Spotlight on Digital Media And Learning

4.26.10 | The United Negro College Fund and the MacArthur Foundation hosted a public forum on digital media and learning in multicultural contexts in March at Huston-Tillotson University in Austin. It was the second in a series of forums taking place around the country.

[Watch Spotlight’s video of the first forum: “Does Race Matter Online?”].

“Digital literacy is more than having the knowledge of how to use a computer, what your software program does, what function or understanding how the hardware of your computer works,” said Clarissa Myrick-Harris, director of the UNCF’s Curriculum and Faculty Enhancement Program. “Digital literacy is also about using that knowledge to actually facilitate the learning process.”

In this forum, scholars discussed the new opportunities digital media provides for teaching and learning.

“Any narrative that you tell, whether it’s you texting a friend, whether it’s you creating a social media environment, a Google map or a Facebook page or whatever, all of that depends on an effective use of language,“ said J. Michael Hart, assistant professor of English and communications at Huston-Tillotson.

Panelists also included Katynka Martinez, assistant professor of Raza studies at San Francisco State University, who discussed her work analyzing video games developed by Latino teens in Los Angeles, and S. Craig Watkins, associate professor of media studies at the University of Texas at Austin. [Read Spotlight’s interview with Watkins: “To Be Young Digital and Black”].

View more videos about the forum:

Self-Narration in Video Game Design Environments: How can Latino teenagers in Los Angeles re-invent Pac-Man? Katynka Martinez, an assistant professor of Raza studies at San Francisco State University, spoke recently at a forum on digital literacy about her research on how teaching game design to young people can help them challenge inaccurate representations of themselves and their communities in dominant media.

Beyond Shakespeare and Grammar: Engaging the Language of Technology: How can educators use social media tools to help students develop traditional and digital media literacies? Spotlight talks with professors at Huston-Tillotson University about their work engaging students with social media tools.