Futures of Learning

We are very pleased to introduce a new blog series that reports on the literature review conducted as part of the project, Inspiring the Technological Imagination: Museums and Libraries in a Digital Age. Funded by the MacArthur Foundation as part of the Digital Media and Learning initiative, this project addresses one of the four key questions that defines the initiative:  How might institutions change to take advantage of the learning opportunities provided by new digital media?  The work discussed in this literature review seeks to contribute to the development of a field in new media and learning by focusing on the role of museums and libraries as part of distributed learning networks.

The research was directed by Anne Balsamo, PI. The blog postings will be authored by her and other members of the research team: Cara Wallis, Maura Klosterman, and Susana Bautista (University of Southern California). Over the next six to eight weeks, Anne Balsamo and her research team will address the following topics:

* Overview of Digital Archive Library projects: From information preservation to equality of access
* Digital Media in Communities Libraries: New Practices of Participation
* The Case of Virtual Libraries
* Museums and Digital Media: From Hands-on Explorations to Interactive Experiences
* The Creation of Museum Web Presences
* On-Line Museum Experiences
* The Case of Virtual Museums
* From Games to Play: Libraries, Museums and Digital Learning
* Learning from the Edge:  New Practices and Possibilities for Digital Media in Libraries and Museums

We are very pleased to introduce our new blog series, New Media Practices in International Contexts. Our blog series looks at the intersection of youth, new media and learning in a range of countries outside of North America and Western Europe.  Inspired by the ways in which Scribner and Cole’s (1981) work among the Vai of Liberia transformed activity theory, Brian Street’s (1984, 1993) fieldwork in Iran contributed to the development of New Literacy Studies and Paulo Freire’s (1970) work in Brazil influenced critical pedagogy, we believe that examining new media practices from an international (and, in some cases, transnational) perspective will enhance our current efforts to theorize youth, new media and learning.

Over the next three to four months we will be introducing six case studies – Brazil, China, Ghana, India, Korea and Japan – which challenge us to think about the intersection of youth, new media and learning in new ways. Beginning with Cara Wallis’ analysis of China today, each country review will begin a discussion of the telecommunications landscape. Subsequent posts by HyeRyoung Ok (Korea), Anke Schwittay (India), Heather Horst (Brazil), Mimi Ito and Daisuke Okabe (Japan) and Araba Sey (Ghana) will focus upon internet and mobile phone practices, gaming as well as new media production. As we have discovered in reading and writing up the material, each case study provides a unique perspective on the ways in which infrastructure, institutions and culture (among other factors) shape contemporary new media practices. If you know of books or articles that we have missed, or have feedback on any of the case studies, we would really welcome a comment or an email.

Before I conclude, I want to add one final note. In the exploratory phase of this project we sent out requests for articles, books and information to various individuals and news lists. We were all amazed at the generosity of fellow researchers in providing summaries of the fascinating work being carried out in this space and, in some cases, extensive bibliographies. We would like to thank the following individuals for their valuable suggestions and assistance:

Julie Soleil Archimbault, Francois Bar, Paul Braund, Larissa Hjorth, Răzvan Nicolescu, John Postill and Mikko Villi.

In addition, many of us have also found discussions on the Media Anthropology and Association of Internet Researchers extremely valuable. We are very grateful to these two communities of scholars.

References:

Freire, P. 1970. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Seabury Press.

Scribner, S and M. Cole. 1981. The Psychology of Literacy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Street, B. 1984. Literacy in Theory and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Street, B. 1993. Cross-cultural Approaches to Literacy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

We are very pleased to announce the public release of the findings from the Digital Youth project. The three-year project, funded by the John T. and Catherine T. Macarthur Foundation as part of the MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning initiative Digital Media and Learning initiative., involved over 28 researchers and collaborators based at the University of Southern California and University of California, Berkeley.

As an ethnographic investigation of informal learning with digital media, the project represented a unique opportunity to conduct baseline research on youths’ everyday engagements with new media, and the implications of these practices for learning. Given the interdisciplinary nature of the research team – which ranged from anthropology, information studies, media studies, psychology and sociology – the very negotiation of conducting ‘ethnography’ challenged disciplinary assumptions about the nature of knowledge production and dissemination. Rather than an edited book of 22 individual projects or case studies, we shared our research materials to facilitate the process of collaborative analysis. The White Paper and forthcoming book with MIT Press represents the culmination of this process of interdisciplinary collaboration.

You can find links to a summary of our report as well as a draft of our book which will be published with MIT Press next fall. 

We will be celebrating the release of our report at a reception at the American Anthropological Association meetings in San Francisco. Please join us on Saturday November 22, at 6:30-8:00pm, San Francisco Hilton & Towers, Golden Gate Ballroom.

