Connected Learning: Designed to ‘mine the new social, digital domain’

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. — Citing an ever-widening gap between in-school and out-of-school learning experiences, a team of researchers today introduced a model of learning — ‘connected learning’ — that taps into the rich new world of information, knowledge, and online collaboration available to youth and learners.

The connected learning model, which is anchored in a large body of research on how youth are using social media, the internet and digital media to learn and develop expertise, also seeks to respond to deepening fears of a class-based “equity” gap in education that, without intervention, is likely to be accelerated by disproportionate access to technology and new forms of knowledge sharing.

“We are seeing a growing gap between in-school and out-of-school learning as more and more of young people’s learning, attention, and access to information is happening outside of classrooms and through online networks and exchanges,” said Mimi Ito, a cultural anthropologist at the University of California, Irvine, who specializes in youth and technology. She is one of the principal investigators in the new Connected Learning Research Network, funded by the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning Initiative. “That’s the disturbing news,” Ito said. “The good news is that new technology also hands us opportunities for bringing young people, educators, and parents together in cross-generational learning driven by shared interests and goals.”

Connected learning, Ito said, suggests an approach to education that integrates and connects learning across different settings in a young person’s life because learners achieve best when their learning is reinforced and supported in multiple settings, by parents, educators, knowledgeable peers, and communities that center on their interests. Ito said even more research on learning is needed as the ability to span school, home, community, and peer interaction grows.

Researchers pointed out that, as a new model, connected learning will benefit immensely from contributions and critique from the many stakeholders in public education, especially in how to translate its principles into practice. It draws on social, ubiquitous, blended and personalized learning models, designers and practitioners working with the effort say, but is distinctive and has the potential to help reconstitute our educational system.

The introduction of the connected learning model took place at an evening press briefing at a conference in San Francisco attended by 1,000 technologists, futurists, researchers and educators, “Beyond Educational Technology: Learning Innovations in a Connected World.”

A set of principles for connected learning were developed by a group of researchers, technology makers, philanthropists, and educational practitioners seeking to come together around a common approach for how to expand educational opportunity in the digital age. This approach proposes knitting together of three crucial contexts for learning:

Interest-powered…Research has repeatedly shown that when a subject is personally interesting and relevant, learners achieve much higher-order learning outcomes.

Peer-supported…In their everyday exchanges with peers and friends, young people are fluidly contributing, sharing and giving feedback in web-powered experiences that are highly engaging.

Academically oriented…When academic studies and institutions draw from and connect to young people’s interest-driven pursuits, learners flourish and realize their true potential.

…and the embrace of three key design principles:

Production-centered…Connected learning prioritizes the learning that comes from actively producing, creating, experimenting and designing, because it promotes skills and dispositions for lifelong learning, and for making meaningful contributions to today’s rapidly changing work- and social conditions.

Open networks…Today’s online platforms and digital tools can make learning resources abundant, accessible, and visible across all learner settings.

Shared purpose…Today’s social media and web-based communities provide unprecedented opportunities for cross-generational and cross-cultural learning and connection to unfold and thrive around common goals and interests.

The connected learning model seeks to take advantage of the web’s radically expanding culture of sharing by developing learning experiences for all youth that are more engaging, more motivating, more social, and more supported, because they are abetted by the internet and today’s dynamic knowledge society.

Researchers also announced the launch of two new websites, connectedlearning.tv and clrn.dmlhub.net, featuring an array of resources and research, all open and free:

• Weekly webinars for educators, researchers, policymakers, youth workers, and parents about this new approach to learning
• Stories of connected learners, and educators and organizations already deploying connected learning principles
• Videos about connected learning and the research behind it
• An infographic, an executive summary, and detailed white paper that researchers hope will activate conversation and collaboration among education reformers
• Details of a second wave of ongoing research by a group of education/technology/media scholars from the U.S. and the UK who comprise the Connected Learning Research Network

“I don’t think there’s anyone in education and learning who doesn’t feel an urgent need to reimagine learning for the new century,” said Connie Yowell, Director of Education for U.S. programs for the MacArthur Foundation. The connected learning model, research, and work is supported by the MacArthur Foundation as part of its Digital Media & Learning Initiative, a nearly $100 million program that was one of the first philanthropic efforts in the U.S. to systematically explore the impact of digital media on young people and implications for the future of learning. “Our schools are struggling to prepare young people for fulfilling adult lives and careers.

“Connected learning represents a path forward,” Yowell said. “It’s learning that is socially rich and interest-fueled — in other words, it’s based on the kind of learning that decades of research shows is the most powerful, most effective. And connected learning is oriented towards cultivating educational and economic opportunity for all young people.”

Among the topics at the heart of a new tide of ongoing research by the Connected Learning Research Network:

How can our new culture of online sharing and connecting improve mentoring and coaching for youth, both with peers and multi-generationally?

How specifically is social networking changing the learning practices of youth?

How effective can the exploding sector of open learning and peer-to-peer learning be?

In what ways can digital media boost learning for marginalized communities?

What can popular strategy and creation-oriented games such as LittleBigPlanet 2 and Starcraft II teach us about the power of new-generation video games for learning and education?

Can social media and digital technology improve the impact of after-school programs, especially for disadvantaged youth?

Does learning that is connected to a learner’s interest help produce young people who are more civically engaged and more active 21st century citizens?

The researchers are:

Kris Gutierrez, professor of literacy and learning sciences who is an expert in learning and new media literacies and designing transformative learning environments, University of Colorado, Boulder

Mimi Ito, Research Network Chair, a cultural anthropologist with deep expertise in the implications of how youth are engaging with technology and digital media who led benchmark three-year study of digital youth, University of California, Irvine

Sonia Livingstone, a leading expert on children, youth, and the internet, including issues of risk and safety, and author of a massive study of 25,000 European children and their parents on internet usage, London School of Economics and Political Science

Bill Penuel, expert in learning with digital media in both formal and informal settings, literacy, and using digital tools for digital storytelling, University of Colorado, Boulder

Jean Rhodes, clinical psychologist with expertise in mentoring, adolescent development, and the role of intergenerational relationships in digital media and learning, University of Massachusetts, Boston

Katie Salen, a game designer who has founded two 6th-12th grade public schools that employ game principles for learning, Depaul University

Juliet Schor, economist and sociologist who has published broadly on work, family and sustainability, Boston College

S. Craig Watkins, expert on young people’s social and digital media behaviors and is piloting new programs for in-school and out-of-school learning, University of Texas, Austin

“The announcement of the connected learning principles and the research of the connected learning network couldn’t come at a more crucial time,” said David Theo Goldberg, director of the University of California systemwide Humanities Research Institute and executive director of the Digital Media & Learning Research Hub, sponsor of the connected learning work. “The connected learning principles are well-suited to our digital society. They are built on the best of a historical body of research on how youth learn, combined with fresh research that has surfaced the extraordinary learning opportunities made available through today’s networked and digital media.

“The Connected Learning initiative is also a call for those of us working at the intersection of technology, learning and youth to join together in communities to advance creative new forms of learning and to share them widely with all those who stand to benefit.”

About the Digital Media and Learning Research Hub

The work of the DML Research Hub, which includes original research on connected learning, and youth and participatory politics; websites; publications; workshops, and an annual conference, is funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Located physically at the University of California, Irvine, and situated within the UC system’s Humanities Research Institute, the Research Hub is dedicated to analyzing and interpreting the impact of the internet and digital media on education, politics, and youth. The website for the research hub is dmlcentral.net

About the MacArthur Foundation and the Digital Media & Learning Initiative

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation supports creative people and effective institutions committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. In addition to selecting the MacArthur Fellows, the Foundation works to defend human rights, advance global conversation and security, make cities better places, and understand how technology is affecting children and society. The MacArthur Foundation launched its digital media and learning initiative in 2006 to explore how digital media are changing the way young people learn, play, socialize and participate in civic life, and what that means for their learning in the 21st century. More information on the digital media and learning initiative is available at www.macfound.org/education.

In conjunction with the Badges for Lifelong Learning Competition, applicants are invited to propose badging systems not only for learning content, but also for teacher learning and feedback. Competitive submissions proposing badge systems that track and promote feedback regarding the competencies and skills as well as the programs and subjects over which teachers acquire expertise are a central part of the Stage 1 and Stage 2 processes of the Competition. The winning proposal(s) will be awarded funding to develop the proposed badging system.

For Stage 2, Teacher Mastery and Feedback applicants are encouraged to submit proposals that map out what a teacher mastery and feedback badging system would look like, how it would operate, what benefits and challenges it would present, and the design and implementation process it would incorporate. The proposed badging systems should be based on, and fully interoperable with, Mozilla’s Open Badge Infrastructure (http://openbadges.org).

Stage Two seeks organizations, teams or individuals skilled in the design of badge systems and implementation of badge technology. Design and tech applicants at this stage should describe the badge system they want to build, referring to and describing Stage Two characteristics listed on this page.

Stage Two seeks fully developed badge systems and will include badges or sets of badges, assessments, and the technology required to issue, manage, and track or measure performance. Badge system design and tech proposals may be based on winning content from Stage One, or may use other content to demonstrate the designs.

Badge design and tech applicants that do not use approved content or programs from Stage One can still submit their design proposals at this stage, using any content to demonstrate their proposed badge systems. But bear in mind, however, that if successful in Stage Two, these proposals will be matched with winning content and programs from Stage One for the final proposals.

Whatever technology you propose, the badges must be compatible with the Mozilla Open Badge Infrastructure (http://openbadges.org). The infrastructure includes a simple metadata standard and a set of APIs to allow learners to gather and display badges from across the web. The intent is to afford learners full control over their own badges once issued, giving them more freedom to use badges how they like and promoting a vibrant badge ecosystem.

Applicants are highly encouraged to develop software and widgets that extend the Open Badge Infrastructure. Software and widgets of high value to many badge issuers may be considered for a stand alone grant that requires a lower level of collaboration at the final stage.

Submission Details

Submissions will require a 1500 word written proposal plus visual materials that graphically represent the badge design submission. These can include a video, a diagram, screenshots, napkin sketch, or other visual expressions. Click here for more information about applying to Stage Two of the Teacher Mastery & Feedback Badge Competition.

Deadline for Teacher Mastery and Feedback Badge Competition Stage 2: Feburary 3, 2012, 5pm PST/8pm EST.

Last week we held a webinar on “Badge System Models and Design” for the DML Badges for Teachers competition featuring a presentation by Carla Cassili on designing an effective digital badge system, and Q &A with David Theo Goldberg.

You can watch the video below,  view it at http://youtu.be/fhDWfeGgrR4, or download the slides directly as a PDF right here.

Informational Webinar: Designing Badge Systems for the Teacher Mastery & Feedback Badge Competition
What: Stage Two Prep: Badge Systems Models & Design
Who Should Attend: Potential Stage Two applicants
Date: Thursday, January 26, 2012
When: 1pm EST / 10am PST
Duration: 60 minutes
Register here: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/181225918

The HASTAC/MacArthur Foundation’s Badges for Lifelong Learning Competition, launched in collaboration with the Mozilla Foundation, focuses on badges as a means to inspire learning, confirm accomplishment, or validate the acquisition of knowledge or skills.

During this live webinar for prospective Stage Two badge design applicants, Carla Casilli of Mozilla Foundation’s Open Badges project and David Theo Goldberg, Executive Director of the Digital Media and Learning Research Hub, will discuss badge system design and development, and take general questions about the Stage Two application process. Webinar hosts will review different models of existing badge systems and discuss general guidelines and best practices.

Advanced registration is recommended, but not required. The webinar will open at 12:45 PM EST to allow registrants time to establish access to the webinar.

Questions can be submitted in advance by emailing dml@hri.uci.edu with “webinar question” in the subject line.

Participate in real-time on Twitter using #dmlbadges.

How can badges surface the expertise and mastery of our teachers, while giving them recognition for their own professional learning and development? Sarah Jackson of Spotlight on DML recently browsed through the first stage of winning proposals for the Teacher Mastery and Feedback Competition, and shared her thoughts about the “concrete and exciting examples of badge systems designed to recognize educators who learn from experts and from each other.” Jackson writes:

“A partnership between KQED and PBS LearningMedia proposes creating a badge system to encourage teachers of students in grades 4-12 to develop media-rich science inquiry projects to help them integrate new media technologies and literacies into their own teaching.Working as part of a cohort, participants would complete a series of activities to help learn to create media and media-centered science lessons plans. The badge system would rely heavily on peer review and require teachers to asses the work of other educators. There are also proposed badge systems for training in history, game based-learning environments, computer science, and to help meet the on-the-job training needs of community educators who teach in after-school settings. Educators at Bank Street College of Education have proposed developing an online community of practice for early childhood and special education teachers. Participants can earn ‘Bank Street Badges,’ meant to inspire teachers to bring innovative teaching methods into their own classrooms and schools. Their proposed site would encourage educators to ‘acknowledge their own learning and/or their contributions to the learning of others.’ Teachers on the Bank Street site would be able to create and share documents, case studies and classroom scenarios. Bank Street staff would create rubrics and use existing standards to measure both participation in the online community as well as deep knowledge of early childhood education and teaching effectiveness.”

(To read the rest of the article, visit http://spotlight.macfound.org/blog/entry/teachers-explore-badges-for-mastery-and-feedback/)

Spread the word that Stage Two of the Teacher Mastery and Feedback Competition is accepting applications until February 3, 2012 at 5pm PST / 8pm EST. Click here for more information about Stage Two. Have questions? Mark your calendar and join us Thursday, January 26, 2012 at 10am PST / 1pm EST for a webinar about designing badge systems. A registration link to the webinar will be posted on the DMLCompetition.net shortly.

