Spotlight on Digital Media And Learning

3.3.11 | Wisconsin protests and media literacy; Skype for teachers; iPad2 for students; TED asks for student videos on ed reform; and why go to class?

Teaching Media Literacy in Times of Protest: In a university publication Q&A, Greg Downey, a journalism professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison, discusses covering Wisconsin protest media coverage in class.

His advice to students who are either feeling overwhelmed by the news or just getting started with social media: “I’d say, don’t get distracted by every single Google News headline or cable news crawl or smartphone tweet or Facebook status update — it’s a never-ending flood. Rather, find one or two longer, in-depth, summarizing, news analysis pieces and really read them carefully. We have to get away from the idea that ‘knowing the latest little thing that’s happened’ is the same as ‘being informed about an issue.’”

Here’s a related blog post Downey wrote: “Helpful hints for deciding ‘What is happening?’ and ‘Where do I stand?’”

Skype in the Classroom Launches: Skype has launched a beta version of Skype in the Classroom to support efforts to expose students to a bigger world than what exists within their classroom walls, reports ReadWriteWeb.

It’s a free directory for teachers who want to use Skype to share resources, chat with teachers and even pair classes. Read more about how it works here.

“Currently, many teachers turn to Facebook, Twitter, and their own personal and professional social networks in order to find other teachers to connect with, and it looks like Skype wants to make sure it’s providing its own matching services and helping provide the resources and skill-building so that teachers feel comfortable with video conferencing,” writes Audrey Watters.

Will the iPad 2 Make the Grade?: Sticking with Watters’ coverage at ReadWriteWeb, this post looks at whether the iPad 2 meets the needs of students and teachers. 

Plus: When Apple co-founder Steve Jobs introduced the iPad2, he pointed to Chicago Public Schools’ use of iPads in the classroom, and CPS Tech Director John Connolly made an appearance in a video shown during the launch, touting the iPad as “the future of education.”

New Site for Student Videos: Posting from TED Conference on Thursday, Steve Hargadon announced the launch of elev8ed.org—the call-to-action project from the TEDActive 2011 education group. 

Elev8ed is described as a site for students to upload 2- to 3-minute videos that
* Offer new ideas for what education could be
* Inspire others to transform education
* Propose specific actions you or others can take to improve education in your community

Hargadon was scheduled to give a presentation today, and he said he would call on everyone in attendance to encourage or help at least one student upload a video. You can encourage someone, too—or at least go view the videos that have been uploaded so far.

What’s Right with This Picture? - Asks School Library Journal: We’ll go with: Everything. SLJ has a very good story on how the Chicago Public Library’s YOUmedia space has reinvented what a public library looks like and offers.

Kaillif Ammen, 15, says he was enticed to check it out when friends told him, “Dude, you can play Rock Band at the library!” Now Ammen comes five days a week to work on his own recordings and take part in other media space offerings. And he has plenty of company.

“The Windy City’s one-of-a-kind program, which attracts young men and women in equal numbers from all over town, has become a national model for libraries of the future. And it’s got support from on high,” writes Karen Springen.

Barack Obama has not specifically mentioned YOUmedia himself. But a White House statement describing the President’s “Educate to Innovate” campaign (a CEO-led effort to improve dramatically education in science, technology, engineering, and math) prominently mentions the $4 million partnership between the [John D. and] Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences (IMLS) to fund the creation of as many as 30 YOUmedia centers nationwide over the next three years.

Go read the rest of the story.

Plus: Check out Spotlight’s video and story coverage of teens involved with mixing and creating their own media at YOUmedia.

Are You Going to Class?: We pose that question after reading Jeffrey Young’s story in The Chronicle of Higher Education on educators working to challenge the traditional college course model and put more emphasis on collaboration and student-directed learning taking place outside the classroom.

Randy Bass, executive director of Georgetown University’s Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship, is one of several teachers and students included in the story who is questioning the purpose of traditional courses:

Courses won’t go away completely, Mr. Bass argues—they do provide a handy framework. But he said he hopes that professors will stop thinking of them as a goal unto themselves and focus more on linking skills conveyed in the classroom to hands-on student activities. In fact, Mr. Bass asserts that such an evolution has already begun, driven by student demand, a better understanding of how students learn, and a new generation of faculty members trying tech-infused teaching methods.

“Like Bruce Willis at the end of The Sixth Sense,” Mr. Bass said of the traditional college course, “perhaps it is dead, but it doesn’t quite know it yet.”