I recently attended an event at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in Boston as a member of the Regional Youth Media Arts Education Consortium (RYMAEC) that gave educators using web 2.0 technologies (and beyond) the opportunity to share best practices with one another. RYMAEC's mission is to create a community of Boston area individuals, organizations, and community-based groups committed to supporting and strengthening the youth media arts field through exchanging information, resources, and youth-produced media.
The event was Pecha-Kucha style, where all but the special presenter had roughly 3-minutes to share their practice and an example of how students or teachers were using it. Kindly, after the event, which was held in the museum's theatre, the curtain was raised, revealing the glass wall which serves as the stage's back-drop, where the Boston Harbor in it's winter glory was the scenery for networking with peers, discussing best practices and partaking in drink and food.
The consortium (and event) is the initiative of Joe Douillette, a long-time advocate and youth media educator and director of the successful Fast Forward video production program for teens, also housed at the ICA, and a member of our very own NML community.
The presenters at this event consisted of RYMAEC members and peers. Below is a list of presenters and links to their content, web 2.0 tools and examples of some work that span content area and differentiated uses of technologies.
Almost the entire NML research lab headed west to California two weeks ago to participate in the Digital Media and Learning: "Diversifying Participation" conference; and since this is a transition year where we're spread over the US from east to west -- it was nice to get everyone together in one place.
I presented with Flourish Klink and Barry Joseph from Global Kids on Mad Skills: Making New Media Literacy practices accessible to educators and students alike. This provided us time to dialogue with participants on a Worked Example that is in progress. We are writing and editing videos from the field of our observations on how the Media Makers Collection in the Learning Library was taken up and adapted into Global Kids' Media Masters program. Here is the video presentation. And after the presentation, we had everyone participate in a scavenger hunt game which had participants dialogue on the questions we posed in the presentation and situate it into their own contexts of learning.
I joined James Bosco, Milton Chen, Margaret Weigel and Christine Greenhow on a panel about Participatory Learning in Schools: Square Peg in Round Hole? It was a pleasure to be part of such a
diverse group of panelists. We each took 8 minutes to share insight
into what are some of the critical sticking points that need to happen
to change schools in order to provide a space for participatory
learning. We then opened it up for a lively discussion. Some key
take-aways for me included Jim encouraging us to unite and create a
strong policy voice to help change the structure of schools where
Milton reminded us that this change will happen by a grass-roots
effort; that there is already great examples of participatory learning
but they are segmented and lost in the shuffle. Margaret shared
insights from interviews with teachers and the constant tension between
school culture, even with the most innovative teachers. I shared our
recent findings from our field work with 7 schools on the Teachers'
Strategy Guide: Reading in a Participatory Culture and suggested some
design principles to consider in how to create a new school culture.
And Christine closed with advocating for more research in this area
...one we all agree is needed.
Alice Cavallo, NML's Curriculum Specialist, chaired with Sasha Costanza-Chock to create a panel on Digital Media Production and Social Change. Alice shared insights into her dissertation on Virtual Forum Theater (VFT), an animation tool that allows the
creation of digital plays as a vehicle to convey and discuss unjust
social sketches. Alice shared stories of how VFT connects youth from any part of the world expanding
the importance of role playing as a way of understanding interpersonal
and political struggles in order to foster social changes. Through these stories, she made connections to how the new media literacies, play, performance, judgment, negotiation and collective intelligence, are present in participating in VFT.
There
were many sessions to choose from during the 2 days. Mark Danger Chen
has
Virtual Forum Theater (VFT)
is a computer-based learning experience that allows face- to-face,
computer, and multimedia-based drama. VFT has three parts: VFT
the toolset, VFT the creative
activity, and VFT the performance. The VFT toolset is a
multimedia tool for the creation of dramatic plays using audio, and images that
enables participatory and collaborative digital playmaking through the Internet.
The VFT activity or process is the collaborative process of creating a
digital play, and consists of much more than the VFT toolset, including
dramatic exercises involving group bonding, social awareness and Improv skills.
A VFT performance refers to the activity of watching and responding to a
previously created digital play. In practice, the distinctions between these
parts of VFT become blurred; many times a performance becomes a creative
activity.
VFT integrates image, audio and text and was
conceived as a tool for collaborative creations and remix with basic
educational goals of improving argumentation skills and expressive fluency in
disenfranchised children and youth in developing countries such as Brazil. I developed, tested, deployed and
researched it in the context of my PhD on education, technology and drama at
Tufts University.