Please note: Applicants who applied to Stage Two of the Badges for Lifelong Learning may submit proposals for Stage Two of the Teacher Mastery & Feedback Badge Competition. 

Stage Two applicants for the Teacher Mastery and Feedback Badge Competition are invited to propose badging systems for the teacher learning and feedback content of Stage One winners. Competitive submissions proposing badge systems that track and promote feedback regarding the competencies and skills as well as the programs and subjects over which teachers acquire expertise are a central part of the Stage One and Stage Two processes of the Competition.

Stage Two Badge Design and Tech applications may be submitted to the Teacher Mastery and Feedback Badge Competition (deadline Feb. 3) through DMLCompetition.net.

Click here to view the 16 Stage One winners from the Teacher Mastery and Feedback Badges Competition.

Stage One: Teacher Mastery and Feedback Badge Content and Programs Winners

Sasha Barab, Center for Impact Games at Arizona State University
Badges for America: Preparing Teachings for the 21st Century

Diane Gal, State University of New York, Empire State College – School for Graduate Studies
Mastery of Open Online Tools for Learning (MOOT4L) Badge Experience

Alex Griswold, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory
Annenberg Learner Ambassador Badge Program

Richard Ingram, James Madison Partners for Learning
MacArthur Badges for Standards-based ICT Skills for Teachers – United States and Worldwide

Tony Jackson, Asia Society
Pathways to Global Competence: A Badge System for Educators

Cecilia Lenk, The Reynolds Center for Teaching, Learning and Creativity
simSchool BadgeUp: The Digital Badges Approach to Global Teacher Preparation and Accreditation

David Libert, Milwaukee Teacher Education Center
Growing New Pathways to Teacher Certification

Joshua Marks, curriki.org
Curriki Certified Open Educator

Bruce Morrow, Bank Street College of Education
Bank Street Community of Online Practice

MaryFaith Mount-Cors, VIF International Education
Global Gateway: A Global STEM Educator Badging System

Corey Newhouse, Public Profit LLC
California Out-of-School Time Badges Initiative

Leah Potter, American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning
Who Built America? Badges for Teaching Disciplinary Literacy in History

Rebecca Schultz, KQED
Science Media Teacher Mastery and Feedback Badges

Robin Shoop, Carnegie Mellon Robotics Academy
Computer Science Student Network Teacher Badge System

Andrew Stillman, New Visions for Public Schools
YouPD: Rethinking Professional Development for Teachers

Kris Swanson, Poinciana Elementary STEM Magnet School
Elementary STEM Teacher Certification Project

Today at 5pm PST / 8pm EST, submissions for Stage Two of the Badges for Lifelong Learning Competition are due (not to be confused with the deadline for Stage Two of the Teacher Mastery and Feedback Badge Competition on February 3, 2012).

Those of you who have followed Badges for Lifelong Learning Competition from the day we announced this year’s theme in Washington, DC  know how lively the conversation about badges has been, which — thanks to our Badges for Lifelong Learning topic on Scoop.it – we were able to easily capture and curate.

Maybe it’s a sign that the most recent blog post about badges is Jon Buckley’s Validating Open Badges article exploring the technology of implementing badges. Since the launch, people have talked about badges upsetting college degrees, motivation and badges, employment and badges, the open in open badges, considering badges, and unpacking the meaning of badges.

With Stage Two closing today, the timing is right to turn to the technology questions, the design, the information architecture, and how to use badges to champion the age of the learner, using the same kind of thinking that made the Internet and connected learning possible.

January 12, 2012—The 4th HASTAC/MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Competition today announced the 16 winners of Stage One of the Teacher Mastery and Feedback Badge Competition, held in conjunction with the Badges for Lifelong Learning Competition and in collaboration with the Mozilla Foundation. For a list of Stage One winners of the Teacher Mastery and Feedback Competition, see below.

Stage One of the Teacher Mastery and Feedback Competition requested proposals describing subject and content matter for a teacher badge system that would recognize, reward, and offer peer feedback to teachers regarding mastery of capacities and skills. Submissions were to include systems for recognizing and rewarding some of the capacities, skills and content needed to effectively teach math, literacy, or digital literacy skills and/or to effectively teach to the Common Core State Standards. For example, giving feedback to students, developing complex skills, or skills needed to teach in an environment that privileges digital or online learning.

Stage One winners from the Teacher Mastery and Feedback Competition may be paired with winning badge design/technology teams from Stage Two for the opportunity to advance to Stage Three, during which selected teams will work collaboratively on developing a badge system. After the final round of judging, winning teams will be announced at the Digital Media and Learning Conference in San Francisco, California on March 1, 2012.

Stage Two of the Teacher Mastery and Feedback Badge Competition is now open. Deadline to submit applications is February 3, 2012 by 5pm PST / 8pm EST.

Stage Two applicants for the Teacher Mastery and Feedback Badge Competition are invited to propose badging systems for the teacher learning and feedback content of Stage One winners. Competitive submissions proposing badge systems that track and promote feedback regarding the competencies and skills as well as the programs and subjects over which teachers acquire expertise are a central part of the Stage One and Stage Two processes of the Competition.

Stage Two Badge Design and Tech applications may be submitted for both the Teacher Mastery and Feedback Badge Competition (deadline Feb. 3) and the Badges for Lifelong Learning Competition (deadline Jan. 17). Click here to view the 60 Stage One winners from the Badges for Lifelong Learning Competition, and the 16 Stage One winners from the Teacher Mastery and Feedback Badges Competition, visit www.dmlcompetition.net.

Stage One: Teacher Mastery and Feedback Badge Content and Programs Winners

Sasha Barab, Center for Impact Games at Arizona State University
Badges for America: Preparing Teachings for the 21st Century

Diane Gal, State University of New York, Empire State College – School for Graduate Studies
Mastery of Open Online Tools for Learning (MOOT4L) Badge Experience

Alex Griswold, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory
Annenberg Learner Ambassador Badge Program

Richard Ingram, James Madison Partners for Learning
MacArthur Badges for Standards-based ICT Skills for Teachers – United States and Worldwide

Tony Jackson, Asia Society
Pathways to Global Competence: A Badge System for Educators

Cecilia Lenk, The Reynolds Center for Teaching, Learning and Creativity
simSchool BadgeUp: The Digital Badges Approach to Global Teacher Preparation and Accreditation

David Libert, Milwaukee Teacher Education Center
Growing New Pathways to Teacher Certification

Joshua Marks, curriki.org
Curriki Certified Open Educator

Bruce Morrow, Bank Street College of Education
Bank Street Community of Online Practice

MaryFaith Mount-Cors, VIF International Education
Global Gateway: A Global STEM Educator Badging System

Corey Newhouse, Public Profit LLC
California Out-of-School Time Badges Initiative

Leah Potter, American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning
Who Built America? Badges for Teaching Disciplinary Literacy in History

Rebecca Schultz, KQED
Science Media Teacher Mastery and Feedback Badges

Robin Shoop, Carnegie Mellon Robotics Academy
Computer Science Student Network Teacher Badge System

Andrew Stillman, New Visions for Public Schools
YouPD: Rethinking Professional Development for Teachers

Kris Swanson, Poinciana Elementary STEM Magnet School
Elementary STEM Teacher Certification Project

HASTAC/MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Competition

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation launched the Digital Media and Learning initiative in 2006 to help determine how digital technologies are changing the way people, especially young people, learn, play, socialize, and participate in civic life. Answers are critical to developing educational and other social institutions that can meet the needs of this and future generations.
The Digital Media and Learning initiative is marshaling what is already known about the field and seeding innovation for continued growth.
Grant support has been provided to the Digital Media and Learning Competition and to research projects, design studies, pilot programs, and experiments in learning applications, assessment and institutional design, structure and approach.

HASTAC (the Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory) is an international network of educators and digital visionaries committed to the creative development and critical understanding of new technologies in life, learning, and society. HASTAC is committed to innovative design, participatory learning, and critical thinking.

Mozilla is a global, nonprofit organization dedicated to making the Web better. It emphasizes principle over profit, and believes that the Web is a shared public resource to be cared for, not a commodity to be sold. Mozilla works with a worldwide community to create open source products like Mozilla Firefox, and to innovate for the benefit of the individual and the betterment of the Web. The result is great products built by passionate people and better choices for everyone.

Last week we held our fourth webinar for Stage Two “Badge System Models and Design” featuring another great presentation by David Theo Goldberg, who answered questions about the Stage One and Two application process, and Erin Knight of Mozilla, who discussed  the many considerations of designing an effective digital badge system.

You can watch the video below,  view it at http://youtu.be/Km6RerAYYLc, or download the slides directly as a PDF right here.

By Matt Thompson

Mozilla is seeking designers and developers to participate in the $2 million “Badges for Learning” competition. Participants will have the chance to design digital badges for more than 60 different leading organizations, all aimed at providing recognition for learning that happens on the web or outside of school.

Winners will receive funding from the MacArthur Foundation to make their designs a reality, plus the opportunity to collaborate with Mozilla and other leading organizations in education, industry and government.

The goal: supercharge 21st century learning by building a free, open source badge system that helps people around the world use the web to gain new skills and level up in their life and work.

Why digital badges for learning?

The web provides revolutionary new ways for people to learn, but it’s often difficult to get recognition for learning that happens outside of school.

Mozilla’s Open Badges project aims to help solve this problem, providing software that makes it easy for any organization to award digital badges for learning and achievements that happen online, outside the classroom, or just about anywhere.

Organized by the MacArthur Foundation and HASTAC, the “Badges for Learning” competition provides an ideal opportunity to test this software and approach in the wild, gathering leading organizations, designers and technologists to build badge systems together, all using Mozilla’s free and open source Open Badges Infrastructure.

From robotics and digital literacy to botany and the environment

As part of the competition, more than 60 badges for learning projects are now open for your design and technical ideas on the competition web site. For example:

• NASA is seeking design and web development expertise for its new “NASA Robotics Badges.”
• The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration wants help with “Planet Stewards” badges that drive youth awareness around local environmental issues.
• The National Association of Manufacturers will issue badges to help learners gain the skills they need to find jobs in today’s high-tech workplace.
• Disney-Pixar is creating “Wilderness Explorers” badges that help youth become advocates for wildlife and nature-based exploration.
  
• The American Museum of Natural History will offer badges for science literacy.
• 4-H will award badges for youth around science, engineering, technology and applied math.
• Plus many, many more badge projects on the competition web site, all seeking design and web development expertise.

Who should enter?

Anyone with an interest in design. Graphic designers, web designers, product or industrial designers, educational technologists, digital humanities majors. What’s important at this stage of the competition is visual and conceptual creativity.

All of the badge projects will ultimately plug into Mozilla’s Open Badges Infrastructure, but it’s not necessary to possess the technical chops to implement at this stage.

All you need is to provide some early visual designs, plus a written description of how your badges will help participating organizations meet their requirements. Visual representations can include a video, diagram, screenshots, napkin sketches or anything that helps get your ideas across. (See the competition web site for complete details.)

How to get involved

• Choose a badge project from this list on the competition web site. (These are “Stage 1″ winners and collaborators seeking your ideas for the “Stage 2″ design and tech portion of the competition.)
• Then submit your proposal here, with early visual ideas and a written description of how you’d tackle it.

You’re free to enter as many proposals as you’d like — but act quickly. The deadline for submissions is January 17, 2012. Winners will be announced March 2, 2012. Good luck!

Please note January’s major deadlines for the Badges for Lifelong Learning Competition. Details below….

• Thursday, January 5: Webinar on Stage 2: Badge System Models and Design
• Friday, January 6: Research Competition applications due
• Tuesday, January 17: Badges for Lifelong Learning Stage 2 applications due
• TBD: Teacher Mastery Stage 2 applications due

****************************************************************************************************************

Webinar: Stage 2 Preparation: Badge System Models and Design

To register and attend the webinar, visit: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/534182006

Thursday, January 5, 2012 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM EST

In this webinar for prospective Stage Two badge design applicants, we will delve deeper into the badge conversation and explore badge system design and development considerations. We will review different models of existing badge systems and discuss general guidelines and best practices. We will also walk prospective applicants through content, technological and team characteristics that should be considered when developing a badge system and putting together a proposal for Stage 2.

Badges, Trophies, and Achievements: Recognition and Accreditation for Informal and Interest-Driven Learning Research Competition

Applications are due by Friday, January 6th, 2012 at 5pm PST/8pm EST

Please note that although we will make every effort to assist applicants with questions and technical problems on the final day of the Competition, due to expected volume, we cannot make any promises. The application system is open now and we advise applicants not to wait until the last moment to submit. Please note that once you submit your application, you can continue to edit it and make changes until the close at 5pm PST on January 6th.

For information on how to apply, click here. When creating your application in FastApps, please make sure to select the appropriate application fro the specific research competition you’re applying to. Options are:

• Badges, Trophies, and Achievements – Research Grant
• Badges, Trophies, and Achievements – Doctoral Student Grant
• Badges, Trophies, and Achievements – Student Writing Prize
• Badges, Trophies, and Achievements – Faculty Writing Prize

Badges for Lifelong Learning Competition Stage 2

Submissions for Stage Two are due no later than January 17, 2012 at 5pm PST.

