“It might surprise parents to learn that it is not a waste of time for their teens to hang out online,” says Mizuko Ito, University of California, Irvine researcher and the lead author of the most extensive U.S. study to date on teens and their use of digital media. The study showed that America’s youth are developing important social and technical skills online often in ways adults do not understand or value.
Results from the most extensive U.S. study on teens and their use of digital media show that America’s youth are developing important social and technical skills online – often in ways adults do not understand or value.
"Kids' Informal Learning with Digital Media: An Ethnographic Investigation of Innovative Knowledge Cultures" is a three-year collaborative project funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
UCLA scientists have found that for computer-savvy middle-aged and older adults, searching the Internet triggers key centers in the brain that control decision-making and complex reasoning. The findings demonstrate that Web search activity may help stimulate and possibly improve brain function.
Living and Learning\nwith New Media:\nSummary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project
Members of the research team at Project New Media Literacies discuss the social skills and cultural competencies needed to fully engage with today's participatory culture. Featuring Henry Jenkins, and produced by Anna Van Someren at Project New Media Literacies. See more NML videos at http://techtv.mit.edu/collections/new...
New Media Literacies is a research project within MIT's Comparative Media Studies program. Our central goal is to engage educators and learners in today's participatory culture. We are funded by MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media and Learning initiative.
Stephen Downes (http://www.downes.ca) is a Senior Researcher with the E-Learning Research Group, National Research Council Canada, Moncton, New Brunswick. Comments on this article can be sent to the author at stephen@downes.ca.
Stuart Glogoff expounds on the educational applications of blogs—simple Web pages that can have surprisingly complex classroom applications. Situating his commentary in the context of pedagogical theory, Glogoff outlines the ways in which blogs can enable receptive learning, directive learning, and guided discovery. Reflecting on successful practices in his own classroom, he also reveals how blogs can build community, promote interactivity, and increase student comprehension. This account of blogging technology as a learning tool provides models that instructors of both online and hybrid courses will find helpful.
Blogs are reshaping our environment. They are beginning to emerge in large numbers in the educational field and offer great potential to transform learning and teaching. It is about new literacies appropriate for this time. The quote below comes from Don Leu, to be published soon in a book by the International Reading Association (http://www.sp.uconn.edu/~djleu/newlit.html)
According to a recent study from the Pew Internet & American Life project (Lenhardt &
Madden, 2005), more than one-half of all teens have created media content, and roughly onethird
of teens who use the Internet have shared content they produced. In many cases, these
teens are actively involved in what we are calling participatory cultures.