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5/20/10
By Ben Wolff
“Teaching People How to Work Together”: Digital Media and Learning Competition Winners
Ten projects received awards for innovation in digital media and learning last week as part of the third annual HASTAC/ MacArthur Digital Media and Learning Competition. Winners in the competition’s 21st Century Learning Lab Designers category gathered in Washington, D.C., in conjunction with National Lab Day. Spotlight was there to talk with winners about their projects.4/28/10
By Ben Wolff
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.4/27/10
By Ben Wolff
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.4/26/10
By Ben Wolff
Digital Literacy in Networked Learning Environments
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.3/04/10
By Ben Wolff
Does Race Matter Online? Digital Media and Learning in Multicultural Contexts
“African American youth are just as likely to use social networking sites as any other young population in the United States,” says S. Craig Watkins, associate professor of media studies at the University of Texas at Austin. “The access gap more or less has been addressed, and now what researchers are turning their attention to is what we call the participation gap.”2/15/10
By Ben Wolff
M-Ubuntu Project Brings Mobile Phones to South African Classrooms to Teach Literacy
Mobile phones are becoming an integral part of the literacy curriculum in two South African primary schools, thanks to work by the M-Ubuntu project, a winner in the 2009 Digital Media and Learning Competition.1/11/10
By Ben Wolff
Dig It: Teens Go on a Virtual Fossil Dig With Museum Scientists in Africa
Aspiring teen scientists in Chicago and New York went digging for fossils in Zambia this summer, without leaving home, thanks to a technology enhanced science camp run by Chicago’s Field Museum and Global Kids.12/02/09
By Ben Wolff
Civics Under the Sea: What Happens When Kids Dive in to WhyReef
After building a coral reef on the gaming website Whyville to teach middle school kids about fragile ecosystems, scientists at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago decided to damage the reef with overfishing, without telling the kids. Not only did the kids notice the effect on their reef, but they started a movement in Whyville.12/02/09
By Ben Wolff
Kids’ Participation in Online Interest-Based Communities Leads to Offline Civic Engagement
Research by education professor Joe Kahne shows online experiences—such as participation on fan sites—can help make kids more active offline citizens.10/30/09
By Ben Wolff
Dig It: Field Museum & Global Kids Team Up to Send City Teens on Virtual Fossil Dig
Teens in Chicago and New York went digging for fossils in Zambia this summer, without leaving home, thanks to a technology enhanced science camp run by Chicago’s Field Museum in partnership with Global Kids.10/19/09
By Ben Wolff
This one caught even Mayor Daley’s eye
Justin and Chance’s video gets a viewing from Mayor Daley when he stopped in at YOUmedia to see what the teens were creating. Ben Wolff remixes the experience.10/19/09
By Ben Wolff
Finding Daniel Burnham / Finding Community
Teens at YouMedia were given a challenge: read Daniel Burnham’s “A Plan for Chicago” and create your own digital urban plan. They took that challenge and ran with it, all the way to the United Nation’s World Habitat Day celebration.10/05/09
By Ben Wolff
Learning In Motion
“Today at the showcase, we got to see students playing with the Princeton Laptop Orchestra, and that wedding of art, science, music, and signal processing was wonderful. I mean, you could just see the light bulb go on. And that’s learning. I think the technologies of our era make that kind of immersive learning happen.” Cathy Davidson, HASTAC See participatory learning in action.9/29/09
By Ben Wolff
Parenting Our Tech Savvy Students
Joe Battle, a parent of a high school student, talks about the importance of advocating for technology in our children’s schools.9/29/09
By Ben Wolff