Full information: http://dmlcompetition.net/Competition/4/badges-stage-2.php
Additional information: http://openbadges.org

Stage Two (design and technology stage) seeks organizations, teams, or individuals skilled in the design of badge systems and implementation of badge technology to submit early prototypes for badging systems based on the learning content or programs developed by winning applicants from Stage One and official Competition collaborators.**

Teacher Mastery and Feedback Badge Competition Stage 2

Full information: http://www.dmlcompetition.net/Competition/4/teachers-stage-2.php
Deadline: TBD (Check the DMLCompetition.net blog for updates)
Application requirements: 1,500 word written proposal plus visual materials that graphically represent the badge design submission.

In Stage Two, applicants will be encouraged to submit proposals that map out what a teacher mastery and feedback badging system would look like, how it would operate, what benefits and challenges it would present, and the design and implementation process it would incorporate. The proposed badging systems should be based on, and fully interoperable with, Mozilla¹s Open Badge Infrastructure.

If you have any questions or concerns, simply email your inquiry to us at dml@hri.uci.edu.

A few weeks ago we held our second webinar of phase 2, “Badge System Models and Design.” There was a delay in posting this recording due to a glitch in the recording, but I’m happy to say that I found and fixed the problem!

It featured a great presentation by Erin Knight of Mozilla about the many considerations of designing an effective digital badge system as well as some insights into the process from David Theo Goldberg. You can watch the video below or at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CqMRzr30QM, or download the slides directly as a PDF right here.

REMINDER: The Digital Media and Learning Research Competition closes on January 6, 2012 at 5 pm PST/8 pm EST.

Please remember to complete and submit your Research Competition applications in advance of the deadline. The Research Competition application requirements can be found here.

Please note that although we will make every effort to assist applicants with questions and technical problems on the final day of the Research Competition, due to expected volume, we cannot make any promises. The application system is open now and we advise applicants not to wait until the last moment to apply.

If you have already submitted your application, you can view it here. For information on applying, click here. Questions or concerns?Email your inquiry to dml@hri.uci.edu.

*** Digital Media and Learning Research Competition: Call for Applications***

Badges, Trophies, and Achievements: Recognition and Accreditation for Informal and Interest-Driven Learning

Deadline: January 6, 2012 at 5pm PST/8pm EST 

Awards: $5,000 to $80,000

Online networks, digital resources, and gaming environments provide rich opportunities for learning that is demand-driven and learner-centered. More and more people are turning to networked knowledge communities, online tutorials, and other digital resources for wide ranging learning needs. While learning is migrating to these more informal and non-institutionalized kinds of contexts, we still have little research that examines how people assess, recognize, and display the learning that happens in these settings.

• What are the emerging techniques and practices for managing reputation and recognizing learning?
• What are the broad historical and structural understandings of how accreditation operates in our changing social and cultural environment?
• What systems exist for recognizing learning outside of formal degree and training programs?
• How do credentials and other displays of achievement operate in the digital and networked world?
• What kinds of skills and experiences have not been well captured by existing credentialing and recognition systems?
• How is the landscape of credentialing changing (or not) with the shift to digital and networked society?

We seek empirical and theoretical research focusing on these questions. Studies should focus on areas such as:

• Ranking, badging, and achievement systems in games, clubs, competitions, and other forms of interest-driven activities.
• Accreditation and certificates outside of formal degree programs, including areas such as work skills training, language, writing and critical capabilities, arts, crafts, and other trades.
• The role of credentials, badges, and other recognitions of achievement in career and reputation development.
• Empirical, theoretical, and critical studies of how companies, groups, institutions, and individuals produce, utilize, and exploit various credentialing and reputation systems.

Apply to the Research Competition here by Friday, January 6, 2012,  5pm PST/8pm EST. 

Informational Webinar: Badges for Lifelong Learning Competition
What: Stage Two Prep: Badge Systems Models & Design
Who Should Attend: Potential Stage Two applicants
Date: Thursday, January 5, 2012
When: 1pm EST / 10am PST
Duration: 60 minutes
Register here: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/534182006

The HASTAC/MacArthur Foundation’s Badges for Lifelong Learning Competition, launched in collaboration with the Mozilla Foundation, focuses on badges as a means to inspire learning, confirm accomplishment, or validate the acquisition of knowledge or skills.

During this live webinar for prospective Stage Two badge design applicants, Erin Knight of Mozilla Foundation’s Open Badges project will delve deeper into the badge conversation and explore badge system design and development considerations. Webinar hosts will review different models of existing badge systems and discuss general guidelines and best practices.

Advanced registration recommended, but not required. The webinar will open at 12:45 PM EST to allow registrants time to establish access to the webinar.

Questions can be submitted in advance by emailing dml@hri.uci.edu with “webinar question” in the subject line.

The HASTAC/MacArthur Foundation’s Badges for Lifelong Learning Competition, launched in collaboration with the Mozilla Foundation, focuses on badges as a means to inspire learning, confirm accomplishment, or validate the acquisition of knowledge or skills.

During this live webinar for prospective Stage Two badge design applicants, we will delve deeper into the badge conversation and explore badge system design and development considerations. We will review different models of existing badge systems and discuss general guidelines and best practices. We will also walk prospective applicants through content, technological and team characteristics that should be considered when developing a badge system and putting together a proposal for Stage Two.

To learn more about the Badges Competition and the Research Competition, visit http://dmlcompetition.net.

Time: 1pm EST / 10am PST
Duration: 60 minutes
Location: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/953618150

Advanced registration recommended, but not required. Webinar will open at 2:45 PM EST to allow registrants time to establish access to the webinar.

Questions can be submitted in advance by emailing dml@hri.uci.edu and including “webinar question” in the subject line.

The 4th HASTAC/MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Competition will begin accepting Stage Two applications from organizations, teams, or individuals skilled in designing digital badge systems for Stage One winners’ and official Competition collaborators learning content. Submissions for Stage Two are due no later than January 17, 2012 at 8pm EST / 5pm PST.
—————————-
BADGES FOR LIFELONG LEARNING COMPETITION

Badges Competition (three stages)

Awards: $10,000 to $200,000

This year’s Competition, held in collaboration with the Mozilla Foundation, is designed to encourage the creation of digital badges and badge systems that support, identify, recognize, measure, and account for new skills, competencies, knowledge, and achievements for 21st century learners wherever and whenever learning takes place. There are three stages: Stage Two finalists will be matched with finalists from Stage One, ultimately forming a collaborative Stage Three team. It is this collaborative Stage Three proposal that is subject to award. Institutional/organizational applicants from outside of the United States are welcome to apply.

View the Badges for Lifelong Learning Competition timeline here.

——————————-

STAGE TWO: BADGE DESIGN AND TECH
Call for badge design, technology, and assessment

Opening: December 12, 2011
Deadline: January 17, 2012 at 5pm PST/ 8pm PST
View the complete Badges for Lifelong Learning Competition Stage Two call for proposals here.
Additional information about the Mozilla Foundation’s Open Badges infrastructure available here.
Informational Webinar on Badge Systems Design and Models with Q&A: Thursday, December 15, 2011 @ 1pm EST. Register for the webinar here.

Stage Two (design and technology stage) seeks organizations, teams, or individuals skilled in the design of badge systems and implementation of badge technology to submit early prototypes for badging systems based on the learning content or programs developed by winning applicants from Stage One and official Competition collaborators.**

Application requirements:
Applications should propose full badge systems and will include badges or sets of badges, assessments, and the technology required to issue, manage, and track or measure performance. Visual materials that graphically represent the proposed badge system, as well as a 1,500 word written description of how the badge system will perform. Stage Two design and tech applicants should describe the badge system they want to build, referring to and describing the characteristics listed here in their written proposal. Applications are due no later than January 17, 2012 at 5pm PST/8pm PST.

Mozilla’s Open Badge Infrastructure makes it easy to issue, display, and manage badges, and as such platforms proposed by Stage Two applicants must work within the Open Badge Infrastructure standards and APIs (http://openbadges.org). Applicants are also encouraged to develop software and widgets that extend the Open Badge Infrastructure. Full information about Mozilla’s OBI, including a beta release, supporting documentation, etc. can be accessed at http://openbadges.org.

Submissions will be displayed online for public comment and assessed by an expert panel of judges before winners are matched with content and programs teams from Stage One.

Who should apply: Organizations, teams, or individuals skilled in design that are interested in submitting an early prototype for badge systems. These applicants will focus their designs on the content and programs proposed by either winning Stage One applicants or Digital Media and Learning Competition Collaborators (including Intel, Microsoft, NASA, Department of Education, American Library Association, Department of Labor, Department of Veteran Affairs, and more)**.

**(NOTE: Badge design and tech applicants that do not use approved content or programs from Stage One or collaborators’ content can still submit their design proposals at this stage, using any content to demonstrate their proposed badge systems. Keep in mind, however, that any successful Stage Two proposals will be matched with winning content from Stage One or collaborator content for collaborating in Stage Three.

Connect with the Digital Media and Learning Competition:

HASTAC Badges Group
Badges for Lifelong Learning on Scoop.it
Twitter: @dmlcomp
Twitter Hashtags: #dmlbadges and #openbadges
DMLComp on Facebook
DML Comp on Google+
DML Comp on LinkedIn
DMLCompNews listserv: Subscribe by sending an email to dmlcompnews-request@duke.edu with “subscribe” in the subject line.

How many words does it take to describe your learning content? Applications for Stage One of the Teacher Mastery and Feedback Badge Competition require a 1000-word written proposal (plus optional additional material if you need). The clock is ticking for today’s deadline (8pm EST/5pm PST), but there’s still time to apply.

Take a look at the call for proposals below to see if your organization has material to be a Stage One contender. Need some ideas to get you going? Check our Badges Competition page to see the kind of learning content proposed by other organizations, or  browse our Collaborators’ content to see what they posted. In conjunction with the Badges for Lifelong Learning Competition, applicants are invited to propose badging systems not only for learning content, but also for teacher learning and feedback. Competitive submissions proposing badge systems that track and promote feedback regarding the competencies and skills as well as the programs and subjects over which teachers acquire expertise will be a central part of the Stage 1 and Stage 2 processes of the Competition. The winning proposal(s) will be awarded funding to develop the proposed badging system.

Stage 1: Teacher Mastery and Feedback Badge Competition

At Stage 1, educators applying to the Competition submit proposals describing subject and content matter for a teacher badge system that recognizes, rewards and offers peer feedback to teachers regarding mastery of capacities and skills. Submissions require a 1000 word written proposal and can include optional supplementary materials that help visualize the proposed badging system. These materials should include systems for recognizing and rewarding some of the capacities, skills and content they believe are needed to effectively teach math, literacy, or digital literacy skills and/or to effectively teach to the Common Core State Standards. For example, giving feedback to students; developing complex skills; or skills needed to teach in an environment that privileges digital or online learning. Deadline for Teacher Mastery and Feedback Badge Competition Stage 1: December 5, 2011, 5pm PST/8pm EST.

By Cathy Davidson

We at HASTAC are extremely proud to announce the opening of a new Competition, designed specifically for educators, “Teacher Mastery and Feedback Badge Competition.”  The purpose is to support educators in their own professional goals, in their desire to develop their skills and knowledge, and in their own professionalism in judging quality—not being judged, top down.  This Competition begins from the premise that great teachers should be acknowledged and, equally, that great teachers work hard to get that way and should be appreciated as such.   Who better to know how to do this than educators themselves?  This Competition invites educators to think about the most creative, interactive, interesting ways of deciding what counts most for great teaching—and how to count it.

My personal investment in this Competition is in that it is based on supporting an ideal of professionalism to one of the great professions that, in recent years, has been something of a whipping boy to many.   Face it, it’s not easy being an educator these days.  It’s not just the de-funding of schools, not just the requirements for end-of-grade testing that may or may not have much relationship to actual knowledge, it’s not just that much of our thinking about what education is for is antiquated and hasn’t been re-thought, top to bottom, for the information and communication revolution that began in April of 1993 when the Mosaic 1.0 browser went public and the Information Age officially began.   No,  it is hard to be an educator these days because teachers have been subjected to some pretty “regulatory” measures lately.

Sometimes these come from higher up, being initiated by politicians rather than educators themselves.   The language is of “certification” and “accreditation” but too often it is not clear if it is real quality that is being measured or something far more bureaucratic, that has little to do with a teacher’s ability to inspire students or to keep up with the changing knowledge in a field.  Too often, these “merit” systems  don’t really measure merit but, instead, undermine teachers’ own sense of professionalism, as if teachers aren’t the ones most concerned with our own high standards (the best ones of us are!).

I’m convinced a lot of the mentality of policing and regulating teachers is contributing to the national crisis of many of the best teachers leaving the profession.   According to the National Education Association, about half of new teachers do not stay in teaching.  In a U.S. Department of Education survey of 7,000 teachers  who had recently quit or said they were likely to quit soon, the #1 reason given was intrusive administration; another was cumbersome and ineffective  accountability procedures.  And some of the other top five reasons were also about this externalizing of  the “metrics” for excellence over the inspiring, creative, intelligent, and powerful ways that motivate kids to learn—and motivate teachers to stay in the classroom, despite the low pay and hard work.

The reason I wrote the “How We Measure” chapter of Now You See It is because all my research, including interviews with dozens of great teachers, underscores that we now have ways of measuring “quality” that are neither about quality, nor even about good ways of measuring.

• If a multiple choice, end-of-grade test only covers about 25% of the actual content/material in a course, what about all the rest?
• If we know that you have to “teach to the test” to ensure your students get the best test scores,  what  happens to the ideal of teaching to improve students’ real skills and knowledge (not just test-taking ability that has little real-world relevance)?
• If we know the biggest motivator to testing well is believing high scores will help get one to college, then what about all the kids who know they will never be able to afford higher education?

All that wasted effort!   All those ways of measuring qualities peripheral to the ones great teachers know are needed to inspire kids.  It’s a tragedy, and it is sending our best teachers out of the profession fast.

