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danah boyd: coverage from MacArthur’s launch of the Digital Media and Learning Initiative

Filed at 6:57 pm on October 20, 2006 in Civic Engagement, Credibility, Games, Identity, Digital Divide • 7 comments

Yesterday, the MacArthur Foundation launched its “Digital Media and Learning” initiative and i had the fortune to participate so that i could bring you, our dear new readers, some sense of what took place.  Grantees, educators, policy makers, industry leaders, and members of the press gathered in New York to discuss the future of youth, digital media, and learning.  MacArthur representatives explained the importance of the project while a panel of grantees talked about their own work. We were joined by others watching the talks by Webcast in addition to nearly 50 participants on Second Life (in both the adult section and the teen island). 

To get a sense of what this initiative will entail and why it is important to MacArthur, check out the welcome post by Jonathan Fanton, the Foundation’s President.  In short, MacArthur believes that the lives of children are changing in major part because of their relationship with digital media.  This poses numerous questions:
1) how are youth incorporating digital media into their lives and with what effects?
2) how is digital media shifting the way young people reason, make judgments, consume and product content, and engage in civic life?
3) how does digital media affect young people’s ability to navigate and judge digital life in school and beyond?
4) how can and should institutions help young people in the future?

To address these questions and more, the MacArthur Foundation is launching a five year, $50 million initiative to look into digital media and learning.  The initial focus will be American and youth-centric, but the broader project will be global and address a variety of different age groups.  There are numerous grantees addressing this problem from a variety of different angles.  For a complete list of the projects involved.

With this overview in mind, i want to dive in and highlight some of the key take-aways of the conversation.  For the sake of brevity, not everything discussed is included.  If you would like to listen to the full conversation, check out the podcast.  There are also pictures (coming soon), Second Life chat logs (coming soon), and other coverage.

The panel consisted of Mimi Ito, Henry Jenkins, and Nicole Pinkard.  Mimi is spear-heading a large-scale ethnographic project (along with Peter Lyman) to look at the informal learning that takes place out of structured environments.  Henry is investigating media literacy and Nicole is seeking to translate the Henry and Mimi’s findings into a school context.  Henry also has a new white paper out on Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century.  Below, i have paraphrased some of the key points made by the speakers.

Henry: We have all lived through profound changes in media; not surprisingly, there is a great deal of fear, anxiety and euphoria.  One mistake we often make is to assume that it’s about the technology but really, we must think about the culture around the technology.  What new media looked like when it was locked in the computer is a very different order than what takes place now.  Furthermore, while the digital divide is closing, the participation gap is widening.  Kids may have access but those who do not have the latest technology in their homes are falling behind.  At the same time, those who live in technology-enabled households without parental guidance are facing different challenges.

Nicole: Another important misconception is that when kids are producing music or videos, they aren’t engaged in literacy.  Yet, to do these types of things, you have to write lyrics and you have to storyboard.  New media provides another hook to engage kids and it lets them accomplish something that is meaningful to them.

Mimi: There are a couple of things that make this moment distinctive.  Digital technology is pervasive today and most young people’s media use is outside of the classroom.  Play and social communication is the central force behind their use.  While we know a great deal about what takes place in the classroom, we know very little about what takes place outside.  We need to begin with the interests and motivations of kids themselves rather than focusing on goals of adults.  This is kid-driven learning.  This may give us hints on how to harness media technology for formal education.

Nicole: Any afternoon, you’ll see kids creating graphic novels, music, documentaries, music videos, etc.  We believe that there isn’t one form of digital media that all kids need to know but we want to help them find the one that is relevant to them.  Our kids are on the south side of Chicago.  They wouldn’t just happen into access to this type of technology.  We take the normative wealthy technologies into our space and try to create a natural setting for use.

Henry: Young people are already using this technology to learn.  In “Convergence Culture”, I discussed how the Harry Potter fan community is helping some youth engage in writing.  In Second Life, teens are programming worlds, avatars, identities, and teaching each other programming skills.  It’s peer to peer teaching!  We think that these are rich places to study where kids are already learning.

Mimi: My work might be perceived as antithetical to education.  For example, I look at card games like Pokemon and Yugioh.  From a mainstream perspective, these games are about goofing off, having fun, and game play.  Yet, there are important learning dimensions to what kids are doing.  Pokemon was a breathru media genre because it showed that kids can master complex media content.  There are encyclopedias of Pokemon, websites that dedicate this culture, and a full knowledge economy around this.  From a learning perspective, there are very important lessons concerning social dynamics, economics, the value of things, etc.  Yet, parents crack down on these practices.

Nicole: We must rethink what constitutes a learning environment.  We know that young people learn in different places but it was typically disconnected; now, with digital media, we can connect the classroom to the museum to the afterschool program, creating continuous learning environments.  Kids can learn from each other and from adults online.

Henry: We are learning that media literacy has to be integrated as a skillset and it has to start in the home.  The only advice currently available to parents is to shut off the screen but we need to provide skillsets to help kids and parents understand the media.  We’ve always gone and listened to off-key music recitals because they are important to our kids - why are we not playing with them as they engage with media?  Media literacy is not just an add-on subject; it’s a paradigm shift and we must take ownership of this and embed it in every aspect of our child’s life.

Mimi: In this project, we are also hoping to impact technology development.  Commercial entities have a huge impact on youth’s experience and we must create innovative alliances to private sectors in order to shape the development process, even though that’s not how academics typically engage.

Henry: My greatest fear is that we’re going to shut down these opportunities before we fully understand them.  I’m concerned with corporations trying to tighten intellectual property and copyright which restrict kid’s ability to interact.  Hollywood’s enemies represent the other threat: Washington.  We are creating legislation like DOPA that is run by fear.  Schools are punishing kids for their afterschool activities.  We need to provide kids with knowledge, not fear.

Nicole: As we close the digital divide, I’m concerned that we’re creating a participation divide.  While the cost of technology is accessible, what Mimi’s work is showing is that what’s costly are the people that help them figure out how to interpret and create.  If we don’t think critically, we’ll end up with a group who don’t have access to opportunities to use digital media effectively.

Mimi: I’m also concerned about the generation gap between young people and adults concerning what is valuable.  As researchers, we can see the learning opportunities but it’s a lot harder to translate it to institutions in a way that they can recognize.  We need to break down distinctions and bring in kids who might feel alienated by the mainstream structures of achievement.

... At this point, the conversation opened to a broad Q&A.  I’d encourage any interested party to listen to the Podcast as there is a great deal of information from different groups explaining their own projects and much strategizing about how this project can engage with museums, PBS, corporations, educators, policy makers, corporations, libraries, etc.

The big take-away is that there are many opportunities and MacArthur is invested in building a field where researchers and practitioners can investigate digital media and learning.  There is a profound opportunity for affecting change and we invite all of you to help us in this project!
...
[Note: for the sake of readability, i have provided a sense of what each speaker said but these are not exact quotes.]

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