MacArthur Spotlight Blog

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I’m pleased to announce the launch of a blog that documents a new research effort that is just getting under way as part of the Digital Media and Learning Initiative. Futures of Learning is a collective blog authored by an international group of researchers.

For the next few months, we will be doing reading on research and practice in the area of new media and learning, as well as visiting different institutions and projects in the US and elsewhere that are innovating in this space. Along the way, we will be using this blog as a way to share some of what we are learning, and to solicit feedback on our work in progress. We will be posting book and article reviews and reports from our visits to various sites and conferences. Our goal is to help inform and grow a field of research and practice that is grounded in deep knowledge of the changing landscape of new media, as well as in an understanding of innovation in educational and design practice. We are focusing on two areas. One is an international review of research on how people are adopting digital and networked media. The second area is a review of learning institutions that are incorporating new media in innovative ways.

We welcome suggestions for literature and programs that we should be looking at!

Editor’s Note: Check out Mimi’s post on the recently released games and civics survey.

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Many adults who care about civic and ethical education are hostile to video games. We assume that gaming is a solitary, passive, violent activity, unrelated to issues in the real world. Actually, games vary enormously; some of the most popular ones are challenging simulations of democracy and social issues. And gaming is not always solitary; sometimes it is a social and cooperative passtime.

According to the most ambitious and careful study to date, ”Civic Implications of Video Games,” what matters is not whether or how much kids play video games. The question is which games they play and how they play them.

For example, there are strong positive correlations between playing the Sims and active civic engagement in the real world. This is perhaps not too surprising because the Sims requires active thinking about social issues in a fictional setting. In contrast, Halo is a “first-person shooter” game. The report doesn’t say that it correlates with traditional civic activity, but Halo does involve collaborating with other players online. Those who collaborate with others online are also more engaged in active citizenship. For instance, they are much more likely to talk about elections. Thus even Halo has some civic potential. We need to promote and celebrate the best games, develop more like them, and use them in conjunction with school, community, and family activities.

The whole report is worth careful study.

Editor’s Note: Peter Levine’s original post can be seen on his blog here. Also see Connie Yowell’s post on the report’s release here. 

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Congratulations on two thoughtful reports and on getting them out to the media.  These should dispel myths about the isolationist impact of gaming.  Kids are neither bowling nor gaming alone. And the fact that kids typically play different genres is important with respect to the potential diversity of skills and perspectives gaming enables. The civic possibilities are clearly there. These results suggest important directions for future research. 

First, a note of caution about selection effects and correlational data.  A socially adept/engaged kid is more likely to engage with others in community affairs and to play games in a social context.  In this regard, several recent studies of the genetic bases of political engagement (think temperament and disposition to join, to interact with others, etc.) are noteworthy. Second, the most exciting news out of this study is the equitable distribution of civic gaming experiences.  Their potential for overcoming class divides in civic participation is a topic worthy of more exploration.  Third, why on line social interaction did not yield the same civic correlates as playing in person is a question that needs more investigating if we’re going to understand the potential of digital media to expand borders and perspectives.  Fourth, with respect to whom one games with or communicates about gaming with, I think we need to think more about the complementary civic roles that age mates and adults can play. 

The egalitarian nature of peer relationships make them a better means for developing feelings of solidarity and notions of interest group, etc. and peers may know more about gaming than many adults.  However, adults can scaffold kids’ activity and inquiry in many arenas, games included. Typically, they have more experience with power, politics, and people and, as work on youth-adult partnerships as a new model of community youth development, shows, youth’s motivation and capacity for civic engagement is enhanced by partnerships with multiple adults.

Editor’s Note: See Connie Yowell‘s post on the new report here.

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The new report that was released this week garnered wide press coverage. 

Based on a national survey of teens, the report finds that youth game playing is universal, social and has potential to cultivate civic engagement.

