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Transmedia Storytelling and Education at DIY Days @ UCLA

By Meryl Alper on November 9, 2011 1:10 PM | Permalink

Two weeks ago, this blog featured a preview of Robot Heart Stories (R<3S), a 10-day transmedia learning project in which two classrooms in underserved neighborhoods in Montreal (French speaking) and Los Angeles (English speaking) used collaboration and creative problem solving to help a lost robot navigate across North America before hitching a ride back to space with NASA on a launch to the International Space Station, scheduled sometime early next year.

The robot (symbolized by a stuffed animal version embedded with a GPS chip, whom students in both classrooms decided to name Laika, after the first dog in space) ended the North American-leg of its journey (in picture and story form here) in Los Angeles on Friday, October 28 at the DIY Days conference held at UCLA.  I had the pleasure of attending DIY Days (keynoted by my Ph.D. advisor Prof. Henry Jenkins) and meeting a diverse group of creative educators, game designers, filmmakers, and authors. 

Many of people I met are deeply invested in new ways to approach the role of media in children's learning ecologies.  I believe that various projects presented at DIY Days (including R<3S and another very special project I'll share in a later post) have deep implications for the role transmedia storytelling and immersive learning experiences can have in problematizing and improving education processes and outcomes in the U.S. and internationally.

NML and PLAY! (Participatory Learning And You!)

By Vanessa Vartabedian on September 27, 2011 3:16 PM | Permalink

NML and PLAY!

Project NML has been involved in some exciting new endeavors since our move to the University of Southern California last year. As a part of USC's Annenberg Innovation Lab, the new media literacy play (the capacity to experiment with one's surroundings as a form of problem-solving) has become central to our current work in the field of digital media and learning. After partnering with the non-profit RFK Legacy in Action (RFK-LA) last fall, we began piloting a series of programs at the new Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools in Los Angeles under the umbrella of PLAY!, which in addition to being an nml, is also an acronym for 'participatory learning and you'!

NML's guiding principal for a participant-centric approach to learning maintains providing ample opportunities for gaining expertise in the new media literacy skills and competencies. However, since branching out from working with individual educators and schools into the larger realm of professional development (starting with our early adopters program with the NH Dept. of Education in 2009), we've recognized the value of giving teachers permission to play the role of "participant-learner" (as opposed to "expert") before asking them to try new approaches with their students. By examining the ways educators took-up this challenge, our team was able to identify five characteristics of participatory learning that have come to frame our current research for PLAY! Please take a moment to click on the link above to read more about them.

To get a sense of the direction we are taking with our current work on the ground, I will outline the programs we are piloting with the Los Angeles Unified School District below, which explore participatory learning practices, new models of professional development and the Playground tool.

Explore Locally, Excel Digitally

By Vanessa Vartabedian on June 10, 2011 10:32 AM | Permalink