I was interviewed about NML recently for the Ed Beat blog, which is run by a non-profit I used to work at, Learning Matters.
Here's the intro followed by a link to the rest of the article:
Last week, when John Merrow's post on technology in schools generated a long discussion in its comments section, we learned just how important this issue is to educators and students. This week we spoke with Hillary Kolos, who worked with Learning Matters from 2002-2005, and is now a graduate student in MIT's Comparative Media Studies program. She's a research assistant for a project we've mentioned here before-Project New Media Literacies-which is attempting to explore what media literacy means in the 21st Century, and how students-and their schools-can learn to do it well.Full article
Global Kids, Inc.
Tashawna is a high school senior in Brooklyn, NY. In the morning she leaves home for school listening to her MP3s, texting her friends about meeting up after school at Global Kids, where she participates in a theater program, or FIERCE, the community center for LGBT youth. On the weekend she'll go to church and, on any given day, visit MySpace and Facebook as often as she can. While she misses television and movies, she says she just can't find the time.
This describes what we can call Tashawna's distributed learning network, the most important places in her life where learning occurs. Not just at home, school and church but also through digital media, like MP3s, SMS and social networks, and at youth-serving institutions, like Global Kids and FIERCE. Some are places that require her presence, like school, while others are opt-in, like MySpace. But the learning she gathers across the nodes in her network are preparing her to succeed in the classrooms, workplaces, and civic arenas of the 21st Century.
And Tashawna is not alone. In part due to the changes in education, in part due to the affects of digital media, youth have a wide array of options for learning knowledge and developing skills. But how many youth feel in charge of their networks, or are even aware they exist as an interconnected whole? How do they learn to synthesize what they learn and communicate it to future employers and college admission staff who won't learn of their strengths on most school transcripts?
Last weekend, Home Inc, put on a vibrant, thought-provoking conference here at MIT. Project NML was represented in two sessions. Erin and I presented about appropriation and using remixes in the classroom. Jenna McWilliams, former NML curriculum specialist and current Phd candidate at Indiana University, presented about the participatory assessment model she is working on with Dan Hickey using examples from the Teachers Strategy Guide: Reading in a Participatory Culture. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to see any of the other workshop presenters, but I heard there were some very interactive and inspiring sessions. I'll have a Part Two post about our NML sessions up soon and hopefully a link to videos from the conference!
Before discussing the workshops, I wanted to write about an overarching issue that came up throughout the conference. As the day progressed, we began to notice through corridor chatter and tweets (check out #homeinc on Twiter for the threads from the conference) that copyright/fair use confusion was becoming a trend. None of the sessions were explicitly about copyright, but a pattern emerged in many of the sessions where someone would raise a copyright issue or ask a fair use question, others would offer resources or their perspective, and debate would ensue because of the many different understandings of copyright/fair use law.
We hope that you will join us in a couple weeks for Home, Inc.'s Media Literacy conference. It will be held here at MIT and will run from 8:00am to 4:00pm. This conference was the reason I first visited MIT and it is truly inspiring.
Project NML will be represented in two panels at the conference:
Erin and I will be presenting from 10:15 to 11:45 about NML's tools and resources and how you can use remixes in the classroom to help students become familiar with appropriation and transmedia navigation.
Jenna McWilliams, who is now a graduate student at Indiana University, will be presenting from 2:15 to 3:45 on participatory assessment and the Teachers' Strategy Guide - Reading in a Participatory Culture that we implemented in several schools last year.
We'll also be tweeting before, during, and after the conference using the #homeinc tag.
HOME, Inc., TechFoundation and MIT's Comparative Media Studies program partner on their biennial one-day conference on Media Literacy. Prominent educators, filmmakers, public health workers and representatives from dedicated organizations will highlight programs that promote and teach 21st Century skills and new media literacies.
Keynote Presenter: Alan November, author, leader and innovator in the field. Keynote title: Digital Nation- Education in Transition to 21st Century Learning
This Keynote presentation includes an analysis of trends in learning... independent and hands on learning that tracks projects that explore how the web and digital media is changing the way we think, work, learn and interact.
Twitter
For those of you who can't attend please follow us the day of the conference on Twitter!
Follow tweets tagged #homeinc and join the discussion!
