Monday 11th August 2008 8:00 am

Anthony Bryk: Taking Stock and Looking Ahead in Digital Media and Learning

The president designate of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching describes a new effort to host a series of conversations about emerging lessons in digital media and learning.

Over the past several years, the MacArthur Foundation has stimulated and supported a truly impressive array of projects in the area of digital media and learning. The resulting body of work creates an unprecedented opportunity to ask what lessons are emerging and where those lessons lead us, and I am pleased to announce that The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching will partner with MacArthur to facilitate a series of conversations to begin answering those questions.

Specifically, this partnership will support a set of interactive convenings hosted by Carnegie at our offices in Stanford, California, to explore emerging issues in digital media and learning. The aim of these get-togethers is to build this field of work in ways that set the stage for further developments and bring coherence to a diverse range of efforts and findings. Beginning in September 2008 and continuing over the following year, Carnegie and MacArthur will organize eight small-group meetings and one larger conference, both comprised primarily of current MacArthur grantees and focused on topics suggested by them and informed by their work. Our hope is that attendees will benefit from interacting with others who share their interests, dilemmas, and questions. In addition, Carnegie will share the fruits of these events with a larger group of practitioners, scholars, and policy leaders by developing video interviews, extracting meeting highlights, and catalyzing broader engagement around the growing universe of explorations in digital media and learning. Carnegie’s programs span the full spectrum from K-12 education to graduate and professional schools, and running through all of them are issues about the character and quality of learning in a changing society. We’re eager to learn from and contribute to the terrific work that MacArthur grantees have underway.

Category: Civic-Engagement, Credibility, Ecology-of-Games, Identity, Race-Ethnicity