Posts filed under 'digital learning skills'
The Center for Communication and Civic Engagement has just released a new report that catalogs and describes many of the most prominent youth civic engagement resources on the web. It is crucial for civic practitioners and scholars to be aware of the wide range of online projects dedicated to youth engagement, and the purpose of this report is to contribute to that goal. We gratefully acknowledge the Surdna Foundation Digital Advocacy Skills project for sponsoring this project, which was researched and compiled by Becoming Citizens interns under the direction of Scott Brekke Davis.
Download the report
Entry Filed under: digital learning skills, participatory media, practitioners and scholars
August 31st, 2009 at 09:45am
admin
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posted by Kat Catlett
On Jan 10, Puget Sound Off (PSO) members and their friends, families and supporters all gathered at the Metrocenter YMCA to celebrate the end of PSO’s first competition.
“I [got to meet] some of the PSO bloggers and developers. It was so great,” wrote regular blogger Kai Flores.
Overall, the event was successful. A majority of contest participants attended, and one extra member, Tim Chambers, received an unexpected prize that was left over.
The general vibe of the gathering was relaxed and welcoming, with bloggers and developers walking around, shaking hands and commenting on each other’s posts. Parents were also put at ease by finally meeting the developers in real life and being explained the safety features of the open-forum style of PSO. A healthy choice of Thai food was served at the beginning, and everyone seemed to enjoy the food without complaints.
The actual award ceremony at the end, the purpose of the gathering, was also a success. Well organized and full of great prizes, the bloggers and their supporters left very happy. Each category within the competition was explained, while a preview of each winner was shown after they gave a short speech describing why they posted what they did.
“[My favorite part was] winning. What makes the ceremonies good are the prizes,” stated member, and third place winner of the blog category Daniel Wyman. The gathering was such success, that one member wrote a blog thanking everyone for such a great time. All the members who attended joined in commenting that they had a great time.
Although the competition is over, the end of this chapter, of PSO leads into a new one. Currently, PSO members and developers are organizing a new PSO game, an e-scavenger hunt. While the details are still in the making, the overall layout is set; members will visit a variety of websites to uncover information regarding a certain important issue. While they uncover information on one site, it will lead to another- much like a treasure hunt. There is also the consideration of having a trip to Seattle for “clues” to enable a more hands-on approach.
At 2 pm on Feb 7, members and developers will meet at the Metrocenter YMCA to finalize the new game that will hopefully bring more members and more success to PSO.
PSO contest winners:
Blog:
3rd Place: Daniel W. “Flaw in our Freedom”
2nd Place: Erin R. “Human Trafficking”
1st Place: Kat C. “Washington State Student Press Rights”
Music:
1st Place: Sophie D. “This Is Who I am”
Video:
3rd Place: Tatiana P. “Child Abuse”
2nd Place Leda G. “Teens and Politics”
1st Place: Philip K. and Samuel A. “Break the Habit”
Entry Filed under: digital learning skills, notes from PSO
February 3rd, 2009 at 09:41pm
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As part of the Civic Learning Online Workshop we created a video to showcase several efforts that are related to youth civic online under the umbrella of Center for Civic Engagemen.
The video features Lance Bennett and CCCE staff members as well as YMCA Metrocenter youth team members.
Video was shot and edited by Jon Hickey
Entry Filed under: PSO website development, conceptions of citizenship, digital learning skills, participatory media, videos
October 8th, 2008 at 12:54pm
Adri
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Where’s the future of activism?
—from the Mother Jones 2008 Student Activism Survey
- 69 percent of students cited “donating money to a cause or charity”
- An equal proportion cited “using eco-friendly or ‘green’ business practices.”
- 68 percent cited “fair labor practices” (down slightly from top ranking last year)
- Also of note, almost half (49 percent) give brands a hint on what might sway them: social messages incorporated into advertising have an effect.
—from Alloy Media + Marketing’s recently release 8th annual College Explorer study
The Rock the Vote site within the Xbox Live network has downloadable Gamerpics, which can be added to an individual’s Xbox Live profile, in support of Barrack [sic] Obama or John McCain, the presumptive Democratic and Republican nominees, respectively. There’s also voter registration information and Rock the Vote videos.
Banner ads on the Dashboard — the central hub of Xbox Live — will point people toward the Rock the Vote content. After downloading the “I registered” pic, members will get voter registration information via e-mail.
—Seattle Times story on Microsoft’s partnership with RocktheVote aimed at outreach to online gamers
“Hurricane Katrina: Tempest in Crescent City” is a comprehensive social networking website featuring an educational “game” experience where participants are encouraged to act in support of New Orleans residents. The site provides links to a variety of relief groups as well as information about New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina including multiple timelines, analysis of media coverage, and supporting articles for all information presented.