Will this one Badges for Teacher Mastery and Feedback Competition solve all problems?  Of course not.  But we are extremely proud, at HASTAC, to announce the opening of a new Competition designed specifically for educators, that puts educators in a leadership role, helping to think about cutting-edge new ways of assessing what they know to be high quality,  important new skills and areas of knowledge.

This isn’t for everybody and shouldn’t be.  We are trying not  to go for one-size-fits-all which we think of as the kind of standardization that de-motivates true learning.   Rather, we invite any educator who is passionate about these issues to compete, to show their ideas on our all-public website, and to inspire others to think deeply, too, about what counts in the classroom, what should be counted, why, and how.

We assume most applicants will be K-12 educators, but we want any teacher, from preschool to professional school, informal and formal learning, who is deeply interested in thinking about new peer feedback and mastery badging systems to apply.  We know that we all have much to learn from one another.

To those educators interested in these issues, we invite you to apply and we thank you for your dedication and your commitment to what, at HASTAC, is our motto:  learning the future together.

Here’s the link to the Competition application page:  http://dmlcompetition.net/Competition/4/teachers.php

Applications due December 5, 2011.

In conjunction with the Badges for Lifelong Learning Competition, applicants are invited to propose badging systems not only for learning content, but also for teacher learning and feedback. Competitive submissions proposing badge systems that track and promote feedback regarding the competencies and skills as well as the programs and subjects over which teachers acquire expertise will be a central part of the Stage 1 and Stage 2 processes of the Competition. The winning proposal(s) will be awarded funding to develop the proposed badging system.

Learn more at http://www.dmlcompetition.net/Competition/4/teachers.php

The HASTAC/MacArthur Foundation’s Badges for Lifelong Learning Competition, launched in collaboration with the Mozilla Foundation, focuses on badges as a means to inspire learning, confirm accomplishment, or validate the acquisition of knowledge or skills.

During this live webinar for prospective Stage Two badge design applicants, we will delve deeper into the badge conversation and explore badge system design and development considerations. We will review different models of existing badge systems and discuss general guidelines and best practices. We will also walk prospective applicants through content, technological and team characteristics that should be considered when developing a badge system and putting together a proposal for Stage 2.

To learn more about the Badges Competition and the Research Competition, visit http://dmlcompetition.net.

• Time: 3pm EST / 12pm PST
• Duration: 60 minutes
• Location: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/741026966
  Advanced registration recommended, but not required. Webinar will open at 2:45 PM EST to allow registrants time to establish access to the webinar.

Questions can be submitted in advance by emailing dml@hri.uci.edu and including “webinar question” in the subject line.

By Cathy Davidson

As more and more fascinating and creative and surprising applications to our DML Badges for Lifelong Learning Competition flood in (we’re at almost 100 and the competition does not close until the end of today), I am wondering if, a hundred years from now, some historian ploughing through the dusty data archives of the Internet, will see this moment as digital learning’s tipping point.    I mean that.

This could be our tipping point for how we measure, the entry point to thinking up an array of new forms of deciding what counts for our era.   This Competition isn’t the end point, but the beginning, but it could tip the balance so that, all over, people are wondering why and how they are measuring quality and contribution the way they are and beginning to think about better ways—better ways that fit their organization’s values and goals.   That’s the key.   So many of us work in schools or in jobs where what counts has been decided for us.   The array of badging systems in these applications is starting to suggest that there are many, many of us who are frustrated with our inherited systems and want to come up with new ways of deciding what we want to count, what we want to value and acknowledge and credit and reward.     A badge system can be the symbol of all that,  visible proof of an organization’s some quality of participation and contribution that, previously, wasn’t even defined.

To understand why this is so important, we have to go back to the origins of the system that we have now, a system designed for the Industrial Age as part of the Taylorized movement of “scientific labor management.”   I speak of the invention of the item-response/multiple choice/bubble test, still the corner stone of our national educational policy, passed in 2002, called No Child Left Behind, and invented in 1914.  It was the tipping point in what I call “scientific learning management,” the application of Taylorized theories of uniform, standardized, timed, regulated productivity to education.

The reason I devoted a chapter of Now You See It to “How We Measure” is because, without a uniform method of assessment, there is no standardization. Standardization is the most important ideal of the Industrial Age–but is quite contrary to the peer-led, interactive, contributory, connected ways of learning and interacting that the World Wide Web affords us.    If we are going to truly transform our Industrial Age institutions for the digital age, we have to re-evaluate how we evaluate.  We have to come up with interactive, process-oriented new methods where peers can decide all the different things that count for them and why, and figure out a way to count them.   We do not have to know what those outcomes will be.   If we did, we would be buying into “scientific leaning management” again where, like all Taylorization, the outcomes are determined in advance of the process (Taylor called them “quotas”).    Outcomes–for labor productivity or learning productivity–are defined in advance.  They are the bar you have to get over, the scale on which you are measured.

In scientific labor/learning management,  there is a set scale that measures only pre-defined kinds of productivity and pre-defined forms of achievement and you are assessed by a standardized form of testing only on those things, and you are them measured against all other workers/learners and rewarded on that scale.  Badges for Lifelong Learning offer us other ways of measuring and other ways of thinking about what qualities and contributions we might want to measure.   

Don’t you see it?   At present, just about everything else about school and work rests on evaluation.  If the goal is set in advance, it changes the process.   Even if you try to modify the process for another end, you are modifying it against a set standard.   A standardized assessment metric is a mentality as much as it is a measurement.

How Did We Get Here?

In the “How We Measure” chapter of Now You See It, I go back to the archives to find out who invented the mulitple choice test, the tipping point in fully turning the movement toward compulsory, public education into a more uniform, standardized system for the Industrial Age and conforming to Industrial Age values.  The invention of that item-response form of standardized assessment, invented in 1914 (and virtually unchanged in the present) is based on Taylor’s “scientific labor management” that is the basis for the assembly line model of industrial manufacturing.   Timed, standardized, uniform, in quality and in method of assessment.   Frederick J. Kelly, the inventor of the standardized test, transformed “scientific labor management” into what I call “scientific learning management.”  The test was the single most important apparatus of an educational mentality that has lasted nearly 100 years.

Here’s the background on Kelly.  He was a doctoral student at Kansas State Teachers’ College in 1914.  Men were fighting in Europe in World War I.  Women were in the factory.   Compulsory public education was now the law of the land in every state and the age by which you could leave school had changed to 16, meaning that two years of secondary education were no longer just college prep but for everyone.   At the same time, the rank of immigrants coming into the secondary schools of the U.S. public school system was swelling at an extraordinary rate, from 200,000 in 1890 to 1.5 milliion in Kelly’s day.   There was a crisis.   Kelly looked at Model T’s being turned out in standardized fashion and came up with the itemized test, first, because it gave some kind of objectivity to what was slipshod processing of all these students through the educational system and, second, because it was cheap, fast, and easy—like turning out the Model T’s.

The reason the bubble test (what Kelly called the Kansas Silent Reading Test) caught on is because, in the decentralized state-based educational system in the U.S., a standardized test allowed some form of assessment across schools, school districts, and across states.   From the U.S., the system spread to the world.  America tests earlier and more often than any other country on the planet, but virtually every country has adopted some form of bubble testing.   And it is an industry, worldwide, with billions of dollars of commercial investment and return.   There is a lot at stake.

But does hierarchical, timed, pre-defined, uniform, standardized testing really measure the kinds of intelligence and activity that our kids need for the challenging world they will face as adults?    Do similar forms of standardized evaluation really work in the workplace today?   The “timed test” is a weird way to measure intelligence, when you think about it.   It’s hard to imagine trying to even explain it to Newton or Leonardo or Galileo . . . that a timed bubble test would be the pinnacle of intelligence would convince great thinkers of the past that the 21st century was for lemmings running fast off the cliffs.   I agree!   It is a system for another century.  It may have worked for that one.  We need better ways of evaluating contribution now.

Sadly, Kelly would have agreed with me.   The father of item-response testing himself wanted to abandon this make-shift way of testing “lower-order thinking” (as it was called in 1914) once the First World War was over.  He became a Deweyesque integrated thinker, who believed all subjects were relevant to one another and answers were processes, not products, to be filled in, bubble after bubble.  He went on to be President of the University of Idaho and tried to reform that university to these more integrated, interdisciplinary, process-oriented “higher order thinking” goals.  His faculty was furious at this presidential plan.  The faculty there had wanted to hire the father of scientific learning and measurement.   By then, even the Scholastic Aptitude Test was using a timed bubble test to decide who would or would not get into university.  Kely was fired from his Presidency within two years.

You can find a short version of this story here, in the Washington Post:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/standardized-tests-for-everyone-i…

Badges for Lifelong Learning: The Competition Closes Today but the Thinking Has Just Begun

If you want to peek in on how this badge competition is unfolding, you can.  You can read about the array of organizations that are taking the chance to try something new, to think in new terms about what they want to measure, and how and why.  Check out the applications.  They are all public.  Some have logos, some do not (that is not a requirement); if you click on their box, you will be able to see their entire application : http://dmlcompetition.net/Competition/4/badges-projects.php?group=dmlc-4b

From these applications, you can learn and get ideas that might for yourinstitution or organization.  That’s the point.  If you are a teacher, you can go into class today and ask your students what they think is most important thing they will learn in the class, what they think they are learning, not just in content but in form.   That, for me, is the best part of this Badges for Lifelong learning:  we can all learn from this process, from these organizations willing to step back and think about what system might work best for them, now.   Standardized testing is not the only way to evaluate quality. 

What Makes a Tipping Point?

Before there can be institutional or organizational change, there often has to be a crisis.  For Kelly, it was World War I and the immigrants who needed to get through the newly required secondary educational system.   For us, now, it is a worldwide economic crisis but also a crisis inhow we work and in defining what work is that is far more complex and complicated than the systems of education that are supposed to prepare kids for independent adult hood.  I don’t mean “job preparation” in a simplistic way.  I mean, systems designed to inspire and reinforce values and forms of responsibility, self-regulation, self-determination, and maturity that can help us to thrive in a complex world.  

This Badges for Lifelong Learning Competition is by no means  the end point but it may be a beginning.  It may be the starting point, a tipping point, in helping us to think about How We Measure, and helping us to think through better ways.    I am gratified beyond words by all those who have taken the last few months to think deeply about what their organization needs and to work together to propose something that the rest of us can be inspired by.   That process, in and of itself, is an original and bold one that very few organizations ever engage in.   It is a bold step towards learning the future together. 

—————————

NOW YOU SEE IT

Two months ago we launched the Badges for Lifelong Learning Competition in Washington, DC, sparking a lively conversation that generated over 150 blog posts, 2400 + tweets, a series of webinars and, by tomorrow at 5pm PST, a flurry of Stage One applications. That’s right — there’s still a day left to submit an application for Stage One:

Submissions will require a 1000 word written proposal. They can also include optional supplementary materials that help visualize the proposed learning content, programs, or activities. These are highly encouraged and can include a video, diagram, screenshots, napkin sketch, or other visual expression that helps depict the proposed learning content, programs, or activities.

Proposals are submitted through the DML Competition submission web site: See Application Instructions
Multiple proposals are permitted from a single organization, but only one may be selected as a winner and move to Stage Two.

Submissions for Stage One are due no later than November 14, 2011 at 5pm PST.

Written Proposal

In your written proposal, please describe the following, including links to relevant material or resources where applicable. It’s not required that you answer ALL of these questions — you may not know the answers yet and that’s okay. The purpose of the questions is to help you fully express the content and opportunity, so that judges can understand the value of your proposal, as well as so that badge designers in Stage Two of the competition have the information they need to propose badge systems that are relevant and valuable for your content.

• The learning content, programs, or activities that will be supported by badges. What are the primary domains of learning reflected by the content, programs, or activities? What are the overall goals for learning? Who is the main learning audience or target community? Does learning occur at a specific place or time (i.e., where and when)? How does learning typically occur? What programs and activities will a learner or group of learners experience?
• The skills, competencies and achievements badges will validate. These may include traditional skills like writing or sports, programming in a particular language, operating a specific type of machinery, or 21st Century skills such as collaboration, communication, and teamwork. One of the benefits of badges over more traditional assessments is their ability to represent a wider range of accomplishments and evidence about an individual’s capacities, and provide a more complete and nuanced picture of their accomplishments and attributes. What are the main skills represented or developed within this content or learning experience? Are these skills and competencies better understood as discrete levels, or measurements of continuing performance?
• Identity and roles. Do the proposed learning content, programs, or activities support specific identities or roles for the learner? For example, will they assume the role of a scientist, sound engineer, or writer, or build the identity of a collaborator, leader or creator?
• Opportunities or Privileges. A badge or set of badges can be designed to provide opportunities or confer privileges to learners. What opportunities or privileges can arise from the content, programs, or activities? For example, advancing through a set of badges may provide access to mentorship or internships, available equipment, review of work by professionals, access to an elite community, or a new experience.
• Existing assessments. What existing assessments or tools, if any, do you have for tracking or measuring performance? Do they align well with badges? How so?
• Partners and Organizations. Does the proposed badge or set of badges require partners and/or other organizations? What are their roles in the learning content, programs, or activities, and potential roles in creating a badge or set of badges? Does your team, or a partner organization, include someone with expertise in assessment?
• Administration of the badges. Who would administer the badges — your organization or a partner? Where would the badges be deployed or displayed? Would they appear on your website or another website? How would this occur and what infrastructure will be required to support it?
• Branding. Ultimately, a badge or set of badges for your community of interest will represent you beyond your institution. What elements of your brand are relevant to your badges? These may be general brand perception elements or specific visual elements like logos, colors, shapes, etc. Consider that you may begin with a single badge but that it may grow into a family of badges and ultimately a full ecosystem.

