MIT's New Media Literacy Project

Project New Media Literacies (NML), a research initiative based within MIT's Comparative Media Studies program, explores how we might best equip young people with the social skills and cultural competencies required to become full participants in an emergent media landscape and raise public understanding about what it means to be literate in a globally interconnected, multicultural world.

The white paper Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century (Jenkins et al., 2006) identifies the three core challenges: the participation gap, the transparency problem and the ethics challenge, and shares a provisionary list of skills needed for full engagement in today's participatory culture. In the video below, members of the NML team share their thoughts and perspectives on the skills we call the New Media Literacies.

8th Graders New Media Applications

What do you get when you cross Greek mythology with a media literacy class on paid political advertising? Well, if you're media literacy teacher Marianne Malmstrom, you get 30-sec. video ads about kicking various lesser gods off Olympus that end with "I am Zeus, and I approve of this message" (see "The Dog Ate My Homework" project at the Elisabeth Morrow School in Englewood, N.J. ). This is media literacy education 2.0. It can take many forms, but this approach teaches critical thinking about media messages by having students create their own messages collaboratively, using social media - in this case, the Second Life virtual world. Malmstrom's students created avatars, wrote scripts, and "filmed" and edited machinima (like video screenshots, or "movies" of what's happening in a virtual world).

Find more videos like this on The Elisabeth Morrow School

Research on New Media by Digital Youth Project

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. Carried out by researchers at the University of Southern California and University of California, Berkeley, the digital youth project explores how kids use digital media in their everyday lives.

Here's a conference presentation on the results of the study by lead investigator Mimi Ito:

Welcome to the 2009 Ackerman Collquium blog...

This blog has been created to support the 3rd James F. Ackerman Colloquium on Technology and Citizenship: Citizenship Education 2.0: New Media in a Networked World.

Participants are encourged to read and add to the blog before, during, and after the Colloquim.

The goal of the Ackerman Colloquium is to engage participants in discussions related, but not limited to: (1) the potential role of new media/Web 2.0 technology in the development of knowledge and skills required by citizens in an increasingly digital and global world, (2) the knowledge/research base on new media in K-12 social studies classrooms; (3) defining a research agenda on new media in K-12 social studies; and (4) demonstration of the application and use of new media technologies in the K-12 social studies classrooms.

The colloquium will also provide a unique opportunity to interact with a relatively small circle of scholars and researchers working in this area in order to discuss our common interests and take stock of the current state of this field of study.

The colloquium is sponsored by Purdue University's James F. Ackerman Center for Democratic Citizenship.


Colloquium Co-coordinators:

Phillip J. VanFossen
Director, Ackerman Center and
Ackerman Professor of Social Studies Education
Purdue University
vanfoss@purdue.edu


Michael J. Berson
Professor
Social Science Education
University of South Florida
Berson@coedu.usf.edu