Partners

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
The MacArthur Foundation supports creative people and effective institutions committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. In addition to selecting the MacArthur Fellows, the Foundation works to defend human rights, advance global conservation and security, make cities better places, and understand how technology is affecting children and society. MacArthur's $50-million digital media and learning initiative seeks to gain a better understanding of how digital technologies are changing how young people learn, play, socialize, exercise judgment, and engage in civic life.

The GoodPlay Project: Ethical Perspectives on Young Person's Use of Digital Media
Principal Investigator: Howard Gardner, Harvard Graduate School of Education
The GoodPlay Project is exploring the ethical character of young people's online activities. The broad aim of the project is to discover how young people are changing because of digital media, with a  particular focus on the ethical fault-lines that surface online, including those related to identity, privacy, ownership and authorship, credibility, and participation. The Good Play team is studying youth ages 15-25 who participate in online games, social networking sites, and other online communities. The project seeks to uncover the meanings of "good play" online and to develop curricular materials that support reflection about digital ethics.

Indiana University Center for Research on Learning and Technology
A team at Indiana University is developing classroom assessments, implementing the Teacher Strategy Guide & Learning Library, and helping document learning outcomes. This collaboration is directed by Dan Hickey, Associate Professor of Learning Sciences. He studies formative assessment, program evaluation, and situated cognition, and refines participatory approaches to assessment, motivation, and management. Michelle Honeyford, research coordinator, is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Language Education, and studies literacy and cultural citizenship. Becky Rupert is the lead teacher on the Indiana implementations. She teaches English Language Arts at Aurora Alternative High School. This collaboration between Project New Media Literacies and Indiana University is supported by the MacArthur Foundation via the 21st Century Assessment for Situated and Sociocultural Learning project, directed by James Paul Gee at Arizona State University.

Platform Shoes Forum
Platform Shoes Forum (PSF) dedicates its operations to building digital learning networks with a focus on STEM education for the 'tween demographic. Founded in 2003, PSF has been researching and designing such platforms that engage youth through digital media and through experiential learning. Its signature program, Zoey's Room at www.zoeysroom.com, is an award-winning online learning community maintained through peer-to-peer mentoring. Geared to girls, Zoey's Room encourages girls to complete STEM challenges, which expand their knowledge on a range of 21st century skills, including Internet research, databases, word processing, science, business math, digital and video proficiency, robotics, engineering and GPS technology. This one-on-one connection, along with the collaborative community of the website, encourages girls to become more interested in STEM careers, which could critically affect their success in today's economy and job markets.

Wyn Kelley
Wyn Kelley, of the Literature Faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is author of Melville's City: Literary and Urban Form in Nineteenth-Century New York (1996). Associate Editor of the Melville Society journal Leviathan, and editor of the Blackwell Companion to Herman Melville, she has published in a number of journals and collections, including Melville and Hawthorne: Writing Relationship, Ungraspable Phantom: Essays on Moby-Dick, Melville and Women, "Whole Oceans Away": Melville in the Pacific, and The Cambridge Companion to Herman Melville. A founding member of the Melville Society Cultural Project, she has worked closely with the New Bedford Whaling Museum on a number of initiatives: lecture series, conferences, exhibits, and a scholarly archive. Her next project is a Blackwell Short Guide to Herman Melville.

Ricardo Pitts-Wiley
Over the past twenty years, Ricardo Pitts-Wiley, Artistic Director of Mixed Magic Theatre, has written/produced/directed "From the Bard to the Bounce: A Hip-Hop Shakespeare Experience", "Kwanzaa Song", "The Great Battle for the Air", "About Me and the Adventure" (with Community Prep and the Rhode Island School for the Deaf), "How the World Came to North Kingstown Cafe" (an American historical drama for the North Kingstown Millenium), "The Spirit Warrior's Dream" (at the University of Rhode Island, Long Island University, Johnson & Wales University, and Marin Academy in San Rafael, California), "Harlem Renaissance Project" (with Blackstone Academy), and four Annual Black History Month Celebrations at Portsmouth Abbey. Pitts-Wiley was the Resident Artist at Brown University Summer High School in 2001. In all of these collaborations, students had the opportunity to work with professional theatre artists and musicians.

Global Kids
Founded in 1989, Global Kids' mission is to transform urban youth into successful students and global and community leaders by engaging them in socially dynamic, content-rich learning experiences. Through its leadership development and academic enrichment programs, Global Kids educates youth about critical international and domestic issues and promotes their engagement in civic life and the democratic process. Through professional development initiatives, Global Kids provides educators with strategies for integrating experiential learning methods and international issues into urban classrooms. Over ninety percent of the high school seniors who participate in Global Kids' leadership program graduate from high school.

HOME, Inc.
Home, Inc. (Here-in Our Motives Evolve) is a non-profit that teaches educators and youth to create and analyze media . HOME has worked continuously with Boston inner city teens and media since 1976 and has created ground- breaking media projects such as "Get the Facts About AIDS!" and "It's On You" with the Boston Schools, Job Corps of New England, and others. HOME's work with schools includes creating and supporting new media lab spaces where students and teachers can collaborate and examine issues through media analysis, advocacy, and research, and foster student confidence, creativity and efficacy. Over the past four years HOME Inc. and MIT's Comparative Media Studies Program have jointly hosted a biennial media literacy conference for educators to highlight advances and convene practitioners to share the best practices in the field.

2007-2008 Focus Groups:

Youth Voice Collaborative
Young Woman's Christian Association (YWCA), Boston, MA
An innovative after-school program of media literacy and leadership training, YVC provides young people from 13-18 with the information they need to become critical consumers of media and the skills to create and distribute messages that reflect their realities. YVC continues to expand and students have benefited from partnerships with the Boston Public Schools, WGBH, MIT, and 21st Century Learning Centers.

MIT@Lawrence
MIT@Lawrence is a long-term commitment to support dynamic and mutually beneficial relationships between faculty, students, and staff at MIT, together with civic leaders, residents, and community-based organizations in Lawrence, Massachusetts. The MIT@Lawrence commitment includes service learning, technical assistance, and community-based service projects in three program areas: affordable housing, community asset-building, and youth pathways to career and education. These areas promise opportunities for action-oriented scholarship through university-community engagement for the purpose of contributing to an equitable and sustainable future in the City of Lawrence.

2008-2009 Teachers' Strategy Guide Pilot Schools: