TITLE: Digital devotees are made of people! : Leveraging our humanity to enrich digital media and learning
THEMES/CONCEPTS:
Walking the talk, Being the change we (earnestly) recommend
The most engaging, productive moments of the conference occurred when we applied our own best practice by: allowing DML attendees to pool their collective intelligence and creativity; inviting their interactivity, play, relationship-building, and reflection; offering students the opportunity to present their own work in their own words.
Enough of singing to and talking at the (albeit brilliant) choir. We need to connect, think, and make together. And that “we” needs to get blown even wider.
Tangibility
In the digital shuffle, we can’t lose the face-to-face and tactile. There’s intimacy in looking another person in the eye. There’s comfort in snuggling with a grandparent and beloved book. While time and distance may sometimes prevent corporeal communion, I think it should be the preferred option, with virtual meetings a better-than-nothing back-up. Breakthroughs in presence and haptics are exciting but there ain’t nothin like the real thing.
Portion size and frequency
A yearly grand reunion is also inadequate for making and sustaining change. So too, perhaps, are our smaller, monthly meetings. How can we harness the tech tools we love(/hate) so well in order to expand opportunities for contributions and micro- (hopefully leading to macro-) changes? Do we pipe every Impact Games member’s Tweets into a homepage feed? Do we post a daily poll to our FB site? Do we create a quick, casual game application that allows for simple service (e.g., Google Image Tagger)? And, at the same time, how do we avoid irrelevance by appearing like so much noise? In a bursting Inbox, information overload world, how much is too much and how much is just right?
BIO:
Laurel Felt is a Ph.D. candidate, researcher, and curriculum designer focused on nurturing youths’ social and emotional competence, critical thinking, and communicative capacities. She is currently investigating participatory learning with the Annenberg Innovation Lab’s PLAY! Project, and emotional regulation with GameDesk via biofeedback-enhanced impact game Dojo.
The Digital Media and Learning Conference is an annual event supported by the MacArthur Foundation and organized by the Digital Media and Learning Research Hub located at the UC Humanities Research Institute, University of California, Irvine. The conference is meant to be an inclusive, international and annual gathering of scholars and practitioners in the field, focused on fostering interdisciplinary and participatory dialog and linking theory, empirical study, policy, and practice.
Themed “Beyond Educational Technology: Learning Innovations in a Connected World,” DML 2012 focused on the following categories:
Making, Tinkering and Remixing // MTR: To become full and active participants in 21st century society, young
people must learn to design, create, and invent with new technologies, not simply interact with them. What
are the pathways for becoming a maker and not just a user in a world of Connected Learning? What social and
technical infrastructures provide the best support for young people as they learn to tinker with materials, remix
one another’s work, and iteratively refine their creations?
The goal of this track is to explore the tensions between the design of emerging platforms and the practices that
unfold on them, with specific attention given to the policy challenges that emerge. How does the technology
respond practice and how do users repurpose technology? Who gets to set the community norms and how are
these norms negotiated? How are values— like privacy, safety, and transparency—embedded in the technology
and how does this shape socio-technical practices? What happens when conflicts emerge between the users and
the creators? How does the tension between technical design and personal practices configure these spaces?
Re-imagining Media for Learning // RML: What does it mean to think of media and games in the service of
diverse educational goals and within a broad ecology of learning? In particular, how can we balance the needs
of multi-stakeholder alliances against the challenges of designing engaging, playful and truly innovative media
experiences? Especially those that go beyond implementations of technologies and platforms to create real
communities of playful learning and rich opportunities for individual discovery and growth.
Democratizing Learning Innovation // DLI: Looking to the groundswell for massively collaborative innovation
and change, what does it take to pull from a participatory and networked ecology to push innovation from the
bottom up and from the outside in versus top down and inside out?
Innovations for Public Education // IPE: Too often cutting edge technology innovations serve the interests
of the already privileged “creative class.” What can we do to ensure that the most innovative forms of
learning are accessible to all educators and young people relying on public education infrastructures?
How can digital innovation directly impact disparities in achievement of students based on race and class?
I had the privilege of presenting on two panels, both in the Innovations for Public Education division. Kicking off the first session of Day 1, we colleagues (Henry Jenkins, Erin Reilly, Laurel Felt, Kirsten Carthew, Vanessa Vartabedian, Akifa Khan, Isabel Morales, Greta Enszer) from the PLAY! (Participatory Learning And You!) initiative offered a hands-on workshop entitled “Challenge-based Learning and the PLAYground: What is challenge-based learning and how can we use an online platform to explore it?” At least 100 individuals crammed into our wee conference room and spilled into the hallway…
This hands-on workshop will explore challenge-based learning opportunities using Project New Media Literacies’/PLAY!’s PLAYground on-line platform. Teachers, students and researchers will facilitate an exploration of challenges
created by our pilot program and demonstrate opportunities for workshop participants to create action-oriented curriculum for student participation/engagement in both formal (classroom) and informal learning environments.
In 2009, the New Media Consortium collaborated with Apple to define a new pedagogical framework called
challenge-based learning. This combines project-based learning, problem-based learning and the importance of taking action in solving real-world problems to share with the world. With information and sharing with others at the tips of our fingers, challenges encourage participants to search, synthesize, collaboratively remix and disseminate information central to questions that are open-ended and serve as a framework for student-centered learning and inquiry on specific topics that they are passionate about (Johnson, Smith, Smythe, & Varon, 2009).
The PLAYground is an online platform for the curation, creation and circulation of user-generated challenges, where the majority of participants are teachers and students from various disciplines and ages. It is designed to cultivate and promote challenge-based learning experiences. In large and small groups, participants are able to: design and participate in learning-rich activities; identify these activities’ potential contributions to teaching and learning; reflect upon their own pedagogical practices; and discover intersections and practical take-aways.
The innovation of the PLAYground is embedded in both its content and design as a technological tool that serves teachers and students within the learning eco-system. The platform is free, user friendly, and has been piloted with Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) public school teachers and students from a range of disciplines (e.g., special needs, math and sciences, health, literacy, social studies, etc). Every teacher who participated in the pilot phase testing of the PLAYground derived benefit, regardless of classroom access to technology. Those who lacked digital tools utilized the challenge content within the PLAYground to create dynamic lessons off-line using the 21st century skill sets implicit to challenge-based learning.
WORKSHOP OUTLINE
1) Introduction to Challenge-Based Learning in the context of PLAY!: PLAY! framework; Working Definition of “Challenge-based learning” – What key nuances distinguish it from other types of learning?; Introduction to the PLAYground
2) Playful polling — How recently and often have you used play as a vehicle for learning? How, if at all, does co-learning appear in your practice?
3) Challenge Creation — Each group, divided by the foci of the conference + key interest areas, creates a paper prototype of a challenge
4) Share out — Group discussion/presentation of the challenges: How can this be used in the classroom and beyond?
Here is our presentation. Participants’ brilliant and unique creations illustrated the value (even the imperativeness) of flexibility in education. When we provide open-ended means for accessing learning goals, as well as support learners with tools for pursuing passions, the richness of their products is inestimable.
After lunch, I joined USC colleagues (Zoe Corwin, Elizabeth Swensen, Sean Bouchard, Jenna Sablan,
Tracy Fullerton, Vanessa Vartabedian, Laurel Felt, Vanessa Monterosa) to present “Divide and Conquer: Examining and Confronting the Digital Divide.”
The “digital divide” creates an additional layer of challenge for students already facing inadequate services in their schools. But what does the digital divide look like? And what strategies are being employed to provide greater access to meaningful technologies?
The intent of this panel is to bolster understandings of how students from low-income backgrounds use technology and explore what digital and game innovations are being developed for under-served students. Panelists hail from education, communications, interactive media and sociology programs and all are currently working with game and social media projects designed to provide high quality digital resources to low-income communities. The panelists will: 1) share quantitative and qualitative research findings that describe the digital divide and 2) discuss how researchers and game designers are addressing the digital divide through innovative programs. A moderator will facilitate a questions and answer segment with the aim of stimulating discussion among audience and panelists about what we know about the digital divide and how we are confronting it.
1: Digital snapshot of urban high school students
This paper describes digital profiles of students at three urban Los Angeles area schools. Data derive from focus groups, questionnaires, and observations. Study findings outline what types of technology students use at school and at home, ease and speed of Internet access, social networking behaviors, mobile device usage, influence of technology on interactions with peers and family members, and students’ willingness and ability to learn about college through technology.
2: Serious problem, seriously fun game
Through the Collegeology Games project, researchers and game designers from the University of Southern California have utilized new media forms, such as digital and tabletop games, to boost college aspirations and promote college-going strategies for underserved students. The focus of the presentation will be on identifying potential aspects of a problem space, and adapting educational games for different platforms and audiences.
3: After-school digital literacy, Part 1: Explore Locally, Excel Digitally
How one negotiates digital tools and norms impacts citizenship on and offline. USC Annenberg’s Participatory Learning And You! (PLAY!) initiative’s after-school program “Explore Locally, Excel Digitally” (ELED) used hardware, software, and team-building activities to investigate ethics, mapping, and their intersections. Students examined their own communities and the nature of their participation within these networks, looking at ELED, their friendship circles, schools, and neighborhood. Ethnographic fieldnotes, video footage, student-generated multimedia content, and survey measures demonstrated that this pedagogical framework supported a participatory learning culture and facilitated students’ development of self- and collective efficacy.
4: After-school digital literacy, Part 2: Laughter for a Change
Play On! Workshops are a series of after-school programs facilitated by USC Annenberg’s PLAY! initiative, operated out of RFK-LA’s MediaLab at the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools. Among these workshops, improvisational theater-focused Laughter for a Change provided its high school-aged participants with opportunities to develop performance skills, boost self-confidence, practice collaboration, and co-learn in a trusting, multi-aged community of practice.
While I had prepared an elaborate PowerPoint presentation, I opted to breeze past most of it in favor of practicing what I preached. Climbing atop a chair, I exhorted the (post-lunch lethargic) audience to find a partner and risk public silliness. Each pair’s “A” individual (who self-identified by raising the roof while whooping “Whoo whoo!”) kicked off a mirror exercise, slowly moving arms, legs, torso, and face while his/her “B” mate (who self-identified by pressing it down while grunting “Whoa whoa!”) moved in synchrony. I called out “B!” and the “B” individual took the lead while “A” followed. They passed control back and forth according to my command, striving for eye contact (an intimate, uncomfortable, and valuable connection) and monitoring action.
Reflecting on the exercise, participants commented on their varying levels of engagement and comfort and identified the utility of play/games as a context for learning and community-building. Dr. Sarah Vaala, a fellow member of the International Communication Association (ICA)’s Children, Adolescents, and Media division and Research Fellow at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, included my presentation in her recap of Day One at DML:
“…In one panel, Laurel Felt of USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism described how LA high school students boosted their self-confidence and communication skills through an afterschool improv class. “Laughter for a cause” [sic], she claimed, gave kids the space they needed to look silly, goof around, fail, and have fun. The students essentially were given permission to play, free of peer pressure, societal expectations, and academic assessment, all while building trust with each other and co-learning the basics of improv comedy” (Vaala, 2012, para 7).
Throughout the conference, in an uncharacteristic move, I Tweeted! It seemed the thing to do — when in Rome and all that — and this backchannel provided access to super note-taking and rich interrogation, annotation, and reflection.
In DML’s aftermath, several participants have penned sense-making essays, Mimi Ito‘s of particular note. Action and continued community-building must follow. With USC Impact Games colleagues Zoe Corwin and Tracy Fullerton, I will gather USC’S DML attendees and interested/like-minded individuals to debrief, identify, and innovate. Specifically, we will: reflect on DML 2012; list out our projects to increase transparency and synergy across the university; support the development of conversations and working groups; and take over the world!
Wednesday, March 21, 2-3 pm, Game Innovation Lab (GIL), located on the second floor at Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC), 3131 S. Figueroa
USC’s DML attendees (in no particular order): Bill Tierney (Education)
Sean Bouchard (Cinema)
Elizabeth Swensen (Cinema)
Jeff Watson (Cinema)
Henry Jenkins (Communication, Journalism, Cinema, Education)
Ben Stokes (Communication)
Alex Leavitt (Communication)
John Seely Brown (at-large)
Brendesha Tynes (Education)
John Pascarella (Education)
Otto Khera (Education)
Erin Reilly (Communication)
Vanessa Vartabedian (Communication)
Jenna Sablan (Education)
Vanessa Monterosa (Education)
Melissa Brough (Communication)
Meryl Alper (Communication)
George Villanueva (Communication)
Ronan Hallowell (Education)
Akifa Khan (Communication)
Kirsten Carthew (Communication)
Francois Bar (Communication)
Gabriel Peters-Lazaro (Cinema)
Tracy Fullerton (Cinema)
Zoe Corwin (Education)
Laurel Felt (Communication)
An old activist adage encourages us to “think globally, act locally.” Riffing on this, my colleagues and I developed an after-school program called “explore locally, excel digitally.” I’d like to think that our USC-based, digital media & learning-oriented coalition combines both complementary values. With the goal of impacting the wider world on- and off-line, we disparate denizens of a single institution will cross the quad for face-to-face encounters, asynchronous cyber conversations, and collective intelligence-enriched innovation. The question is, If we build it, will they come?
Cooperation is neither the province of women nor an artifact of maturity; cooperation fuels all peoples and emerges from our earliest days.
Kohlberg’s stages of moral development (1958) position obedience as preceding negotiation; thus, cooperation cannot emerge until the capacity for a certain amount of cognitive complexity has been achieved. While Gilligan’s In a Different Voice (1982) illuminated several deficiencies in Kohlberg’s vision, it did so on the basis of gender bias. According to Gilligan, “They [women] developed in a way that focused on connections among people (rather than separation) and with an ethic of care for those people (rather than an ethic of justice)” (Huff, 2001).
Designating empathy and cooperativeness as expressions of subgroups rather than universal human traits, though, is incredibly problematic. First, just who or what are men and women anyway? I wonder how, if at all, Gilligan’s paradigm accommodates for socially-constructed gender vs. biologically-tied sex. What happens when these superficial distinctions break down, as in the case of butch females, drag queens, transsexuals, intersex individuals, etc? Second, how do the historical record and contemporary social structures support this theory of opposing, partisan priorities? While I tend to distrust biological determinism, human evolution and culture, broadly defined, suggest that all peoples value collaboration and connection. Similarly (and sadly), abuse can induce individuals from all walks of life to commit atrocities that tear those institutions asunder.
“Jen science is based on its own microscopic observations of things not closely examined before. Most centrally, it is founded on the study of emotions such as compassion, gratitude, awe, embarrassment, and amusement, emotions that transpire between people, bringing the good in each other to completion. Jen science has examined new human languages under its microscope—movements of muscles in the face that signal devotion, patterns of touch that signal appreciation, playful tones of the voice that transform conflicts. It brings into focus new substances that we are made of, neurotransmitters as well as regions of our nervous system that promote trust, caring, devotion, forgiveness, and play. It reveals a new way of thinking about the evolution of human goodness, which requires revision of longstanding assumptions that we are solely wired to maximize desire, to compete, and to be vigilant to what is bad” (Keltner, 2009, para 3).
Along a similar vein, Richard Sennett’s Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Cooperation (2012) conceptualizes cooperation as a homegrown, human craft. Excitingly, he draws on developmentalist Erik Erikson and children’s gaming to strengthen his argument:
“Reflexive, self-critical thinking doesn’t imply withdrawal from other kids; children can be reflexive together. One piece of evidence Erikson provides for this process is game-playing. At the age of five to six, children begin to negotiate the rules for games, rather than, as at the age of two to three, take the rules as givens; the more negotiation occurs, the more strongly do children become bonded to one another in game-playing…
“Erikson’s sweeping point about this passage is that cooperation precedes individuation: cooperation is the foundation of human development, in that we learn how to be together before we learn how to stand apart. Erikson may seem to declare the obvious: we could not develop as individuals in isolation. Which means, though, that the very misunderstandings, separations, transitional objects and self-criticism which appear in the course of development are tests of how to relate to other people rather than how to hibernate; if the social bond is primary, its terms change up to the time children enter formal schooling” (Sennett, 2012)
Our mission, therefore, is to support the skills and spaces that facilitate development of the ties that bind. I’ll stop short of calling for hand-holding and Kumbayah-singing — but if you start the song, you know I’ll chime right in.
Explore Locally, Excel Digitally: A participatory learning-oriented after-school program
for enriching citizenship on- and offline = ACCEPTED!
The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is simultaneously committed to boosting students’ digital proficiency and challenged by these learners’ academic disengagement. In response, Participatory Learning and You! (PLAY!) designed a theoretical framework and methodology for introducing a pedagogy of participatory culture, and applied it in a pilot after-school program at LAUSD’s Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools. Dubbed “Explore Locally, Excel Digitally” (ELED), this program invited high school students to hone their digital citizenship. Ethnographic fieldnotes, video recordings, and student reflection from ELED’s 15 weeks illustrate this program’s culture of participatory learning, characterized by motivation and engagement, creativity, relevance, co-learning, and ecological learning. ELED also supported participants’ acquisition of digital literacy skills, new media literacies proficiencies, and social and emotional learning competencies. This experience suggests that relationship-building is integral and foundational to establishing citizenship, both online and offline.
Feeling our way through: Exploring the potential of Dojo, a biofeedback-enhanced video game for emotional regulation training = DENIED
How do we boost students’ test scores, improve school safety, cultivate creativity, and combat the spread of public health challenges such as HIV/AIDS? Complementary research from diverse fields suggests that the key is emotional regulation (Elias, Zins, Weissberg, Frey, Greenberg, Haynes, Kessler, Schwab-Stone, & Shriver, 1997; Clark, Miller, Nagy, Avery, Roth, Liddon, & Mukherjee, 2005; Immordino-Yang & Damasio, 2007). But despite this considerable body of evidence, emotional regulation is the least taught competency of all of the social and emotional learning (SEL) learning skills (Collaborative for Academic Social and Emotional Learning, 2003). Educators’ lack of pedagogy for addressing students’ emotional regulation contributes to its curricular absence; difficulties around unambiguous perception both of one’s own emotional state as well as that of others also embattles the development, uptake, and successful realization of such curricula. GameDesk’s state-of-the-art emotional regulation video game Dojo addresses this visibility issue via biofeedback. Fingertip sensors record skin conductance and heart rate as players negotiate game-related quests; in addition to displaying these levels on-screen, the game’s difficulty increases when players’ stress increases, thus compelling players to consciously apply emotional regulation mechanisms in order to prevail. The pedagogy issue, however, remains largely unaddressed. This presentation will offer a compendium of guiding principles and best practices to inform the development of a Dojo-related emotional regulation curriculum for students in grades 6-9. It will review results from similar SEL curricula, identify successful strategies for both teaching and coping, recommend analog assessment measures, articulate past and possible future relationships between technology and behavior change, and spotlight key areas for continued research, development, and intervention. Finally, attendees will have the opportunity to slip on a set of sensors and pilot Dojo themselves.
Laughter for a Change: Realizing participatory learning via play and negotiation = DENIED
Play and negotiation are crucial tools as contemporary education stands at a crossroads: emphases on standardized testing and digital proficiency call into question what to teach and how to teach it; changes in social relationships and communication norms introduce promises and perils for students seeking support and self-expression; and anticipation of future shifts for both technology and job opportunities (Johnson, Smith, Willis, Levine, & Haywood, 2011; Thomas & Seely Brown, 2011) also challenge established theory and practice vis-à-vis education. In order to address this, educators should engage learners in play and negotiation. “Play” and “negotiation,” respectively defined as “the ability to experiment with one’s surroundings as a form of problem-solving” and “the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms” (Jenkins, Purushotma, Clinton, Weigel, & Robison, 2006, p. 4), provide opportunities for youthful collaborators to “…increase developmental assets such as competence, self-efficacy and sense of control by developing an awareness of and engaging with their environment” (Wong & Zimmerman, 2005, p. 105). A play- and negotiation-rich intervention with Los Angeles high school students functions as a case study. Implemented in the fall of 2011, non-profit organization Laughter for a Change established a weekly, after-school improvisational theater workshop for students at the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools. Ethnographic fieldnotes, documentary photography and videography, as well as students’ end-of-semester reflections reveal participants’ learning outcomes that range from stronger performance skills to greater self-confidence to richer interpersonal relationships to increased willingness to take risks. Additionally, analysis of students’ process confirms their motivation and engagement, creativity, relevance-seeking, co-learning, and ecological learning, collectively suggesting that Laughter for a Change established a culture in which participatory learning flourished.
In 1990, when my older brother Benjy was 14 years old, he interviewed our Grandpa Ray and wrote a short essay about his life. Last year my mom unearthed it, squirreled away in some nook of Benjy’s bedroom for more than two decades, and Benjy read parts aloud at the unveiling of Grandpa’s headstone in May 2011. Earlier this morning, Dad scanned these seven pages. I’m grateful for this essay’s multiple windows into history. Not only does it depict the Depression and post-WWII eras that marked Grandpa’s life, but it also reminds us of Benjy’s world then — a world where he, as a high school freshman, had to laboriously and neatly handwrite multi-paged essays; a world where spellcheck wasn’t built into the platform upon which he was writing. (How could it be? It was a piece of ruled paper!)
This morning I told my young cousins, a 10-year-old and a 6-year-old who had awoken at 6:30 am in order to jump on my head, that I knew we were watching the NEW Scooby Doo (as opposed to the classic Scooby Doo) because Velma didn’t consult laptops back in my day — they hadn’t been invented yet. Last night, I told them a bedtime story that my Grandma Elly had imagined and related when my sister Sarah and I were little girls. All I could recall was the premise — there once were three Hawaiian sisters named Oola, Moola, and Leela — and I proceeded from there, making up as I went along and regularly asking the girls to fill in blanks. What do you think happened next? I would ask. Molly, a precocious first-grader, contributed a storyline in which baby Leela continued fishing while her older sisters built up the fire for cooking. In addition to netting fish after giant fish, she also attracted a shark! Leela had to bonk him on the head with her little fishing pole to keep him back. When the sisters returned home with fish and tales, no one believed Leela’s story. Personally, that’s where I thought Molly would leave it. But she threw in a detail: “Here’s a video!” Leela said. “See!” And she showed the footage to her parents.
I smiled. When we were Molly’s and Sadie’s ages, Sarah and I never would have thought to suggest such corroborating evidence — videography wasn’t ubiquitous back then. Moreover, Oola, Moola, and Leela were indigenous peasant girls who lived in Hawaii. I’m not sure if Sarah and I would have granted them the technology of even the fork… I also thought that Oola, Moola, and Leela were from the past. I don’t know if Grandma stipulated that, or if I’d assumed that since their life seemed so tranquil and tied to the earth, or if Grandma’s age and the classic quality of her warm voice (I loved my grandma’s voice) led me to associate all of her stories with days of yore.
It doesn’t matter. It’s interesting but it doesn’t matter. What matters is love and family and creativity and storytelling. I’ve always mourned the fact that my grandma, who had been an elementary school teacher and children’s librarian, never got to realize her aspiration of publishing children’s books. I dreamed of getting them published posthumously — I wanted to do her that service. But I realize now that both the stories our grandparents lived and the stories they told live on. I thank my brother and sister, our parents, and the rest of our family for facilitating that beautiful truth.
NOTE: As I scrutinize the date of this essay, I realize the context in which Benjy wrote it. Grandpa Justin had passed away unexpectedly, the result of a stroke tragically mistreated, in January of 1990. Grandma Elly, who’d been struggling against breast cancer for years, moved in with us immediately after. Her older sister Pearl, whose voice to this day sounds just like my grandma’s and moves me nearly to tears every time I talk to her on the phone, also took up residency in our house. But despite these efforts and my grandmother’s powerful will, we lost her a few months later, in June of 1990. This essay’s date: October 1990.
After Dad’s parents could no longer testify, Benjy made sure that we heard from Mom’s.
NOTE: Benjy got his wish — partially. His older daughter, Lyla, was a baby when Grandpa Ray died. Benjy’s younger daughter, Violet, never got to meet her great-grandpa. But maybe someday, if we keep telling these stories, she will.
