Tene Gray's List: DYN Articles

• Kimberly Gomez, an associate professor of educational psychology at the University of Pittsburgh, has studied the network’s impact on learning. Students are developing higher-order analytical skills as well as digital savvy, she reports. While other schools in Chicago offer technology programs, she adds, none feature the combination of cutting-edge technology and access to skilled mentors who receive additional training in teaching.
• “The difference is the artists-technologists, who are there every day, guiding kids through inquiry-based projects,” Gomez says. “This is a kind of demonstration site of what is possible if you believe kids can, with support, have more self-directed learning and develop more creative and analytic thinking.”
• Quality instruction is integral to the network. And the most important addition to the project since its inception has been the professional development that gives mentors information on teaching, says Gomez.
• Initially, the focus was to give students experience with digital tools. But leaders realized a need to give the artist-mentors teaching strategies to move students beyond mere skill- building.

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• A new literacy is emerging — digital literacy. The digitally literate are media producers — they participate in today’s global conversation.”
• As Pinkard is quick to point out, digital literacy doesn’t replace the traditional values: “For example, just think of what it takes to create a video — skill in writing, story construction, and critical analysis.  The digitally literate know how a narrative flows, how it has a beginning, a middle, and an end.”
• “Traditional educators can’t teach digital literacy — they’re simply not prepared, and they can’t keep up with the technology,” says Pinkard. “So, our goal all along was to enable teachers to integrate new media into assignments without requiring them to be ‘digitally literate’ themselves
• After a student takes the media arts class from a practitioner, the teacher can fold these skills into a traditional curriculum. The students can represent their understanding of books in multiple ways. And they have the repertoire of skills to decide which media is the right choice for a given situation.”
• Pinkard collaborated with the Chicago Library to create YOUmedia, a learning space in which high school students make and produce digital artifacts, such as music, games, video, and virtual worlds — all grounded in the content of books

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