Spotlight on Digital Media And Learning

11.24.10 | Why Spreadable Doesn’t Equal Viral: Nikki Usher of Nieman Journalism Lab talks with Henry Jenkins about the notion of spreadability and what it means for news. Jenkins has a new book coming out next year with Sam Ford and Joshua Green, “Spreadable Media: Creating Value in a Network Culture.”

Here’s an excerpt from the conversation that may remind you to give thanks this holiday for digitally literate family members:

NU: And finally: How many people do you expect to actually engage in making media mashup? I see more people watching Auto-Tune the News mashup videos on YouTube than making their own media out of existing media.

HJ: Our book makes the point that there are many different forms of participation, some requiring more skills, more technical access, more community engagement than others. Spectacular forms of grassroots cultural production rest on one end of a continuum of different forms of community participation. So some people certainly will be mashing up the news, just as they are remixing songs, films, and television shows. And we can point to many exciting examples of political remix videos which emerge from people’s engagement with news and commentary — think about the recent mashup of Donald Duck and Glenn Beck.

But many more people will help to shape their news by appraising its value and passing it along to specific people or groups who they think will be interested in it. We all probably have friends or relatives who mostly communicate through forwarding things. They may or may not be exerting great selectivity in their curatorial roles, but they are helping to insure the circulation of that information. More people in the future will be engaging with news on that level and their acts of circulation will play a larger role in shaping the flow of information across the culture.

The Library is Cool, Got That?: Teens who contribute to The Mash, the Chicago Tribune’s high school publication, shared their ideas on five great places to hang out. Would you have guessed they chose the library? Not any library, however—they’re impressed with the YOUmedia space at the Harold Washington Library Center, which features computers, video cameras and a recording studio. It’s open to everyone with a Chicago Public Library card; suburban teens can check here for a list of reciprocal libraries.

Writing at the Huffington Post, Mimi Ito reports on a recent video to the YOUmedia space: “Unlike any other library experience I had growing up, YouMedia is loud, sociable, and hip—but it’s still all about the public mission of the library to serve as a point of access to culture, information, and the media of the day, staffed by smart guides to knowledge and literacy.”

Plus: Good news for teens: YOUmedia is expanding! Learn more about YOUmedia in Spotlight’s archive. Most recently, teens adapted and remixed Toni Morrison’s novel “A Mercy.”

What Does Digital Citizenship Look Like?: Over at School Library Journal, Joyce Valenza writes:

Digital citizenship is a critical element of ISTE’s NETS (standards for students). It is woven throughout AASL’s Standards for the 21st Century Learner. Everyday I live, model, and teach citizenship. But, to be perfectly honest, I haven’t been able to figure out how our/a district or school might teach digital citizenship or weave it into the curriculum in a totally comprehensive and systemic way. I suspect I am not alone.

Valenza had the good fortune to meet middle school technology specialist Patrick Woessner at a recent conference. She shares with readers his specific recommendations for building digital citizenship at The Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School (MICDS) around a student-parent-teacher partnership. There are some great links and suggestions in the post you won’t want to miss. 

Here’s a short video MICDS students created with the help of the school’s drama teacher that demonstrates reliance on digital communication:

Console Games and Learning: Futurelab has released a new report on the impact of console games in the classroom (pdf), based on a study of 19 schools in Scotland. The findings, according to Futurelab, “suggest that well structured and planned game-based approaches to learning can provide excellent opportunities to engage students in activities which can enhance learning and produce a wider range of educational benefits.”

Annenberg Innovation Lab Launches: The Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California has created a new Innovation Lab, which will focus on designing software prototypes that will run on digital books, televisions, computers and mobile devices.

“As with other university media laboratories—MIT’s Media Lab, for one—the Annenberg lab will rely extensively on sponsorships from large corporations,” reports the L.A. Times. “The program has already won sponsorships from Verizon Wireless, IBM Corp., Levi Strauss & Co. and Mattel Inc., which have collectively chipped in $1 million to get the program started.”

Henry Jenkins is one of the professors who has signed on. Others include: Dmitri Williams, who studies Internet video gaming communities; Jonathan Aronson, an international economics professor; Scott Fisher, a professor at the cinema school who has worked extensively on virtual reality; and Roberto Suro, a journalism and public policy professor. Learn more here.

8 Ways Technology is Improving Education: Sarah Kessler of Mashable talks with Don Knezek, CEO of the International Society for Technology in Education, about how technology is helping teachers to expand learning and engage students with multiple learning styles.

“Despite these opportunities,” writes Kessler, “adoption of technology by schools is still anything but ubiquitous. Knezek says that U.S. schools are still asking if they should incorporate more technology, while other countries are asking how. But in the following eight areas, technology has shown its potential for improving education.”

Continue reading for examples of changes brought about by e-books, global learning, more efficient assessment and Epistemic games, which put students in roles like city planner, journalist or engineer and ask them to solve real-world problems.