Here are some of the links:

“Are Video Games Actually Good For Kids?” - CBS News (watch clip at right):
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/16/eveningnews/eyeontech/main4453801.shtml

“Survey: Nearly every kid a video gamer” - Associated Press:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080916/ap_on_hi_te/tec_video_gamers

“Can games make your kid a better citizen?” - msnbc:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26726230

“Computer games drive social ties “ - BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7619372.stm

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We knew that the Pew survey on gaming and civics, the first of its kind, would be important to the field of digital media and learning.  The survey’s findings, which affirm the social elements of game play, are consistent with other Foundation-supported research—including Mimi Ito’s forthcoming ethnography of kid’s informal learning through knowledge cultures—that focus on the participatory nature of new media.  The Pew survey reveals that 97% of young people (94% of girls) play video games, often with friends. This finding not only challenges long held stereotypes about gaming, it also suggests broader changes in the way that young people learn and participate in civic life.  For example, perhaps most exciting is that more than 75% of teens have gaming experiences, such as helping others and thinking about moral and ethical issues, which parallel aspects of civic life.  Moreover, having these experiences is closely related to other measures of civic engagement such as going online to get information about politics and raising money for charity. 

We’re excited about these results and see them as the beginning of an important discussion about the role of digital media in learning, community, and citizenship in the 21st century.  And we feel that the findings should inspire parents to observe what games their children are playing, talk with their children about gaming experiences, and look for opportunities to exploit the civic and learning possibilities of games.

We’re continuing our discussion of these important findings on Spotlight today with posts from the principal authors of the report, Amanda Lenhart of the Pew Internet and American Life Project here and Joe Kahne of the Civic Engagement Research Group at Mills College here. Joe’s research group has also issued a white paper that examines the implications of the civics findings for parents, educators, and game designers.

Additionally, look for more posts in the coming weeks from researchers and practitioners discussing what these findings might mean for their work, followed in a few weeks by the release of a white paper and book discussing the findings of Mimi Ito’s Digital Youth Project.

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I was sitting in my friend’s living room a few weeks back, watching his three daughters play with the family’s Wii. Bart Simpson was trying, repeatedly, to leap over a vat of what looked like boiling liquid. The three sisters, elementary and junior high aged, were all engaged with the game and each other, talking, sharing strategies for clearing the river and advancing to the next part of the game.

In many way these girls are living examples of some of the main findings of a new research report issued today by the Pew Internet & American Life Project and Mills College, supported by the MacArthur Foundation that takes a first look at teenagers, their video gaming habits and how their gaming experiences, both in the game and around the game are yielding opportunities for social interactions and engagement with their community.

The report, titled Teens, Video Gaming and Civics is based on a national, random digit dial telephone survey of 1102 parent-teen pairs. The teens we interviewed were ages 12 to 17.

Among the many findings of this study, we learned that gaming is nearly universal among teens, with 97% of American youth 12 to 17 playing computer, console, portable or cell phone games, and half of teens play on any given day, usually for about an hour. And as the three girls illustrate, gaming isn’t just the domain of boys - 94% of teen girls play games, as do 99% of teen boys. Teens who play games span the racial, ethnic and socio-economic spectrum, in ways that young users of many other technologies do not.

Gaming is also a social experience for most teens - 76% of adolescents say they play with friends, either in person or online. As with the girls I watched, gaming is an integral part of the fabric of teens’ social lives. Rather than keeping teens from interacting with peers (indeed, teens who game daily communicate and spend face to face time with friends just as frequently as teens who game less frequently), games often serve as a topic around which interaction is organized. Nearly a third of teens say they visit websites and online discussions about games they play.

Games also hold promise for teaching and learning, particularly in the realm of civics and civic engagement. My colleague and co-author, Dr. Joe Kahne, elaborated on those elements in his own blog post.

Editor’s Note: Also see Connie Yowell’s post on the gaming and civics findings.

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If the stereotype of the lone gamer is accurate, we would expect video game play to undermine participation.  Our analysis of the gaming and civics survey, however, found no evidence to support the stereotype of gamers as socially isolated and distracted from the broader society.  Teens who frequently play video games are just as likely as those who play infrequently to be civically and politically engaged - to volunteer, give money to charity, try and convince someone to vote, express interest in politics, commit to improving their communities, and to take part in protests and demonstrations. Moreover, when we asked teens whether they had “civic gaming experiences” such as helping or guiding other players, thinking about moral and ethical issues, and learning about social issues, we found that teens who frequently had these experiences were much more likely to be civically and politically engaged - to raise money for charity, to be interested in politics, etc. 

Similarly, we found some forms of social interactions around video games (e.g. playing with others in the room, contributing to web sites, organizing and managing guilds) were related to civic and political activity, while others were not. This finding raises important questions for future research about when and why the social life around a game may support civic life.

