scholars, from the University of Iowa and University of Washington, are kicking off the year with a vibrant forum on “Democratizing Knowledge.” The forum discusses the possibilities of making scholarship more public. Public scholarship, the organizers suggest, can radically redefine who finds, owns, and gives knowledge, and such transform both practice and research.

More than 4,000 visitors have followed the conversation and 92 had left serious, detailed, pointed commentary, proposals and ideas here.

We could not be more proud of the work these scholars are doing, and we’re especially pleased by their collaboration with winners of the Digital Media and Learning Competitions. Bridget Draxler, a HASTAC Scholar, interviewed the director of the M-Ubuntu Project, a 2009 winner of the Digital Media and Learning Competition. The project builds on distance-learning teacher workshops by using mobile phones to bridge the digital divide.

Here’s an excerpt that teachers can relate to:  “New technologies do not have to be sophisticated and expensive technologies,” says Theo van Rensburg Lindzter, an M-Ubuntu Project leader. “Teachers are far more alert to their needs and see far more clearly through the maze of the complexities of learning and teaching than policy makers and researchers give them credit for.”
For the rest of the Q&A go here.

We’re looking forward to the next interview with the Vóces Moviles team.

The HASTAC Scholars are also leading our HASTAC@ initiative this year, arranging HASTAC events and meet-ups at professional conferences throughout the year.  Several scholars traveled to New Orleans for “Imaging America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life.”  Others are now at HASTAC@AIS (the Association for Integrative Studies) in Tuscaloosa, and next will be HASTAC@ISMAR (the International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality) in Orlando. They will be networking there and also blogging, vlogging, and micro-blogging on the HASTAC site.  We hope you’ll join us at the next HASTAC@ meet-up near you!

HASTAC promotes collaboration across communities and academic disciplines fostered by creative uses of technology. HASTAC, in partnership with the MacArthur Foundation, holds the Digital Media and Learning Competition, an annual effort designed to find—and to inspire—the most novel uses of new media in support of learning.