Recently in focus group testing Category

All Together Now

Engaging educators and learners in today's participatory culture is the central goal of Project New Media Literacies (NML).  This Fall, NML modified the current exemplar video library to reflect more strongly the theoretical framework laid out in our influential white paper, "Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture:  Media Education for the 21st Century".  This included tagging all the videos and learning activities to fit within the participatory culture framework centered around 4 C's ...how do we create, connect, communicate and collaborate.

The Exemplar Library that was once documentary videos highlighting best practices of participatory culture is now an integration of learning activities embedded into multimedia material.  In addition to videos, the Exemplar Library now has animated data visualization, flash movies, and other motion media as launching points.  The learning activities are a combination of online activities that teens can do on their own to group activities that can happen both in and out of the classroom.  This new informal approach to learning through the Exemplar Library encourages teens from passive viewing into interactive participation... and we saw just that in our first focus group of the semester.