—Press release for Global Kids’ latest civic gaming project
In their first joint appearance since the party conventions, presidential nominees John McCain and Barack Obama will discuss service and civic engagement in the post-9/11, post-Katrina world during the primetime televised “ServiceNation Presidential Candidates Forum” on the evening of Thursday, Sept. 11, hosted by Columbia University in the City of New York, as part of the ServiceNation Summit.
—Columbia University press release on ServiceNation Summit
Entry Filed under: digital learning skills, participatory media, social networking
September 4th, 2008 at 05:04pm
Deen Freelon
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If we may depart from our usual theoretical discussions for a moment, let’s have a look at the web-based curriculum profiled in our recent CLO report. This blogging curriculum, entitled Blogistics, is currently available as an interactive Flash presentation. Here are some questions to think about while navigating through it:
- What works well and what could be improved upon? How effective is this presentation likely to be overall?
- What do you think of format (interactive web-based slideshow) as a delivery vehicle for civic lessons? Might it work better for presenting some learning material than others?
Of course, feel free to comment on any other salient aspect of the presentation.
Entry Filed under: adviser conversations, digital learning skills
August 8th, 2008 at 10:05am
Deen Freelon
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What determines whether attempts at online youth civic engagement succeed or fail? Eszter Hargittai tackles a question very similar to this one in her recent contribution to a discussion of Clay Shirky’s latest book, Here Comes Everybody. But you don’t need to have read the book to apply Hargittai’s core insight to the issues we’ve been discussing on this blog:
While it is certainly the case that new technologies, tools and services are leveling the playing field, existing societal position and resources still matter. The question is: when do they matter more or less? Under what circumstances do people with less resources still manage to benefit from the new tools in ways that would have been difficult earlier? What are the examples of mobilization that do not involve people with PhDs, ones with noteable techie know-how or one’s with considerable financial resources either themselves or among those in their networks? There are such examples, certainly, but it would be interesting to see systematically what it is that unites them. What commonality is there among such cases that suggests a true leveling of the playing field that goes beyond allocating more opportunities to those who are already considerably privileged? (On a sidenote, these issues are similar to the ones I raised while discussing Yochai Benkler’s book The Wealth of Networks.)
What is important to understand from a youth civic engagement perspective is that not all youth are equally proficient at using digital media. Terms such as “digital natives” and “DotNets,” used by scholars and civic practitioners alike, imply the opposite when applied broadly to the current generation of adolescents and young adults. A better conceptualization of online youth engagement might begin by observing that only some youth fit the tech-savvy “digital native” archetype, and continue by asking how the digitally disadvantaged can best be brought to the virtual table. As a local example illustrating this divide, members of the CLO team have anecdotally observed alarmingly low levels of email proficiency among some of the low-income youth with whom they have come into contact. Instead of maintaining consistent email addresses, they seem to be caught in a ongoing cycle of email address registration, abandonment, and re-registration fueled by chronic password forgetfulness. Reaching these young people via participatory civic sites will remain a Sisyphean endeavor until they learn to master this most fundamental of online skills.
Much of the breathless internet triumphalism effusing forth from the popular press tends to downplay the strong possibility that preexisting inequalities will, in the absence of action to redress them, persist in online contexts (this is not to imply that Shirky’s book falls into this category; I haven’t read it). This holds true for youth civic sites no less than for any other type of participatory media. In addition to Eszter’s general questions, then, I would like to pose a few of my own:
- What can be done to make online civic spaces more appealing to diverse groups of youth? What are some effective ways to avoid falling into the trap of simply placing a piece of technology into the world and expecting an energized, diverse user base to emerge autonomously?
- What offline structures need to be constructed to ensure that youth civic sites attract more than just the “usual suspects,” i.e. young people who have already bought into the value of civic engagement?
- What other online exemplars devoted to youth engagement can we look to that have managed to navigate these issues with a relative measure of success? What can we learn from them?
Edit: According to a recent report from Scientific American, a new University of Minnesota study has found that
even the least privileged kids have profiles on MySpace and Facebook. And they’re on the internet all the time. That finding goes against past studies that have found a ‘digital divide’ between rich and poor kids.
This looks like a pretty egregious non-sequitir to me, as the fact that poor kids have social network profiles is not evidence of the absence of a digital divide. Eszter, I’d be particularly interested to see what you have to say about this. (Can’t find the actual study write-up, but here’s an interview with the PI.)
Entry Filed under: adviser conversations, digital learning skills, participatory media
June 25th, 2008 at 03:39pm
Deen Freelon
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We are currently developing PSO media skills curricula at both our partnering organizations, such as the YMCA, and through the CCCE’s Becoming Citizens program (http://depts.washington.edu/ccce/civiceducation/citizens.html). However, we would love to hear our project advisor’s ideas on the following:
What are some of the programmatic pieces you feel we might want to be sure to include to go along with the PSO website?
What are some of the media pieces that you think we should teach?
Finally, what kind of youth development philosophy would you encourage?