This summer, I had the opportunity to attend the Games for Change Festival, an annual convening of academics, game developers, non-profits, and educators who are interested in using games to create social change. Over three days, I attended a game-making workshop, an expo of new social issue games, and panel discussions on topics ranging from funding to using games in schools.
The highlight of the festival for me though, was a short talk given by high schooler Kaelan Doyle Myerscough, who is an advisor for NYU's new Games for Learning Institute. In five minutes, she thoroughly impressed a packed room of adults and reminded us all how important it is to speak directly with young people about their thoughts and experiences with new media.
In her talk, Kaelan explains the importance of creating a sense of immersion when developing games. She also gives examples of games that are both fun to play and great learning experiences. (Here's a link to her talk.)
I asked Kaelan if she could expand on some of the ideas she brought up in her talk over email.
Here's what she had to say:
Can you explain how you became involved with the Games for Learning Institute?
Well, I am friends with Ken Perlin, who is heading up the Institute, and whenever he would come to Toronto for whatever reason we'd spend hours talking about pretty much everything. When I first met him I was working on a game with my friends, and we talked about that a lot. Eventually when it came time to put together the advisory board he asked if I wanted to be on it. At the time I was in grade 8, which was right in the demographic that they were looking at, and he thought it'd be good to have someone from that age group who was also knowledgeable about games and gaming. Of course I was thrilled, and I guess the rest is history.
Do you consider yourself a "gamer"? What games do you like to play?Yeah, I'd say I'm a gamer. Some of my friends play games more than me, and there are times when I hardly play games at all. But for the most part I tend to keep my Nintendo DS with me wherever I go, and I play games a lot just as part of my daily routine. As for my favorite games, I nearly always have a Pokemon game (or two) in my aforementioned DS, and I've played through most of my Pokemon games about 5-10 times. Right now I'm playing Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates. I'm a huge fan of the NES as well, and I'm addicted to Tetris and Crystalis. Lastly, the Legend of Zelda games are really awesome, especially Ocarina of Time. Of course, that's just video games, but I won't get into analog games much because the list would be too long.
By Erin Reilly on August 7, 2009 11:00 PM
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Dear Mr. Vernon, We accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. What we did was wrong. But we think you're crazy to make us write this essay telling you who we think we are. What do you care? You see us as you want to see us... In the simplest terms and the most convenient definitions. You see us as a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal. Correct? That's the way we saw each other at 7 o'clock in the morning. We were brainwashed.
As the opening lines of John Hughes' classic 1980s movie The Breakfast Club illustrates, generation after generation, we've been able to stereotype each other as we come of age, but today, with the emergence of social media and participatory practices, teens have more opportunities to play with their identity and avoid being typecast.
At school, a teen might, like Ally Sheedy's character, be labeled the "basket case" but online, she can reinvent herself and practice the new media literacy, performance-- the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery. Social media allows this new door to open for the girl who sees herself as a dull caterpillar but hungers to be a beautiful butterfly. With assurance from her new group of friends who welcome her not on looks but on what she has to offer to the community, this girl gains confidence that then informs her other identities she partakes in throughout her daily activity.
Not only will John Hughes be remembered for his ability to connect to teens but my cousin who huddled with me on the couch through all hours of the night watching 16 Candles and Ferris Buehler's Day Off sent me today this blog post that really shows a touching side of someone we all might consider untouchable because of his fame.
Sincerely, John Hughes reflects on Alison's personal pen pal experience for two years with John. This post is filled with stories of what it's like to receive positive encouragement from someone that cares. Taking time to be a mentor is not just about giving to someone else, it's about improving and learning something new about yourself in the process. What's so interesting about this post is it's the personal connection we see of John Hughes, the Hollywood director and how meaningful relationships with fans like Alison was the highlight of what pushed him to be so good at what he did.
Hi, I'm Lieke, an NML intern from the Netherlands for two weeks. Erin asked me if I'd write a blog about my experiences so I'm doing that right now.
The week started with meeting everyone who was at NML and GAMBIT on Monday. I stayed at GAMBIT so I could play with the Learning Library to find out what everyone would be talking about on the conference on Saturday. The rest of the week I helped with putting papers into the folders, making signs to show where the workshops and restrooms would be, and listening to the presentations of the NML-team.
On Friday I was supposed to meet the other teens who would be at the conference - the Global Kids - but their bus got delayed. Instead we went to dinner with a couple of researchers from Indiana who work with NML to a little African restaurant where we had some good conversations. Most people left early because Saturday was going to be a long day.