Finally, we found that exposure to civic gaming experiences is equitably distributed across most demographic groups. This finding is encouraging given current inequities in school-based civic learning opportunities.

Clearly, there is much more work in this area to do.  Our study, for example, identifies relationships between experiences playing video games and civic engagement.  It does not make causal claims.  We suspect causality flows in both directions - youth who are already civically engaged are probably drawn to games that provide civic gaming experiences. At the same time, we suspect that having civic gaming experiences reinforce players’ civic commitments and skills.  We know that when youth have these kinds of experiences in classrooms, that it fosters civic commitments even when controlling for students’ prior interests. 

There’s also much to learn about school and after-school based efforts to promote civic gaming experiences.  Can schools harness young people’s interest in video games to create engaging curriculum that fosters civic engagement?  And to the extent that games foster such engagement - do they also affect the values and kinds of analysis that drive that engagement?  If so, in what ways? 

In an effort to more fully discuss these findings, my colleagues at Mills (Ellen Middaugh and Chris Evans) and I drafted a white paper, The Civic Potential of Video Games that compliments the broader Pew report Teens, Games, and Civics.  The white paper discusses our findings and sketches out implications for parents, educators, youth, and game designers interested in tapping the civic potential of video games.  It concludes by highlighting priorities for future research.  We would, of course, be very interested in your thoughts in relation to any and all of this.

Editor’s Note: See additional posts on the first national survey on gaming and civic engagement here and here.

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2008 is the 100th anniversary of the Model T. It was a remarkable development, becoming the icon of US industry’s ability to create a mass production system that would incesscantly drive down the cost so that everyone could afford it. It did this by making all the products the same, giving people any color they wanted as long as it was black. It achieved scale and success by standardizing the input of material, processing it in a consistent manner, and standardizing quality control at each step in the process.

American industry has learned a great deal in the last century and one of the key insights is that digitization changes operations from focusing on consistency to flexibility, variety and consumer choice. In fact, the leading companies understand that there has been a power shift from producers like Ford who ruled in the era of an economy of scale, to consumers who rule in our economy of choice. This flexibility of production leading to variety and choice exists in almost every sector except one; educating our kids. Like companies in the early 20th Century, our public school system classified the incoming material, processed it in standardized ways, created stages in the process where quality was checked, and eventually certified or rejected it.

Sound familiar? The confluence of digital technology and media is now twenty years old and the country it is being used to make the old system more effective and efficient. It analogous to the crazy idea that Ford Motor Company would use computers to make a 100-year-old factory run better and not find ways to use the technology to change how it worked. The real power of digital media in education is to reform the institution itself, not just the delivery of content. This leads to concepts like: A collecting a variety of competencies, instead of if passing twelve grades, becomes the dominant structure? Learning becomes kid centered instead of curriculum or test centered. Schools are nodes on a network of companies and civic organizations that make learning relevant to jobs and how the world works. This would be in contrast to their current status as stand-alone institutions. Teachers are chosen by their abilities not by their educational degree.  Imagine (and respond with) the possibilities.

Editor’s Note: See more at http://www.electroniclearningrecord.org

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By James Bosco and Keith Krueger

It comes as little surprise to even casual observers that digital media is central to the life of most American youth.  IM’ing, gaming, virtual worlds, and social networking are only a few of the ways that digital media play an increasingly larger role in the lives of kids. Yet, these resources which are key elements in what Henry Jenkins has termed as “participatory culture,” are seen by many educators more often as liabilities than assets in the school environment. 

The negative orientation of many school leaders toward Web 2.0 applications is particularly pernicious since many of these applications hold considerable opportunity for improved learning, particularly the ability to foster collaboration, creativity and critical thinking - skills that are particularly critical now and in the future.  It would be a sad irony if the increased knowledge and capability which has been developed about digital media and learning - much of which has come as a result of MacArthur sponsored projects—would remain on the other side of the classroom door.

The Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) with support from the MacArthur Foundation, has begun an initiative to close the gap by focusing on leadership and policies that enable/inhibit adoption of these new digital tools in education.  We will gather detailed information to assess the current perspectives, policies, and practices of school leaders which impact on Web 2.0 applications particularly within the context of participatory culture within schools.  The nature of information and analyses which we accomplish will be specifically germane to the formation and implementation of an action plan to promote school policies and practices to close the gap.

