By Ioana Literat on November 19, 2010 2:52 PM
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This week, members of the NML research group at USC Annenberg had the pleasure of participating in the Global Education Conference, help virtually via Elluminate on November 15-19. The aim of the conference was to bring together educators and students from all over the world, and engage them in a critical dialogue about the issues, challenges and future directions of global education across a variety of disciplines.
The event enjoyed widespread international participation; according to Lucy Gray and Steve Hargadon, the conference co-chairs, 13,670 people logged in to the virtual presentation rooms, and the event spanned more than 7,600 hours of session time.
The NML team contributed to the conference by presenting two sessions on Wednesday, November 17: Erin Reilly's keynote talk, "Mapping in a Participatory Culture", and, respectively, "The Core Challenges of Implementation and Assessment in International Contexts", a joint presentation by Laurel Felt, Ioana Literat and Michael Morgan.
Erin Reilly's keynote presentation focused on the multidimensional significance of boundaries, highlighting the ways in which borders and boundaries are complex political, physical, and cultural geographic features. Erin explored the notion of "boundaries" as they exist at the global, local, social, and metaphorical levels, and talked about how young people negotiate the physical and social boundaries in everyday life, and simulate real world processes by conceptualizing and modifying boundaries in online and offline games. You can watch a recording of Erin's Elluminate presentation here.
Erin's talk was followed by "The Core Challenges of Implementation and Assessment in International Contexts", wherein Laurel Felt, Ioana Literat, Michael Morgan explored their teaching experiences abroad through the lens of the NMLs, analyzing the potential of global implementation and assessment of new media literacy initiatives in developing countries, in the face of participation gaps, transparency problems, and ethical challenges with media use and distribution. Laurel Felt discussed the ethics challenge via her experience with new media literacies in Senegal, Ioana Literat explored the participation gap in the context of public education in India, and Michael Morgan addressed the problem of transparency in classroom teaching and media consumption, by analyzing his experience as an English teacher in China. The presentation closed with an evaluation that examines the educational potential of New Media Literacy initiatives in developing countries, addressing the ways in which a universal implementation and assessment system can be developed for global action. You can access the recording of this session here.
Thank you to everyone that tuned in to our sessions, and our warmest congratulations to the conference organizers for putting together a highly stimulating and successful event that managed to extend the scope of this critical dialogue on education across borders and disciplines.