Click here to download a two-page summary of the report.

Click here to download the summary white paper.

Click here to access the full report.

Click here for the press release and video being hosted by the MacArthur Foundation.

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RESEARCH SUMMARY

Over three years, University of California, Irvine researcher and her research team interviewed over 800 youth and young adults and conducted over 5000 hours of online observations as part of the most extensive U.S. study of youth digital media use to date. They found that social network sites, online games, video-sharing sites, and gadgets such as iPods and mobile phones are now fixtures of youth culture.  The research finds today’s youth may be coming of age and struggling for autonomy and identity amid new worlds for communication, friendship, play, and self-expression. Many adults worry that children are wasting time online, texting, or playing video games.  The researchers explain why youth find these activities compelling and important.  The digital world is creating new opportunities for youth to grapple with social norms, explore interests, develop technical skills, and experiment with new forms of self-expression.  These activities have captured teens’ attention because they provide avenues for extending social worlds, self- directed learning, and independence.

MAJOR FINDINGS

- Youth use online media to extend friendships and interests. -

Most youth use online networks to extend the friendships that they navigate in the familiar contexts of school, religious organizations,sports, and other local activities. They can be always “on,” in constant contact with their friends through private communications like instant messaging or mobile phones, as well as in public ways through social network sites such as MySpace and Facebook.  With these “friendship-driven” practices, youth are almost always associating with people they already know in their offline lives. The majority of youth use new media to “hang out” and extend existing friendships in these ways. A smaller number of youth also use the online world to explore interests and find information that goes beyond what they have access to at school or in their local community. Online groups enable youth to connect to peers who share specialized and niche interests of various kinds, whether that is online gaming, creative writing, video editing, or other artistic endeavors. In these interest-driven networks, youth may find new peers outside the boundaries of their local community. They can also find opportunities to publicize and distribute their work to online audiences, and to gain new forms of visibility and reputation.

- Youth engage in peer-based, self-directed learning online. -

In both friendship-driven and interest-driven online activity, youth create and navigate new forms of expression and rules for social behavior. By exploring new interests, tinkering, and “messing around” with new forms of media, they acquire various forms of technical and media literacy. Through trial and error, youth add new media skills to their repertoire, such as how to create a video or game, or customize their MySpace page. Teens then share their creations and receive feedback from others online. By its immediacy and breadth of information, the digital world lowers barriers to self-directed learning. Some youth “geek out” and dive into a topic or talent. Contrary to popular images, geeking out is highly social and engaged, although usually not driven primarily by local friendships. Youth turn instead to specialized knowledge groups of both teens and adults from around the country or world, with the goal of improving their craft and gaining reputation among expert peers. While adults participate, they are not automatically the resident experts by virtue of their age.Geeking out in many respects erases the traditional markers of status and authority. New media allow for a degree of freedom and autonomy for youth that is less apparent in a classroom setting. Youth respect one another’s authority online, and they are often more motivated to learn from peers than from adults. Their efforts are also largely self-directed, and the outcome emerges through exploration, in contrast to classroom learning that is oriented by set, predefined goals.

IMPLICATIONS

New media forms have altered how youth socialize and learn, and raise a new set of issues that educators, parents, and policymakers should consider.

-Adults should facilitate young people’s engagement with digital media. Contrary to adult perceptions, while hanging out online, youth are picking up basic social and technical skills they need to fully participate in contemporary society.  Erecting barriers to participation deprives teens of access to these forms of learning.Participation in the digital age means more than being able to access serious online information and culture. Youth could benefit from educators being more open to forms of experimentation and social exploration that are generally not characteristic of educational institutions. Because of the diversity of digital media, it is problematic to develop a standardized set of benchmarks against which to measure young people’s technical and new media literacy. Friendship-driven and interest-driven online participation have very different kinds of social connotations.  For example, whereas friendship-driven activities centers upon peer culture, adult participation is more welcomed in the latter more “geeky” forms of learning.  In addition,the content, behavior, and skills that youth value are highly variable depending on what kinds of social groups they associate with. In interest-driven participation, adults have an important role to play. Youth using new media often learn from their peers, not teachers or adults. Yet adults can still have tremendous influence in setting learning goals, particularly on the interest-driven side where adult hobbyists function as role models and more experienced peers. To stay relevant in the 21st century, education institutions need to keep pace with the rapid changes introduced by digital media. Youths’ participation in this networked world suggests new ways of thinking about the role of education. What, the authors ask, would it mean to really exploit the potential of the learning opportunities available through online resources and networks? What would it mean to reach beyond traditional education and civic institutions and enlist the help of others in young people’s learning?  Rather than assuming that education is primarily about preparing for jobs and careers, they question what it would mean to think of it as a process guiding youths’ participation in public life more generally.