Important note for organizations with existing badges

If you already have a well articulated design for a badge or set of badges, and/or a supporting technological infrastructure for the learning content, program, or activities, you must still apply through Stage One and describe the core content and programs elements indicated above. Please also briefly describe your existing badge system in your Stage One submission, as well as your goals for the future iteration of your system. You can also include existing badge artifacts in the visual elements of your proposal. If your learning content, programs or activities are selected, you will formally submit the full badge system description, plans, and materials in Stage Two.

The HASTAC/MacArthur Foundation’s Badges for Lifelong Learning Competition, launched in collaboration with the Mozilla Foundation, focuses on badges as a means to inspire learning, confirm accomplishment, or validate the acquisition of knowledge or skills.

During this live webinar for prospective Stage Two badge design applicants, we will delve deeper into the badge conversation and explore badge system design and development considerations. We will review different models of existing badge systems and discuss general guidelines and best practices. We will also walk prospective applicants through content, technological and team characteristics that should be considered when developing a badge system and putting together a proposal for Stage 2.

To learn more about the Badges Competition and the Research Competition, visit http://dmlcompetition.net.

• Time: 3pm EST / 12pm PST
• Duration: 50 minutes
• Location: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/922871318
  Advanced registration recommended, but not required. Webinar will open at 2:45 PM EST to allow registrants time to establish access to the webinar.

Questions can be submitted in advance by emailing dml@hri.uci.edu and including “webinar question” in the subject line.

Recorded on October 25, 2011.

The HASTAC/MacArthur Foundation’s Badges for Lifelong Learning Competition, launched in collaboration with the Mozilla Foundation, focuses on badges as a means to inspire learning, confirm accomplishment, or validate the acquisition of knowledge or skills.

During this informational chat and webinar, the fourth in our series, we will walk prospective applicants through this year’s Competition application process – reviewing each of the three stages and their requirements, the newly extended timeline, and the application requirements.   We will also respond to specific application/process related questions from applicants.

For information on how to participate in the DML Competition Process and Application webinar:

• Time: 3pm EST / 12pm PST
• Duration: 50 minutes
• Location: GoToWebinar at https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/416674326
  Advanced registration recommended, but not required. Webinar will open at 2:45 PM EST to allow registrants time to establish access to the webinar.
• Hosted By:  David Theo Goldberg, Director of University of California Humanities Research Institute and HASTAC Co-Founder;  Matt Thompson, Education Lead, Mozilla Foundation; Sheryl Grant, Director of Social Networking, Digital Media and Learning Competition.

Questions can be submitted in advance by emailing dml@hri.uci.edu and including “webinar question” in the subject line.

*Find archives of the following webinars at:

• Oct. 6, 2011: Badges 101
• Oct. 11, 2011: Badges Competition: Process & Application
• Oct. 17, 2011: Badges 101

*Find questions and answers from Badges 101 here.

Originally recorded on October 17, 2011:

We had our second Badges 101 webinar today with panelists Cathy Davidson, HASTAC Co-founder and Duke University Professor, Sheryl Grant, HASTAC’s Director of Social Networking, and Carla Casilli, Project/Operations Manager for Mozilla’s Open Badges exploring badge basics, explaining Open Badges, offering examples, and fielding participant questions.

If you missed the opportunity to participate in today’s webinar, the archived version is now available for your viewing. Many thanks to all our participants for their thoughtful and engaging questions that made for a great conversation.

Have you viewed this webinar and still have questions? Sheryl Grant has also responded to many questions that were a product of our first Badges 101 webinar in her blog post “Questions and Answers: Badges 101″. You can also check out the Badges for Lifelong Learning Group on HASTAC where we’re aggregating social media around badges.

Originally recorded on October 11, 2011 at 3pm EST

Did you miss the opportunity to participate in yesterday’s “Application and Process” webinar? You can review the archived version or register for one of our other upcoming sessions:

Monday, October 17 at 2pm EST/11am PST
Badges 101

• Register: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/544302734
• Hosted By: Cathy Davidson, Duke University Professor and HASTAC Co-Founder; Sheryl Grant, Director of Social Networking, HASTAC/MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Competition; Erin Knight, Assessment and Badge Project Lead, Mozilla and P2PU; Matt Thompson, Education Lead, Mozilla Foundation; Carla Casilli, Project Manager, Open Badges, Mozilla Foundation.
• During our second Badges 101 webinar, we will address questions about the basics of badges: What are badges? What are open badges? How can badges work for learners? We will also address additional questions about badges as submitted by webinar participants.
• Questions can be submitted in advance by emailing dml@hri.uci.edu and including “webinar question” in the subject line.

Tuesday, October 25th at 3pm EST/Noon PST
Digital Media and Learning Competition Process and Application

• Register: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/416674326
• Hosted by David Theo Goldberg, Director of University of California Humanities Research Institute and HASTAC Co-Founder; Carla Casilli, Project/Operations Manager, Open Badges, Mozilla Foundation.
• During this webinar, the second in our series, we will walk prospective applicants through this year’s Competition process–reviewing each of the three stages and their requirements, the newly extended timeline, and the application requirements. We will also respond to specific application/process related questions from applicants.
• Questions can be submitted in advance by emailing dml@hri.uci.edu and including “webinar question” in the subject line.

Digital Media and Learning Competition 4: Badges for Lifelong Learning

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, in collaboration with Mozilla and HASTAC, invite you to an event on September 15th at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC and online at hastac.org/DML-competition-launch to explore the potential of Badges for Lifelong Learning. Badges are a new assessment tool that will help identify skills mastered in formal and informal settings, virtually and in physical spaces, and in schools, workplaces and communities.

Today learning happens anytime, anyplace, at any age. How can 21st century learners demonstrate their knowledge and skills? Digital badges can inspire learning, unlock jobs, educational and civic opportunities and open new pipelines for talent. The event will feature the announcement of the 4th Digital Media and Learning competition which will provide up to $2 million in grants for innovations in the use of Badges for Learning.

Watch the live video stream from the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington at hastac.org/DML-competition-launch from 9:00am to 10:30am EDT on September 15th.

Featured speakers include:

• The Honorable Arne Duncan, Secretary, U.S. Department of Education
• Charles F. Bolden, Jr., Administrator, NASA
• Emily Stover DeRocco, President, The Manufacturing Institute and the National Center for the American Workforce
• Mark Surman, Executive Director, Mozilla Foundation

It is not hyperbolic to say that 2010 was a phenomenal year for the DML Competition. We partnered with the White House’s National Lab Network initiative, sent 13-year-old Game Changer winner Jack Hanson to meet President Obama at the White House Science Fair, and were honored to have the nation’s first Chief Technology Officer, Aneesh Chopra, congratulate Game Changer winners at the Games for Change Festival in New York, and the Learning Lab winners at a separate event in Washington, DC.

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Public voting on Digital Media and Learning Competition winning projects is now open!

Cast up to 4 votes for your favorite winning projects and help to decide which winning projects will receive additional awards and the title of “People’s Choice.”

Voting will close on June 4th, so don’t wait. Visit http://www.dmlcompetition.net/pligg/ to cast your votes today!

Congratulations to the ten 2010 DML Competition winners announced this week! (Game Changers will be announced in two weeks.)

• Click! The Online Spy School: Engaging girls in STEM activities, peer networking, and gaming
• Conservation Connection: From the West Side to the West Pacific
• EcoBugs
• Fab@School: A Digital Fabrication Laboratory for the Classroom
• Hole-in-the-Wall: Activity Based E-Learning for Improving Elementary Education in India
• MetroVoice: About/In/By Los Angeles
• Mobile Action Lab: Programming Apps for Collaborative Community Change
• Nox No More: Connecting travel logs with simulation, gaming, and environmental education
• Scratch & Share: Collaborating with Youth to Develop the Next Generation of Creative Software
• Youth AppLab

Their videos are below:

Announcing the Digital Media and Learning Game Changers Kids Competition! Please share the web site http://www.dmlcompetition.net/kidscomp and the announcement below with any kids or colleagues who work with young people that may be interested in applying.

Game Changers Kids Competition 2010

Join the 2010 Game Changers Kids Competition for Spore and Little Big Planet players. This is your chance to prove yourself as an innovative video game creator! Winners must be under 18, and will be selected based on “Creativity” and “Playability.”

LittleBigPlanet

Create an inspired LittleBigPlanet™ level with a team of 2 or 3 of your friends, or on your own for a chance to win a PSP® PlayStation Portable device and game!

Learn more at: http://www.dmlcompetition.net/kidscomp/lbp

SPORE Galactic Adventures

Create an inspired adventure with a team of 2 or 3 of your friends, or on your own for a chance to win a visit to Electronic Arts, home to Spore!

Learn more at: http://www.dmlcompetition.net/kidscomp/spore

Public comment now open on finalist videos for this year’s HASTAC/ MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Competition at http://www.dmlcompetition.net/pligg

Finalists for this year’s Digital Media and Learning Competition have now all posted their final three-minute video applications online. Through verbal pitches, story narratives, dramatic renderings, and machinima-style demos, the applicants have used videos to show how they are reimagining learning. We invite you to visit http://www.dmlcompetition.net/pligg to see for yourself and to share your opinions and feedback with the applicants.

In May, you will have the opportunity to help determine which finalist will be named the People’s Choice award winner. Stay tuned to http://www.dmlcompetition.net for details!

We are pleased to announce the finalists for the 3rd HASTAC/MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Competition. Our first round judges had the seemingly impossible task of narrowing down an amazing field of ideas and we are proud to present these 67 finalists who are re-imagining learning in new and innovative ways. You can view the full list of finalists at http://www.dmlcompetition.net/finalists.php.

We invite you to visit http://www.dmlcompetition.net/pligg/ to read through the applications that have advanced to the final round and to share any feedback and your ideas as to what the finalists should consider in advance of the second round. On April 19th, these finalists will post a three minute video that further describes their idea (whether through a verbal pitch, a story narrative, a dramatic rendering, or a machinima-style demo), so your comments during this period are welcomed and appreciated. You will also have the opportunity to view and comment on the round two video applications after April 19th.

Many thanks to all the applicants to this year’s Competition and to all of you that have shared your thoughts and invaluable feedback as part of the public commenting process. We hope you will continue to stay tuned and to participate!

The lists of finalists in both the Game Changers and 21st Century Learning Labs competitions has been announced. It’s available on our web site, but I’ll also paste the list below.

Soon their applications will be available online for additional commenting, and the applicants will be asked to add more detail including multimedia content to further explain their ideas.

Thanks again to all of the amazing educators, activists, and community organizers that applied!

