Futures of Learning

I’m happy to be launching a new blog that documents a new research effort just getting under way, a follow on to some of the work that I have been doing with the MacArthur Foundation Digltal Media and Learning initiative. After completing three years of ethnographic research on youth new media practice with an extended research team, I am taking a step back and trying to get a better sense of what has been happening in the field while I’ve been deeply immersed in the empirical work. I’ll be among a really great international group of researchers, who will be taking a few months to do reading on research and practice in the area of new media and learning, and also to visit different institutions and projects in the US and elsewhere that are innovating in this space. Along the way, we will be using this blog as a way to share some of what we are learning, and to solicit feedback on our work in progress. We will be posting book and article reviews and reports from our visits to various sites and conferences.

This work is one small piece of the broader effort of the MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning initiative and its many partners to support the growth of a field of new media and learning. Our ambition its to help grow a field of research and practice that is grounded in deep knowledge of the changing landscape of new media, as well as in an understanding of innovation in educational and design practice. Just as we hope our earlier research on youth new media practice can inform the research community as well as practitioners in education and technology development, so we hope this review of work in the field can help inform a wide range of stakeholders in this field.