Recently in comparative media studies Category

Can "Digital Hollywood" support education & innovation? Opportunities, obstacles, and missing conversations

I recently attended Digital Hollywood, a digital media trade conference in Los Angeles for executives in the film, television, computer, music, and telecommunications fields. As a Ph.D. student in Communication at USC Annenberg, I attended four panels relevant to my research interests in children and media. These panels were organized around the following themes: immersive touchscreen media, mobile apps, crossmedia content reinvention, and one specifically on children in the digital space (of which Joan Ganz Cooney Center's Ann My Thai and PBS Kids' Sara DeWitt were panelists).

There was a wide range of conversation topics between the different panels, far too many for a single blog post. However, my main purpose in attending was to hone in on this question: In what ways can we meaningfully leverage the technological innovation driven by profit in Hollywood into creating deep-learning digital experiences in informal and formal education for children?

My single day at the conference (Me: "Sorry, I'd attend your panel on Tuesday morning but I have stats class at 9AM.") brought up some evocative questions, as well as some perennial frustrations. I would divide my takeaways into three categories: opportunities, obstacles, and those issues for which an in-depth discussion was unfortunately missing.

Join us at Home, Inc.'s Media Literacy conference Oct 24th

We hope that you will join us in a couple weeks for Home, Inc.'s Media Literacy conference. It will be held here at MIT and will run from 8:00am to 4:00pm. This conference was the reason I first visited MIT and it is truly inspiring.

Project NML will be represented in two panels at the conference:

Erin and I will be presenting from 10:15 to 11:45 about NML's tools and resources and how you can use remixes in the classroom to help students become familiar with appropriation and transmedia navigation.

Jenna McWilliams, who is now a graduate student at Indiana University, will be presenting from 2:15 to 3:45 on participatory assessment and the Teachers' Strategy Guide - Reading in a Participatory Culture that we implemented in several schools last year.

We'll also be tweeting before, during, and after the conference using the #homeinc tag.

You can register here for the conference. Below are more details!

See you there!

Join us at Home, Inc.'s Media Literacy, Teaching and Learning and 21st Century Skills, October 24th at the Tang Center, MIT, from 8 AM-4:30 PM.

Click here for more information and registration.

HOME, Inc., TechFoundation and MIT's Comparative Media Studies program partner on their biennial one-day conference on Media Literacy. Prominent educators, filmmakers, public health workers and representatives from dedicated organizations will highlight programs that promote and teach 21st Century skills and new media literacies.

Keynote Presenter: Alan November, author, leader and innovator in the field.
Keynote title: Digital Nation- Education in Transition to 21st Century Learning

This Keynote presentation includes an analysis of trends in learning... independent and hands on learning that tracks projects that explore how the web and digital media is changing the way we think, work, learn and interact.

Twitter
For those of you who can't attend please follow us the day of the conference on Twitter!
Follow tweets tagged #homeinc and join the discussion!

Building Villages in the Primal Depths

The following is a copy of a letter I wrote to the editors of the newspapers on our press mailing list after Mixed Magic Theatre's trip to the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC to do our production of Moby Dick: Then and Now.

 

Last weekend Mixed Magic Theatre loaded up three vans with a troupe of actors and a set and went to Washington, DC. We went there to perform our production of Moby Dick: Then and Now at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. As the author and director of the play and the Artistic Director of the company, I had a lot to be proud of. But greater than my contribution to this effort is the pride I felt about the energy and commitment of actors and technicians that made the journey special. Not only were they a blast to be with and around, they all had a sense of this time in history and how they were not just performers, but a part of the Mixed Magic Theatre mission to "build more literate and arts active communities." Most of the company started with the project more than two years ago and I have witnessed their growth and willingness to claim ownership of the work.

 

Continue reading Building Villages in the Primal Depths.