Learning Lab Finalists

• Jodi Asbell-Clarke, Technical Education Research Centers (TERC), Canada
• Climate Changers: An MMO virtual lab game to save a planet
• Mark Belinsky, Digital Democracy, United States
• Roebling – Bridging international cultural and social divides among refugee youth and their classmates
• Michael Bitz, Center for Educational Pathways, United States
• Youth Music Exchange
• Lizann Bolinger, United States
• Science Goes Social via Collaborative Internet Site
• Anne Bray, LA Freewaves, United States
• MetroVoice: About/In/By Los Angeles
• Glen Bull, University of Virginia, United States
• Fab@School – A Digital Fabrication Laboratory for the Classroom
• Matthew Steven Carlos, United States
• MaasaiLab
• Michelle Chen, WNET.ORG, United States
• ‘They Might Be Giants’ INVENTION
• Jori Clarke, Circle 1 Network, United States
• Collections of Collaboration: Protecting Oceans Using the Virtual World to Understand the Real World
• Andrew Crow, Worcestershire County Council (Children’s Services Directorate), United Kingdom
• Mars Missioneers
• Ruth Curran, The Evergreen Project, United States
• Digital Environment Project: Exploring the Natural World Through Interaction
• Anne (Nancy) Degnan, Center for Environmental Research and Conservation, Earth Institute, Columbia University, United States
• 21st Century Sustainability Lab (21CSL) using integrated real and digital world technology
• Joshua Drew, The Field Museum, United States
• From the West Side to the West Pacific: Fijian reef conservation through collaborative student action
• Mindy Faber, Columbia College Chicago, United States
• The Girls, Gaming and Gender Learning Lab (3G Lab)
• Rebecca Ferraro, Second Avenue Software, United States
• Martha Madison’s Marvelous Machines, a collaborative multiplayer multiplatform physics game for middle-school girls
• Ray Ferrer, New York Hall of Science, United States
• Scaling up the New York Hall of Science’s (NYSCI) Virtual Hall of Science project
• Nicomedes Flores Martinez, Manuela Gandarillas Rehabilitation Center for the Blind, Bolivia
• Participatory Learning for Blind Children and Teenagers in Cochabamba, Bolivia
• Rosanna Garcia, Northeastern University, United States
• Nox No More: Connecting travel logs with simulation and gaming for more powerful environmental education
• Douglas Geers, City University of New York, Brooklyn College, United States
• American iDolls
• Marcia Grayson, Walworth Barbour American International School (WBAIS), Israel
• Global Awareness, Investigation and Action (GAIA) in environmental research and social/data networking of secondary students
• Robert Hanner, Biodiversity Institute of Ontario, Department of Integrative Biology, University of Guelph, Canada
• Join the race to identify all the species on the planet as a genetic sleuth
• Peter C. Hart, Dialoggers, Inc., United States
• Peace Lab, an Interactive Course & Role-Play Simulation for Peacebuilders
• Leshell Hatley, Uplift, Inc., United States
• YOUTH LAB: Teens Designing Android Apps (Creative Expression & Mobile Application Development)
• Steven Higgins, Durham University, United Kingdom
• Windows Into Our World
• Hole-in-the-wall Education Limited, India
• Activity Based E-Learning – A Scalable Solution for Improving Quality of Elementary Education
• Michael Horn, Northwestern University, United States
• BugHunt: Experiencing Evolution through Participatory Simulation
• Tamara Hudgins, Girlstart, United States
• Girlstart: a STEM-school-life learning resource
• Julie Keane, Culbreth Middle School, United States
• The Digital Sandbox Club: Middle school students creating apps to solve real world problems
• Sarah Kirn, Gulf of Maine Research Institute, United States
• Young People Take the VITAL SIGNS of Climate Change, Build Scientific Habits of Mind
• David Klevan, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, United States
• Collaborative History Lab: Children of the Lodz Ghetto – A Memorial Research Project
• David Langendoen, Electric Funstuff, United States
• The Great Space Race
• Brenda Mathisen, OpenVES, Inc., United States
• Math Learning Landscape
• Narcisse Mbunzama Lokwa, Infogroup International, Zaire
• World Youth Project
• Brad Mclain, Space Science Institute, United States
• Digital Science Theater Creation using SOS and STEPS
• William Muir, The Solar Cinema, India
• The Solar Cinema: An international platform for men to investigate their role within society
• Mitchel Resnick, MIT Media Lab, United States
• Scratch & Share: Collaborating with Youth to Develop the Next Generation of Creative Software
• Jason Robinson, PlanetYou, Canada
• Terra X: An Interactive Learning Lab
• Ruma Roka, Noida Deaf Society, India
• Learning Ecosystem for the Deaf
• Stephen Sayers, Futurelab Education, United Kingdom
• EcoBugs
• Richard Scullin, MobileEd.org, United States
• Open Mobile Learning: Helping Integrate Mobile Phones with Curriculum
• Candace Hackett Shively, TeachersFirst/The Source for Learning, Inc., United States
• MySciLife: Bringing Science to Life
• Elisabeth Soep, Youth Radio-Youth Media International, United States
• Youth Media International’s App Lab: Programming Collaborative Community Change
• Jennifer Stancil, Carnegie Science Center, United States
• Click! The Online Spy School: Engaging girls in STEM activities, peer networking, and gaming
• Emily Starr, StarrMatica Learning Systems, United States
• Online Interactive Science Labs
• Diane Testa, The Revolving Museum, United States
• Artbotics: Creativity with Art and Technology
• Laura Tomokiyo, Carnegie Mellon University, United States
• Global Ecology: Fostering Student-Scientist Field Studies through Gigapixel Images
• Thomas Vaidhyan, Achieve Educational Systems Inc., United States
• Carbon FootPrint/Global SIM City – A Global Energy, Science, Mathematics & Socio-Cultural lab
• Victoria Vesna, Art | Sci center, UCLA, United States
• NanoLab SAND (Social ArtSci Networked Discourse)
• Debra Woods, Office of Math, Science and Technology Education, United States
• DIGIFab (Discovering Ideas and Generating Inventions): Act Locally, Share Globally
• Eve Wurtele, Iowa State University, United States
• Meta!Blast: A 3D videogame exploration of bioenergy for high school students

Game Changer Finalists

• Jennifer Biedler, Blacksburg High School, United States
• Off-the-Shelf-Games as a Pedagogical Tool to Enhance Critical Thinking in High School Biology
• Scott Comstock, United States
• Aeon Quest: Abduction (Episode 1)
• David Dino, United States
• Stem Cell Sackboy
• Martin Grover, Sambiglyon, United Kingdom
• Stop That Baddie!
• Lori Hanson, United States
• GEO-SPORE 3-D: Master Geometry in a series of 3-D Mathematical Galactic Adventures
• Josh Hughes, Add-A-Tudez Entertainment Company // Team KAIZEN, United States
• Discovery Pier: a whole new spin on Science and Engineering!
• Patrick Keller, United States
• DIASTEM (Digitally Integrating Academics of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math): Students Learn by Doing
• Clinton Koch, Indiana University, United States
• Science Matters: Chemistry Adventures in Little Big Planet
• Kan Yang Li, United States
• Sackboys and The Mysterious Proof
• John Livingston, Tyndale Seminary, Canada
• Euphoric Physics
• Mark Matthews, United States
• Exploring and Promoting Chemistry Through LittleBigPlanet
• Gemma McLean, Gemixin Limited, United Kingdom
• A Day in the Life of a Computer
• Christopher Miller, United States
• Little Big Science Series
• Stephen Mills, LBPmedia, United Kingdom
• Science and engineering based level series – “Powered Down”
• Mathew Powers, Indiana University, United States
• Creatures Classified! An exploration of cataloging creatures across the galaxy
• Susan Stiles, Oak Grove Technologies, United States
• The Space Race
• Nicholas Street, Street Family, United Kingdom
• Finding Sources of Energy

Not many people think our Big Problem is that we don’t play enough games. But game designer Jane McGonigal says that’s exactly what we need to do. Even she describes this idea as “crazy,” but she’s also got a great point. What if all the time we spend playing games was dedicated instead to making the world a better place? And what if we could do both at the same time?

Check out her TED talk and see what you think.

The MacArthur Foundation’s Connie Yowell wrote a great essay at Huffington Post this week highlighting the potential of the Game Changers awards. Here’s an excerpt:

News of the competition has been making its way through the gaming community, and a number of contest proposals have already come in. They contain some provocative creative plots and adventures: finding a missing genius scientist, repelling invaders of human consciousness, and the proper care and feeding of aliens. There are some intriguing new potential heroes, too, including: “Sackboy,” a Geico-like lizard named “Sal,” and an invisible time-traveling professor named “Momo.”

- Connie Yowell: Inspire a New Generation of Game Experiences for Children, HuffingtonPost.com, 2/8/10

Got an inspiring idea?  Digital Media and Learning Competition submissions close on Monday.  Apply now!

Last week North Carolina was hit with more snow than we’ve seen in a few years. This, of course, means school was canceled for most of the week. North Carolinians are not so adept at driving on inches of snow, and we don’t have many snow plows! So one afternoon I brought my daughter and two friends to HASTAC, where they spent the entire afternoon playing LBP. They think I have the coolest job around! (They’re right.) Check out the rapt attention and good times:

Due to popular demand, the 2010 HASTAC/MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Competition has been re-opened to new applicants!

The application system is now open.  Submit your application between now and noon EST on February 15th.

• To be considered, all new applications must be submitted by noon EST on February 15th.
• We cannot guarantee that new applications will be given the opportunity to benefit from public comment and feedback on their applications. Newly submitted applications will not be available in the public commenting system until after February 15th.
• For full information about this year’s Competition, please see http://www.dmlcompetition.net

As planned, previous applicants are now also invited to re-submit their applications to include ideas and collaborators that may have arisen from the public comment. All previous applications must be re-submitted by February 15th to be considered.  Click here to learn more about the Competition timeline.

Click here to create or re-submit your application now. Good luck!

Public commenting on the 2010 HASTAC/MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Competition is now open!  Join the conversation.  Log in to provide feedback and comments on applications.

• Register to add your comments by creating a user name and password (please note the user name and password you created to submit an application will not work; all users must create new logins).  You will receive an activation e-mail, with a link to confirm your address, and can then log in to the system.
• Take a look at as many of the brief 50-word project descriptions as you can.  If something looks interesting, you can either read more (a 300-word description) or save it and come back later for a closer look.  
• Once you’ve taken a look, we encourage you to discuss (post a comment) or tell a friend.
• Browse around the site.  You can search for projects by tag words that interest you, like robots or climate change, or look at the tag cloud for other clues.  You can see which projects are generating the most comments or see which ones were commented on most recently.  
• Navigate, explore and share your thoughts.  Do you think the idea is a good one? Do you have any suggestions on how to make it better? Interested in collaborating?  The applicants will have a chance to incorporate your input during the resubmission period.
• All of the projects have distinct URLs, so you can tweet, blog and share applications and solicit feedback.

As the deadline for preliminary applications draws ever closer, we wanted to take this opportunity to encourage you to submit your application today. The application system is open and will remain so until 11:59pm EST tonight–Friday, January 22nd.

However, please don’t wait until the last minute and risk any potential snafus that could jeopardize your eligibility!

Here at HASTAC, we will make every effort to address any and all questions and/or technical difficulties even today–the deadline. Unfortunately, given the heavy traffic, we can in no way guarantee that last day queries or technical difficulties can be resolved in time to meet the deadline.

Don’t risk it! If you have your application ready to go, go ahead and submit it here.

Best of luck!

As the deadline for preliminary applications draws closer, we wanted to take this opportunity to encourage folks to submit their applications as soon as possible. The application system is open and will remain so until 11:59pm EST on January 22nd.

However, please don’t wait until the last minute and risk any potential snafus that could jeopardize your eligibility!

Here at HASTAC, we will make every effort to address any and all questions and/or technical difficulties even on the day of the deadline. Unfortunately, given the heavy traffic, we can in no way guarantee that last day queries or technical difficulties can be resolved in time to meet the deadline.

Don’t risk it! If you have your application ready to go, go ahead and submit it here:
http://dmlcompetition.net/fastapps/login.php

Best of luck!

How do we create meaning with technology?

Leba Rubinoff of Mobile Movement, one of our 2008 Digital Media & Learning winners, asked that question in a blog post months ago, which struck me as one of the fundamental questions for the 21st century. We have the technology, we know the potential, we are flooded in a sea of information. How, then, can technology be used to create meaning?

Leba wrote, “I am always thinking about how to create intimacy and meaning with technology. It’s hard to do. Really hard. Can we move people through technology? Can we inspire young people in Kenya and the US and make connections between people who have never met? Can we promote global citizenry one-to-one? And can we share those stories so others want to join the movement? I think we can.”

I thought about Leba’s questions during my conversation with Sapna Shahani and Angana Jhaveri of Women Aloud Videoblogging for Empowerment (WAVE), Digital Media & Learning winners from 2009. Both women are in India at the moment, so we used Skype to communicate, losing our connection five times during the one and a half hours we spoke. They were calling from a rural part of India, but despite the technological interruptions, it felt as though we were sitting in the same room. Their passion for the project was so palpable and their stories so vivid that it was easy to experience that familiar tug of participation, wanting to travel to India and see their project in action.

A few months ago, Sapna and Angana gathered 50 women from 28 states (and Delhi) for training, to show them how to use video and social media tools to capture the stories of the people and areas where they live. “Every state in India has a different language, and each region is so culturally different,” Sapna told me. According to India’s Constitution, there are 22 recognized languages, although the Indian Census estimates hundreds more different dialects and roughly 2,000 spoken languages.

When I asked Sapna and Angana what it was like to gather everyone together for the training, they both commented on the moment when each of the 50 women went around the room introducing themselves, saying their names and where they came from. “Some parts of India are completely foreign, so to get everyone together at once, it was the first time all of us met someone from each part of the country. We all felt how amazing it was to be together.”

Each of the 50 women have returned to their homes to begin documenting stories, using their recently acquired video and editing skills. Eventually, the videos will become videoblogs on a new Women Aloud Videoblogging for Empowerment site, something we plan to announce on HASTAC.org when the stories are up and ready to share.

I asked if the women would reconvene for a reunion at some point, perhaps when the site launched. Sapna’s response says much about the women involved and what they can, and will, accomplish. “We did not budget for a second gathering, but the women decided that they will raise funds themselves and find a way to make it happen.” As our world becomes more technological and connected, that kind of intention really stands out.

When we began to wrap up our call, Angana asked a question that others may be able to help answer. What is the best way to prepare for the launch of a website? When we spend so much time preparing for an exciting moment, often one that involves real people in real life, how do we translate a kind of stage moment to a networked, distributed environment? Analytics are fun to track, but what else can be done to make an online event meaningful? If you were working on Sapna and Angana’s project, what would you do?

The online application system for the 2010 HASTAC/MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Competition is now open. To apply, visit http://www.dmlcompetition.net/fastapps/login.php. You have until January 22, 2010 to submit your preliminary application.

To make sure that your application process runs smoothly, please keep the following in mind:

Your application will be made visible to the public for commenting on January 22. At that time, the application system will stop accepting new applications and be open for comment.

Prior to submitting your application, you will be given an opportunity to review it. However, once you hit “FINISH” on the application, you will NOT be allowed to revise or edit your application until the resubmission period opens on February 3rd.

The resubmission period of February 3rd-15th is to allow applicants to revise and strengthen their applications by tweaking, editing, broadening, etc., the initial application to incorporate any useful feedback or ideas offered by the public. The structure of the application form will not change.

It is not necessary for you to revise your application based on the feedback you receive, however, all applications MUST be resubmitted (even those that have not been edited or changed in any way) between February 3rd and 15th.

Please remember that you may only be the primary applicant on ONE application, although you may be listed as a collaborator on other applications. Applicants may be disqualified if they are discovered to have submitted multiple applications by using different email addresses or by using other (real or fictitious) identities to apply.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to email dml@hri.uci.edu. While we can’t give you feedback or advice on your application, we are happy to answer any specific questions.

BEST OF LUCK IN YOUR APPLICATION!

www.dmlcompetition.net

www.twitter.com/dmlComp

I’ve been exploring the wide world of LittleBIGPlanet user communities today. (And it is a very BIG world!) I came across this great forum post on “Creating Your Level: The Four P’s.” Planning, Preparation, Playtesting, and Publicity – it’s good advice, and should be helpful for anyone developing content for the Game Changer awards in this year’s competition.