Entry Filed under: adviser conversations, digital learning skills
June 10th, 2008 at 12:19pm
Toby Campbell
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Lance Bennett (Civic Learning Online project director) discusses the citizen identity shift and implications for civic learning in on and offline environments. If social identities and learning preferences are changing among digital natives, shouldn’t we rethink how young people are introduced to civic life?
It seems clear that teens are motivated by participatory media cultures, and this includes politics. The volume of multimedia production in the Obama campaign is just one indicator of how public life can become more vital for young citizens when they are involved in creating and sharing media content. Yet civic education in most schools remains largely a textbook exercise aimed at individual evaluation based on conventional knowledge standards. Few students have the opportunity to work in teams, interact with local communities, or communicate their experiences using digital media that capture their imagination. Outside of schools, online communities offer great potential for engaging the creative energies of young people. However, few of those environments are built on any recognized standards about civic learning or civic communication skill sets that users can take away. It is time to rethink skills and learning standards appropriate for digital natives so that practitioners and youth workers can reach larger youth populations beyond those who already bring the requisite skills and motivation with them. Bennett’s report A Generational Shift in Citizen Identity opens this conversation.
Entry Filed under: civic learning goals, digital learning skills
May 18th, 2008 at 11:30am
Lance Bennett
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When discussing how digital media can best support civic engagement among youth, it is important to distinguish between the technical capacities necessary to navigate and manipulate various forms of digital media and the civic skills that allow young people to connect with shared issues. Howard Rheingold offers a helpful starting point with his digital skills curriculum, which attempts to demonstrate how technology can serve as an attractive vehicle for what he calls “public voice.” Public voice, as distinct from private voice, comprises all communicative acts that seek to “inform publics, advocate positions, contest claims, and organize action around issues that [young people] truly care about” (Rheingold, 2008). Positioning public voice within the context of digital media harnesses the latter as a tool to teach young people about the former. Because this specific form of communication does not come naturally to most youth, learning it is presumed to require some direct instruction.
We on the CLO team believe that Howard’s approach shows much promise, but wonder if many of its recommendations are more suited for college students than for teens in high school. For example, might the concept of a “public” be too subtle for some teens to grasp, particularly if said public does not immediately emerge to respond to their attempts to address it? Further, given the undifferentiated epistemological landscape of the internet, in which Google results place paranoid cranks shoulder to shoulder with accredited experts, might some digital natives experience difficulty in critically analyzing web content? How often are these young people asked to articulate and defend their own opinions? The answers to these questions may recommend that the public voice curriculum be revised somewhat for younger learners.
- How could the public voice curriculum for a high-school age demographic? What is it reasonable for youth of that age to be able to understand and accomplish, civically speaking?
A second question that has arisen for us relates to the long-term sustainability of the skills learned in these types of curricula. Decades of education research has concluded that students retain only a small fraction of what they learn, particularly if the lessons are not practiced. Therefore, we are strongly interested in suggestions regarding ways to ensure that the civic skills we teach “stick,” as it were, as opposed to beginning and ending in the classroom.
- What can be done to ensure that the skills that youth learn in your curriculum become self-sustained habits, rather than one-time lessons?
Entry Filed under: adviser conversations, civic learning goals, digital learning skills
April 24th, 2008 at 05:13pm
Deen Freelon
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Considerable research suggests that while schools are still a major predictor of civic engagement, youth do not gain nearly the civic skills we might hope from their experiences at school. Scholars point to a number of reasons for this:
- Recent trends in education policy have reduced the time devoted to arts, music, and civic education, in favor of math, reading, and assessment.
- A lack of resources often prevents schools from offering programs that enable youth to develop and work on their own civic and political concerns and connect classroom learning with extracurricular activities.
- A disconnect in citizenship styles has schools emphasizing a duty-based style of citizenship to young people who are much more accustomed to using expression tools to craft individual identities.
- Political pressures lead many teachers and school administrators to limit political discussions and debates, despite evidence suggesting that open classroom and school atmospheres greatly enhance civic learning and engagement.
If young people are not developing civic skills at school, are they doing so elsewhere in their lives? An important question is what role online activities may play in civic learning for the millions of young people online—but most young people only occasionally pursue civic information and activities online, preferring to devote their time to social networking, gaming, and entertainment.
This produces something of a Catch-22: when they offer civic skills, most schools emphasize traditional modes of interacting with government and politics, and they present it in a dry manner. The online world is much more attractive to young people, but only occasionally offers civic learning opportunities.
This situation has us at the CCCE thinking about the potential of the new world of online youth engagement projects, especially as we prepare Puget Sound Off for its upcoming launch. The overarching question we ask ourselves is:
Can online projects create spaces for civic learning that engage young people?
And, more concretely: What functions and features should an online environment have to both hold the attention of young citizens and foster the development of important civic skills?
Entry Filed under: adviser conversations, civic learning goals, digital learning skills
April 24th, 2008 at 04:11pm
Chris Wells
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