Spotlight on Digital Media And Learning

9.7.11 | The annual Digital Media and Learning Competition will kick off on Sept. 15 at an event in Washington D.C. attended by a number of education leaders.

Now in it’s fourth year, the competition is designed to find — and to inspire — the most novel uses of new media for learning.

With support from the MacArthur Foundation, in collaboration with Mozilla and HASTAC, this year’s competition will award up to $2 million in grants for the innovative use of badges—a new assessment tool used to “identify skills mastered in formal and informal settings, virtually and in physical spaces, and in schools, workplaces and communities.”

A post on the competition’s blog further explains the theme “Badges for Lifelong Learning”:

Today learning happens anytime, anyplace, at any age. How can 21st century learners demonstrate their knowledge and skills? Digital badges can inspire learning, unlock jobs, educational and civic opportunities and open new pipelines for talent.

The event will take place at the Hirshhorn Museum at 9 a.m. (EST). Speakers include U.S. Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan; NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden, Jr.; Emily Stover DeRocco, president of The Manufacturing Institute and the National Center for the American Workforce; and Mark Surman, executive director of the Mozilla Foundation. 

The kick-off is open to the public; sign up to attend here, or watch it live online at hastac.org.

You can follow all the news about this year’s competition on the DML Competition blog, or on Twitter (@dmlComp). Spotlight has extensive coverage of the work past competition winners are doing. Stay tuned here for more in the coming weeks.