Thanks to the MacArthur Foundation’s collaboration with EA and Sony for the Digital Media and Learning Competition, I have been learning more about the games Little Big Planet (on PlayStation3) and Spore: Galactic Adventures (on Macintosh/Windows).

I haven’t had as much time as I’d like to play them (of course) but I have been dipping my toe in the water. In Spore I have graduated from the primordial ooze on up to “creature stage,” and in LBP I have been exploring The Savannah and unlocked the tools to make my own “level” in the game.

Being the social network junkie that I am, one of the features I tend to check out first are the profiles and friends. But sadly, I don’t have any friends on either network! If you play one of these games, would you friend me up? I’m using my standard handle rubyji in both My Spore and the the PlayStation network. I’m especially looking for people who are using these games for social or educational benefit.

Also, what are your favorite sources of information about these games and communities of game players? I ask for myself, but also because I am reaching out to LBP and Spore players to let them know they can submit content they make (or plan to make) in these games for awards of up to $50,000 in the Digital Media and Learning Competition! Please pass on the web site DMLcompetition.net to people who might be interested, and/or tell me where to follow up. Thanks!

McGill research team sees possibility of training brain to react differently

BY SHANNON PROUDFOOT, CANWEST NEWS SERVICE

JANUARY 6, 2010

**Reblogged from The Ottawa Citizen, http://www.ottawacitizen.com/health/Better+mental+health+through+video+gaming/2409983/story.html**

Video games already provide entertainment and diversion, but they may soon boost self-esteem and improve mental health.

Based on knowledge that many of our reactions to life’s stresses happen in a split-second and often without our awareness, Mark Baldwin’s team at McGill University in Montreal started wondering whether they could program people’s brains to react differently.

“All we did was say, ‘OK, can we train it?’ And once you ask the question, you kind of think, ‘Why not?’ ” the psychology professor says. “You can train anything else. You can train a golf swing, you can train arithmetic skills through practice and drills, so why shouldn’t you be able to train some of these automatic thoughts about social experiences, about self and others, about relationships?”

They thought of how people who play a lot of Tetris start to think and even dream about bricks falling from the sky, he says, and video games seemed an ideal medium to retrain people’s “mental habits” because they’re engaging and motivational.

One could argue that meditation is based on this same notion of retraining thought processes, he says, but efforts backed by psychological science have only appeared in the last five years and the challenge is identifying which thought processes to practise.

He doesn’t think it’s possible to use a video game to convince people of something high-level like the belief they’re a good person, he says, but you can practise basic reactions like paying attention to positive feedback and ignoring criticism.

They’ve already developed some simple games available at MindHabits.com, Baldwin says, including one in which players find the smiling face amid a sea of frowning faces and another where a smiling face appears each time a player clicks on a word related to them, such as their name or year of birth.

“It’s just like Pavlov’s dog. This boosts self-esteem, makes people feel a little less aggressive in response to insults,” Baldwin says. “It’s a long way from being a therapy of any kind; these things are games and little laboratory tasks. But someday I think there’s going to be some use for this as a part of some kind of psychological intervention.”

In the future, the notion of “games” providing entertainment and “applications” doing something useful will converge, he says, pointing out that Nintendo’s Brain Age and Wii Fit have already kicked off that trend.

“In terms of where the future goes, that’s what makes me hopeful that the application idea is growing and the line between them will get blurred and you’ll see more of these positive efforts being integrated with entertainment-type games,” Baldwin says.

- – -

About this series: The World Future Society, a Washington, D.C., think-tank founded in 1967, tracks future trends in technology, politics and society. This week, Canwest News Service highlights five of the organization’s most fascinating forecasts for 2010 and beyond.

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

Today, over at HASTAC.org, former Digital Media and Learning Competition Young Innovator award winner Daniel Poynter (Digital Democracy Contest) posted a selection of interviews that he taped with various 2008 Digital Media and Learning Competition award winners at last year’s winner’s event. Check them out to learn what lessons former Digital Media and Learning Competition winners wish they had known before embarking on their journeys (and some things that you might want to consider when developing your applications).

Reblogged from “Lessons Learned from 10 DML Winners”

The Digital Media and Learning Competition is all about learning. How do digital environments change learning? What do “innovators” in this field learn from their experiments?

At the DML ceremony in Chicago April 17, 2009 the Digital Democracy Contest and GNIC team asked 2008 winners, “What do you wish you would have known last year in order to be more effective?” Videos of their responses are below:

Howard Rheingold – create realistic goals and budgets. Find great programmers.
Hugo Berkeley – keep an open mind, react to realities, and hold on to what’s best about your idea.
Jessica Fraser - network with other grantees.
Amira Fouad - let your users guide your project.
Steve Anderson – it’s very important and valuable to connect with other grantees.
Jon Santiago - think about your “theory of change” and think of how to track those changes.
Adriana Pentz – starting a project from scratch within a year is very difficult. Good projects take time. Also, grantees will be more successful by being candid about challenges in their work with other grantees, MacArthur and HASTAC.
Rik Panganiban – remember those two or three success stories (not just statistics) which show your project’s impact. Catching those stories on video is even better!
Michael Blockstein - Spend a lot of time planning. Set up a clear pathway and strategy. Build relationships.
Edwin Bender – interact with your users early. Find out what’s important to them.

Happy New Year!

Here at Digital Media and Learning Competition headquarters, we are increasingly excited as the opening of the online application system draws closer. We can’t wait to see the ideas that you have percolating and the many innovative ways you are reimagining learning!

To give you some additional time to shine up those initial applications and get them ready for prime-time, we are happy to announce that we have extended the Competition timeline by one week. This means that  the online application system will now open and begin accepting applications on January 15th.  The due date for preliminary applications has been extended until January 22nd, while resubmitted final first round applications (taking into consideration any public feedback/comments received)  will be due no later than February 15th.

Please check out the revised timeline here: http://www.dmlcompetition.net/timeline.php and feel free to email us dml@hri.uci.edu with any questions.

One day last week my third grader got out of school early due to winter weather. I brought her into work with me, and down to Ruby’s office where she got to play LittleBigPlanet (LBP) on the HASTAC research PlayStation3. She’d never played on a PlayStation before–her only gaming experience was with the Wii and some American Girl and PopTropica games on the internet. It was interesting for me to watch her learn and play. It was fun for her to play a game she’d heard about from a bunch of her (boy) friends. (In fact, she only has one girl friend who she knows plays on a PS–and she has an older brother.)

We talked together about the experience, below. I’m “M” (me) and she’s “D” (daughter).

M: So, what did you think of LBP?
D: I thought it was really fun and cool. It was a whole new experience.

M: Your Sackgirl was pretty adventurous looking. Did you think of her as a character acting in the game or was she you?
D: I just put together crazy things. I thought of her as me, sort of. But sometimes she was someone else.

M: How about when you got stuck and got frustrated? You killed yourself so you could continue with the game.
D: I thought it got pretty frustrating, but once I got to this thing where you have to grab and that was pretty hard. So I killed myself then and went back to my pod.

[As her mother, this concerned me, I have to say. I think it would be good for there to be an eject button or something like that so that she didn't have to kill her Sackgirl to start over. I don't really like that message. In fact, it made me very uncomfortable. This is exactly the sort of gaming aspect that many parents don't like and won't buy into. It's not super violent, but she's 8 years old. There's no violence that's good violence at that age (at any age?).]

M: What was your favorite part about LBP?
D: I liked where you could get points, and talk to people and do cool things when you got the points. But I also liked when the people talked to you and told you clues so you could put the clues together like a puzzle.

M: Do you think you would’ve been able to figure out the things they told you on your own?
D: Maybe. When I had to dress Charlie, one of the guys told me I had to dress him. So I had some sneakers and a torso, so I put those on Charlie then the bridge fell down. So I sorta had to figure out some stuff on my own. It was like puzzle pieces.

M: What did you think of earning prizes and stickers and stuff?
D: My favorite part was when you earn stickers, cuz you had a long line of bubbles that you bang into.

M: Do you think you learned anything?
D: Not really. It was fun and I sorta learned how to grab things, but that’s not exactly educational.

M: Would you like to play games like this even if there were some educational parts to it?
D: Yeah. It would be still fun. It wouldn’t be as fun, but it would still be pretty fun. So I take that as a yes.

D: I thought LBP was really fun. It was cool how you could stick things almost everywhere and how you had a poppit that could pop out. At first it got really frustrating but then it got really easy. Once it got easy I moved on to the next level but that level was HARD.

M: I’m sure that playing LBP would be even more fun for D if she were playing with her friends. And I can see how that might bring interaction and collaboration into the game in ways that were nonexistent as she played by herself. I hope that we can bring a friend or two in to play with her sometime soon, and if so, we’ll write about that.

I also think it’s telling that when I asked her about whether she thought she’d learned anything, she had already positioned “learning,” “not learning” and “things educational” in a very specific category, and “fun” wasn’t in that category. Meeting challenges doesn’t count as learning in her current paradigm. This is exactly the problem that our competition addresses: How can we make it so that learning is not segregated to specific subjects and situations, but is more integral to everyday life? And maybe even fun.

Today HASTAC re-launched the website for the Digital Media and Learning Competition (dmlcompetition.net) with the long-awaited details of the 2010 Competition! This competition builds on two successful years of supporting projects that advance and DO participatory learning.

Each year, the competition addresses different themes. In 2008, 17 projects won Innovation or Knowledge-Networking Awards. In 2009, 19 projects won Innovation or Young Innovators awards. This year’s theme is Reimagining Learning and has brought some exciting new players to the table. We have been given the opportunity to participate in National Lab Day – part of the White House’s Educate to Innovate Initiative – on our Learning Lab Designers awards. And we’re also collaborating with videogame makers Sony and EA on the Game Changers awards.

Another new element of this year’s competition is you, dear reader. We will host public comments on the applications as soon as people begin submitting them in January, and in May we will invite you to vote on your favorites to select the winners of the People’s Choice Awards. (See our timeline for more details about this process.)

We’ll be writing more on this blog about learning labs, game changers, and participatory learning. So keep reading, and visit the re-launched DMLcompetition.net, to learn more about this year’s competition. Put on your thinking caps and start developing ideas now. The initial application period will be open from January 7th to 15th. We can’t wait to see what you will do!

Originally posted on Cathy N. Davidson’s Cat in the Stack blog on HASTAC.org

I’ve been thinking about the ways we learn when we make things and how differerent that experience is from learning in order to answer exam questions (especially multiple choice) about things, subjects, or ideas that other people have made.   What is most different is that, when you make something you learn about failure and from failure.   When you “get the answer wrong,” you fail.   Therein lies all the difference.

Whether you are making a robot, a sweater, a poem, a research paper, a mod of a video game, or a donut,  the first time you do it you draw from and build upon a range of similar experiences, some of them successful, some of them not.  Trial-and-error is part of the process but so is your own, personal toolkit.   Some of those tools might be actual, physical, material tools.  Others are bodily repertoires of gestures or words or sounds or experiences.  And still others are histories of past successes and failures, some of which have direct relevance to what you are making, some of which are important simply because they remind you that you survive and even thrive after failure–and success does not stop the process of learning. In all of these settings, actually doing the process becomes a learning lab, a place of experimentation and process and exploration and (dare I say it?) fun.

I’m especially taken with futurist Alvin Toffler’s idea that the literacy of the 21st century is not just reading, writing, and arithmetic  but the ability to learn, unlearn, and relearn.   Unlearning doesn’t thrill everyone.  Some find it profoundly disorienting to realize that what they know doesn’t serve them in the present and they have to not just learn something new but get rid of a lot of baggage and start again.  But the more you spend your life making things, the more you realize that unlearning is a skill too.  It is the novice who thinks every word that issues from the pen of the expert is perfect and that as they write their first major independent project (right, dissertation students?) they have to get it perfect the first time around.   Part of great writing is being willing to chuck a lot.  Whole chapters.  Whole books.  And to realize that it is the process, the confidence that comes from both learning and unlearning (together) that allows one to relearn and achieve.

In his marvelous book Shop Class as Soulcraft, political philosopher and motorcycle mechanic Matthew B. Crawford argues that in the 1990s shop classes were abandoned all over America in favor of computer classes, training students for the technologies of the future.   Quite frankly, I don’t see that many computer labs–and the idea that you would substitute one for the other is tragic.  I can’t think of anything that more prepares one for the process-oriented aspects of computer programming and remixing and Do-It-Yourself video and music mashups and all of the other exciting participatory aspects of learning online together than building something and shop class is a sanctioned place, within education, for doing just that. 

But here’s where I depart from Crawford’s diagnosis.  It wasn’t just the shop class that ended in the 1990s, it was so many hands’ on classes where students made things.  Excellence more and more was determined by those standardized tests, whether ACT and SAT’s (as if every brilliant student had to go to college and was a failure if she did not) or, later, the “standards based education” of No Child Left Behind.   Not only did we lose shop classes but we also lost computer labs in most schools along with art classes, music classes, band, languages, and even gym.  

I personally believe that losing those classes where kids actually move around, where they don’t have to sit in one place all day, looking forward at a teacher who teaches them how to give answers, may well be the biggest contributor we have not only to the high drop-out rate but to such attention diseases of our decade as ADD and ADHD.  Coupled with no longer walking to school, with the extreme limitations parents and teachers today put on kids’ physical experience of play,  we have created home and school environments for the sedentary.  I mean the intellectually sedentary too.  Lack of movement, lack of process, lack of trial and error, lack of participation and getting your hands dirty, lacking of making things, making ideas, making art and music:   we’ve substituted a very ends-oriented idea of knowledge when digital culture should be all about how we get there, with an understanding that “there” is never finished.  It always needs updating.  Like that project in the basement that never is perfect enough,  life online is a constant, a process.

