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Tuesday 12th December 2006 8:13 am
This week’s theme: identity in digital media
We’ll be spotlighting voices drawn from the MacArthur Series online dialogs on identity conducted this fall.
Welcome to this week’s focus on Identity. (Last week Lance Bennett spotlighted Civic Engagement.)
For an introduction to the topic, I’ve posted an introduction to identity on this site. And as always, check out our content stream on identity on this site, and the list of authors on the Identity volume page for the MacSeries.
- Where does the power lie in young people’s engagements with digital media? These media seem to offer youth significant new opportunities to communicate, to make their voices heard, and to take control over the production and distribution of information. Yet this is happening in a context where young people’s cultures are increasingly commodified. Digital media also allow corporations to target individual consumers more effectively, to gather information about them, and to draw them into more intense identifications with brands and commodities.
- As public spaces come to be replaced by commodified spaces, are the possibilities for young people’s self-expression limited and constrained, or do they actually have more choices and possibilities? Does this process actually make any difference to young people? Do they notice it; and if they do, are they not also able to resist it? To put it even more straightforwardly: does it actually matter if Rupert Murdoch owns MySpace, or if Google buys up YouTube - and if so, in what ways?
- Much of the debate about digital media assumes that young people are the ‘avant garde’, and that studying what they are doing will tell us something about the direction in which the world is moving. But to what extent are there uses of digital media that are specific to youth? Can we really draw simple binary distinctions here, for example between ‘digital natives’ and ‘digital immigrants’? Who’s excluded in - and excluded from - our implicit assumptions about ‘digital youth’?
Our bloggers take up these questions in different ways. Rebekah Willett and danah boyd look at different aspects of the commercialization of online spaces. Shelley Goldman considers the benefits of intentional environments for youth. Susannah Stern disputes dominant views about girls’ self-images online; while Sandra Weber challenges adults’ assumptions about the differences between public and private communication.
Category: Identity
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Comments
Chimera Planet, director of private technology sch
http://www.chimeraplanet.net (will be updated in January
Posted on December 21 2006 12:18 AM
I think it is important to understand what kids (learners) like about digital media, especially gaming and interactive learning, in order to transform the way we teach or view teaching and the way we teach teachers. Culture is fluid not fixed whether is it virtual, digital or spiritual. We become part of the mix the nanosecond we begin to study, research or interact with them. I like seeing my secondary school students get excited using Macromedia Breeze, for example, while one of my student teachers experiment with virtual learning in another state. The potential is enormous for global communications and social justice. Kids who game are reactive, interactive, engaged, excited and able to multitask and sometimes even type! I would like to see ways to make the discovery process in learning (for example, ecology or environmental sciences) as complex and invigorating as an Alliance character on WOW.
Lucy Bernholz
Blueprin Research & Design, Inc.
http://www.blueprintrd.com
Posted on December 15 2006 10:32 PM
Relevant to the whole DML Initiative, today we saw the release of a major report on the sorry state of American learning: Tough Choices or Tough Times
http://www.skillscommission.org/. These come about every 10-15 years, ring alarm bells, and sometimes actually shape policy and action.
Has anyone read to see if the report has anything to say about digital media? I downloaded the paper on “innovation and creativity” and will get back to you all if I find something.