Natalie Rodic: Youth Media Exchange
Filed at 9:00 am on February 5, 2008 in Civic Engagement • Leave a comment
Natalie Rodic from Taking It Global discusses their work with Global Kids leveraging social networks to support youth media production on global issues.
How do you bring educational content into a youth space as informal as a social network without interrupting the dynamic energy that makes these spaces so engaging? TakingITGlobal and Global Kids, Inc., in collaboration with Asia Society, aim to find out through the new Youth Media Exchange (ymex.org), an online social network designed to encourage media production by international youth addressing the role of digital media in their lives and pressing global issues. Social networking and digital media production have the potential to enable new kinds of learning around global issues, empowering youth to become a driving force in creating and shaping a shared future in an increasingly interconnected world. Most learning in these spaces are not formalized and can develop in unexpected ways. Ymex.org is an attempt to direct these processes without losing their participatory and emergent properties. Youth members, within learning environments and/or on their own, will be directed by the site to assist, and get assistance from, other members on global issue-based, socially-conscious digital media production.
The http://www.ymex.org site will be equipped with easily accessible information on social issues as well as up-to-the-minute tools necessary to enhance the user’s capabilities to access and work with digital media. For example, one teen might be connected with another to learn how to edit a video or to learn more about global warming. These connections will form the building blocks of regular competitions, in which prizes are offered for participation in creative collaborations amongst youth from around the world. This first phase of ymex.org (set to launch on March 1st, 2008) will be a pilot project, aiming to bring at least 1,000 teens in over six months. This phase will provide targeted outreach to youth in China, India and South Korea (led by project partner Asia Society), as well as North America. The ymex.org Advisory Panel, composed of MacArthur Foundation-funded grantees like Henry Jenkins’ Project NML and Akili Lee, will work to ensure that the online community is based on the latest research on youth, learning and digital media while creating a friendly environment for exploring research questions currently under consideration. Upon completion of the pilot phase we will be able to demonstrate at least one approach for harnessing social networking tools for learning and social engagement on a global scale.
Next: Suzanne Seggerman: Launching the New Knowledge Network > >
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