Where in schools today do we teach kids not only how you draw upon everything you know–and that which your friends know–to make something but, once made, you then use that knowledge to move on to the next thing?  The end product is not the point.  It is the struggle and the joy of getting there.

by Cathy N. Davidson, Duke University

Reblogged from the Durham Herald Sun, December 11, 2009

I often lecture or blog about grading, arguing that the way we now assign grades is an antiquated system that may have worked well for the Industrial Age but that undercuts what is valuable, exciting, or potentially useful for interactive thinking in the Digital Age. I’m often critical of so called “standards-based education” such as No Child Left Behind, with its reduction of evaluation and assessment to standardized testing.

But I’m actually criticizing here a much broader way of thinking that reduces the process of thinking to “a result,” even to “the best result chosen from among a select number of choices” (i.e., multiple choice exams).

That concept of grading seems the exact opposite of critical and daring thinking, and inconducive to the kind of integrative, creative, innovative thinking our era demands, in all fields from the arts to the theoretical sciences and engineering.

Whenever I talk about new ways of evaluating, someone in the audience inevitably retorts, “Well, that’s subjective. It may be fine for humanists — but it would never work for science. We need rigorous, standardized testing to produce the highly specialized scientists necessary for our world.”

Maybe.

But within a minute, I can get this same person pontificating in a different direction simply by switching the topic a little, lamenting, “and isn’t it terrible that America today undervalues science and produces so few scientists?” No argument there!

But now let’s put those two arguments together. What if it turned out that our “rigorous” standardized, multiple choice form of testing — in all fields, including science and math — selected out those who do well on standardized tests but who lack precisely the forms of inquisitive, inductive, hypothetical reasoning and willingness to tirelessly test out a hypothesis that is the basis of the experimental method and exactly what science demands?

Our entire practice of testing is based on a theory of knowledge that is out of date. It used to be thought that brains and neural connectors grew in the same way feet do, tiny at birth, growing until maturity.

We now know that infants have an overabundance of neurons and that, if neural development proceeds on course, they will shear off about 40 percent of their neurons on their way to an adult understanding of the world, working on streamlining neural pathways by repetition and experience, using the scaffolding of one experience (and that of their culture) on which to build ever-more reflexive ways of reacting on which to then build more nuanced, interactive, reflective ways of thinking later.

Much of our standardized testing is still based on an outmoded filling-station view of neural development and of knowledge. Heads don’t fill up with knowledge. New kinds of knowledge build upon older knowledge and often replace that knowledge. Everything works in that process of selection, adaptation, revision, selection.

Memorizing correct answers to questions has some function, but it is not at all clear to anyone what that function is or how useful it is in an era of search and browse.

Socrates had it right. If you want to model higher level thinking, you don’t lecture about your insights achieved as the result (“the answers”) of such thinking. You certainly don’t have students take a multiple choice test to ensure that they remember your conclusions. If you want to encourage the love of thinking and the skill of critical thinking, you question them, you hear their ideas, you debate them, you give them feedback, you lead and mislead them, you intellectually thrust and parry, you joust, and you have them reach conclusions by learning which intellectual moves are fruitful and which lead to dead ends.

That Socratic method is used in law schools today, but I’m suggesting should be true for all fields — including the sciences.

It is a profoundly humanistic method and, to make great scientists, it is that profoundly humanistic method that is required, the ability to think through an idea, to revise an idea in light of other ideas, to test and question, to think critically, to analyze data, to respond to the arguments or hypotheses of others, and on and on.

It may not yield the highest test scores on SAT’s, but it may well be what sorts out the kind of process-oriented mental habits of those who are most likely, someday, to think like Einstein.

Einstein, of course, grew up loving to make little mechanical devices. And he had, as a very young man, two favorite books: Euclid’s “Elements” and Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason.”

He was one of the world’s most famous dyslexics, but he was also someone who, throughout his life, understood the contuities between mechanism, geometry, number theory, a priori concepts and experience.

How do you answer a multiple choice test for pure reason? I fear that some of the standardized assessment aspects of No Child Left Behind may well be constructed to leave behind exactly those non-linear, inductive, intuitive, critical, curious, humanistic, and scientific thinkers who, if nurtured, might well grow up wanting to Be Like Einstein.

This piece was reblogged from The Herald Sun, http://heraldsun.com/bookmark/5030564/article-HASTAC
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A network of educators and digital innovators is playing a role in the White House campaign to encourage students to pursue science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).

The HASTAC network will administer the third-annual Digital Media and Learning Competition.

The competition will award $2 million in support of participatory learning experiences that incorporate STEM principles.

The competition launches Monday and winners will be announced in spring 2010.

HASTAC (an acronym for Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Advanced Collaboratory) was founded and is primarily operated at the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke and the University of California Humanities Research Institute at the University of California, Irvine.

Duke’s Cathy N. Davidson, who co-founded HASTAC with David Theo Goldberg of the University of California Humanities Research Institute, said, “We are proud that an interdisciplinary humanities-inspired network like HASTAC has a leadership role in administering the Digital Media and Learning Competition. We are honored to be so central to President Obama’s vision for education in the 21st century.”

Awards will be given in two categories:

- 21st Century Learning Lab Designers will receive awards for learning environments and digital media-based experiences that allow young people to grapple with social challenges through STEM-based activities.

- Game Changers awards recognize creative new games or additions to Sony’s LittleBigPlanet(TM). These games and game expansions should offer young people engaging game play experiences that incorporate principles of science, technology, engineering and math.

The HASTAC competition is supported by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to the University of California, in collaboration with Duke University.

On the Web: For more information about the competition, visit dmlcompetition.net.

Just one reason we are so proud of our Digital Media and Learning Competition winners and their participatory learning projects?  Engagement with digital media makes kids productive offline citizens!

I’ve spent the morning rereading some of Howard Rheingold’s ideas on 21st century literacies, the skills required to navigate the digital age. Attention, participation, collaboration, network awareness, and critical consumption of information are the key skills he discusses. Where do we teach those skills? How do we learn them? For starters, we learn them from reading Rheingold. I highly recommend his blogs for the San Francisco Chronicle Check out Twitter Literacies http://tiny.cc/vvD8s and Attention Literacies http://tiny.cc/MHBfS

Besides being the author of the classic Smart Mobs, Howard was a winner of our 2008 Digital Media and Learning Competition. He’s a master at participatory learning and he built a Social Media Classroom for his project. You can check that out here:
http://socialmediaclassroom.com/

I spent some of the wee hours of the Thanksgiving break actually playing LittleBigPlanet for the first time.  (I have a son who is too young for TV, so gaming was restricted to after his bedtime.)  I definitely get what all the fuss is about!  The beautiful graphics have a depth my partner described as “the opposite of the Wii.” The personalization was reminiscent of Second Life, without being nearly as flexible of course.  And the game play was not unlike the Atari video games of my youth, with a lot of jumping around, picking up glowing prizes, and avoiding dangerous pits.

The game does a nice job of walking the newbie through the basic skills and concepts, gradually ramping up the challenges to dexterity and problem-solving.  After completing the first three story levels a whole new world of user-created community levels opened up before me, as well as an area of blank canvas for me to create my own levels!

…And that’s as far as I’ve gotten, but I will continue to report back here as I learn this game.  If you are a Playstation gamer, and especially if you are interested in “serious games” or real-world applications of video games, drop me a line.  Rubyji is my Playstation network ID, feel free to friend me there.

I thought folks might be interested to see the official press releases from the White House and the MacArthur Foundation about last week’s launch of National Lab Day and the Educate to Innovate program, of which the Digital Media and Learning Competition is a part.

They are excerpted below. Click the links in the previous paragraph to read the full document.

Speaking to key leaders of the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Math) community and local students, President Obama announced a series of high-powered partnerships involving leading companies, foundations, non-profits, and science and engineering societies dedicated to motivating and inspiring young people across America to excel in science and math.
[...]

Today at the White House, President Obama launched the “Educate to Innovate” campaign, a nationwide effort to help reach the administration’s goal of moving American students from the middle to the top of the pack in science and math achievement over the next decade. President Obama announced a series of partnerships involving leading companies, universities, foundations, non-profits, and organizations representing millions of scientists, engineers and teachers that will motivate and inspire young people across the country to excel in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).
[...]

National STEM Game Design Competitions: The MacArthur Foundation, Sony Computer Entertainment America, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) and its partners (the Information Technology Industry Council, the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, and Microsoft) are launching a nationwide set of competitions that include the design of the most compelling, freely-available STEM-related videogames for children and youth. The competitions will include the 2010 Digital Media and Learning Competition, a $2 million yearly effort supported by the MacArthur Foundation that advances the most innovative approaches to learning through games, social networks and mobile devices. One of the competitions will be open only to children, to help them develop 21st century knowledge and skills through the challenge of game design.  This year Sony will participate in one segment of the competition and encourage the development of new games that build on the existing popular video game Little Big Planet.

- whitehouse.gov: President Obama Launches “Educate to Innovate” Campaign for Excellence in Science, Technology, Engineering & Math (Stem) Education, 11/23/09

As President Obama called for new efforts to reimagine and improve education in science and math, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced a $2 million open competition for ideas to transform learning using digital media. The competition seeks designers, inventors, entrepreneurs, researchers, and others to build digital media experiences – the learning labs of the 21st Century – that help young people interact, share, build, tinker, and explore in new and innovative ways. Supported by a grant to the University of California at Irvine, the competition was planned and announced in partnership with National Lab Day, a movement to revitalize science, technology, engineering and math in schools that was highlighted at a White House event today.

Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA), in cooperation with the Entertainment Software Association and the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, will team with MacArthur to support Game Changers, a new component of the competition. Game Changers will provide awards for the creation of new game experiences using PlayStation’s popular video game, LittleBigPlanet™. [...]

The competition is designed to promote “participatory learning,” the notion that young people often learn best through sharing and involvement. Participatory learning, as defined by the competition, is a form of learning connected to individual interests and passions, inherently social in nature, and occurring during hands-on, creative activities. Successful learning labs and games will exploit all of these elements. Awards will be made in two categories: 21st Century Learning Lab Designers and Game Changers.

The competition includes three rounds of submissions, with public comment at each stage. The public will also be invited to judge the final candidates, including the selection of People’s Choice awards in each category.

“Learning labs are digital media projects that promote hands-on participatory learning,” said Cathy Davidson, Duke University Professor and David Theo Goldberg, Director of the University of California Humanities Research Institute, HASTAC co-founders. “They promote learning together with others, by interactively doing, trying, sometimes failing. When we think of laboratories, the image of beakers and microscopes come to mind, but learning labs help us reimagine and expand our understanding of learning across all domains of knowledge.”

Competition winners will join an existing community of 36 awardees from 2007 and 2008, including a video blogging project for young women in Mumbai, India; a cutting-edge mobile phone application that lets children conduct digital wildlife spotting and share that information with friends; a project that leverages low-cost laptops to help indigenous children in Chiapas, Mexico learn by producing and sharing their own media creations; and an online platform for 200 classrooms around the world that allows young people to monitor, analyze, and share information about the declining global fish population.

- macfound.org: $2 Million Competition Seeks Ideas to Transform Learning, 11/23/09

We are thrilled that yesterday’s announcement has generated so much excitement and that word is traveling fast through the blogosphere (you can keep track of our coverage by monitoring our Delicious account).

We know that many of you have questions. Here at headquarters we are putting the final touches on this year’s shiny new (and President Obama endorsed!) Competition.  Details and more information will be forthcoming December 14th, including information about when the Competition will actually open, the application structure, materials, deadlines, FAQs, etc.

Stay tuned to this blog, follow us on Twitter, or join the Competition list-serv for all the latest details!

One of the first public hints about this year’s competition theme was this story in yesterday’s New York Times.

To improve science and mathematics education for American children, the White House is recruiting Elmo and Big Bird, video game programmers and thousands of scientists.

President Obama will announce a campaign Monday to enlist companies and nonprofit groups to spend money, time and volunteer effort to encourage students, especially in middle and high school, to pursue science, technology, engineering and math, officials say.

The campaign, called Educate to Innovate, will focus mainly on activities outside the classroom.
…
Science and engineering societies are promising to provide volunteers to work with students in the classroom, culminating in a National Lab Day in May.

The MacArthur Foundation and technology industry organizations are giving out prizes in a contest to develop video games that teach science and math.
…
“We’re finding extraordinary engagement with games,” said Connie Yowell, director of education for MacArthur. If the engagement is combined with a science curriculum, she said, “then I think we have a very powerful approach.”

- NYTimes.com: White House Pushes Science and Math Education, Nov 22, 2009

Working for HASTAC has it’s perks. Today’s Presidential announcement about National Lab Day was the culmination of several frantic months of percolating, planning, wondering, worrying, creating, and kvetching. And it was all worthwhile to see the big public launch of this incredible strategic initiative to improve education and address global challenges.
One of the interesting aspects of this year’s Digital Media and Learning Competition is that it includes a partnership with Sony to create “levels” in their PS3 game LittleBigPlanet that incorporate science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) learning. So, dutiful New Media “expert” (ha ha) that I am, I have started to research the game. Not surprisingly, Wikipedia is a definitive resource.  I also found a site where users can create their own avatars (known as “Sackboys”) for the game.  Seen at right is my very own Sackgirl! Cick on it to make your own.
There’s more over on BoingBoing today about National Lab Day and on the unique art of LittleBigPlanet (a sample of which is below).