Eric Hopfer wrote, “In times of change, learners inherit the Earth; while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.” We cannot afford schools that prepare kids for a world that no longer exists.  Now is the time for policymakers and educators to define 21st century learning environments and bridge the home/school digital gap.

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by Cathy N. Davidson and David Theo Goldberg


There is exciting breaking news: the HASTAC/MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Competition has been funded for two more cycles of competition. 

The first cycle this past year was a great beginning.  The application pool was vast and varied, creative and innovative. The 17 winners of the first Digital Media and Learning Competition are working on their projects, communicating on a social network site, participating in online workshops, and they have just gone public with a blog site: http://www.dmlcompetition.net/blog/ The thousand plus applications demonstrate the need for expansive funding opportunities.

So what’s in store for the next Competition?  As successful as the first Competition proved, we find it important to open new ground for the coming competitive funding opportunities. To be launched late-August, we already know three things for sure.  First, the overall theme will be “participatory learning.” We are going to push even harder this year to find innovative projects that promote interactive learning that takes place collaboratively, where each person builds on and contributes to the work of others, and where the learning process is as exciting as the learning product.  Second, we are hoping to foster even greater international participation.  And third, a part of the Competition will be dedicated to young participatory learning innovators, people in the 18-25 age range who want to realize their innovative ideas for some new form of many-to-many learning, looking to take their ideas forward from “garage” to “market.”

We know that this year’s Digital Media and Learning Competition will again inspire new ideas, new forms of collaboration, novel tools, and most of all new kinds of learning.  We’re thrilled to be partnering with the MacArthur Foundation in enabling these wonderfully creative learning possibilities.

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by Cathy N. Davidson and David Theo Goldberg

There is exciting breaking news: the second HASTAC/MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Competition is about to launch.

The first cycle this past year was a great beginning.  The application pool was vast and varied, creative and innovative, over a thousand applications. The 17 winners of the first Digital Media and Learning Competition are working on their projects, communicating on a social networking site, participating in online workshops. They are starting to post progress reports online so that others can learn from what they are learning.

So what’s in store for the 2008 Competition?  First, the overall theme will be “participatory learning.” We are going to push even harder this year to find innovative projects that promote interactive learning that takes place collaboratively, where each person builds on and contributes to the work of others, and where the learning process is as exciting as the learning product.  Second, we are hoping to foster even greater international participation and for the first time are accepting submissions directly from international applicants.  And third, a part of the Competition will be dedicated to young participatory learning innovators, people in the 18-25 age range who want to realize their innovative ideas for some new form of many-to-many learning, looking to take their ideas forward from “garage” to “market.” For all the details, visit http://www.dmlcompetition.net.

And please do help us spread the word!

We know that this year’s Digital Media and Learning Competition will again inspire new ideas, new forms of collaboration, novel tools, and most of all new kinds of learning.  We’re thrilled to be partnering with the MacArthur Foundation in enabling these wonderfully creative learning possibilities. 

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by Douglas Thomas and Yasmin Kafai

Virtual worlds are experiencing incredible growth among youth, with a host of worlds having populations well into the millions. Over the next few years, we expect to see a dramatic increase in both the number of virtual worlds for youth and a significant increase in that age group’s participation in them. Because these spaces provide large scale social environments, they are often used as resources for peer networking and information sharing as well as a site of identity formation and exploration. This project aims to understand how tweens, an understudied but growing group of online players, approach topics pertaining to reproductive health in their online life.

Whyville, one of these virtual worlds, is an informal science site that has currently over 3.3 million registered players ages 8-16 with girls representing over 68% of Whyville participants. Our goal is to better understand the online practices of this group of tweens and to examine what kinds of resources they rely on for information about sexuality, reproductive health, and romantic relationships. This demographic is ideally suited for a project on tween reproductive health because it is a group that is prone to receiving misinformation primarily through social networks about these issues and it is a group which is difficult to reach through other venues. It is also a time period when tweens’ growing physical maturity is accompanied by an increased interest in sex and reproduction. This results in tweens exploring their curiosity about sex through talking, reading, and flirting with others. Virtual worlds such as Whyville serve here as a digital public for this exchange, perhaps because of the anonymity of chat and the perceived absence of adults. An interest in romantic relationships, also called pairing off, often accompanies these interactions. Based on online and offline observations of hundreds of tweens over several months, we will examine concerns about these issues discussed by the tweens themselves. 

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by Douglas Thomas and Yasmin Kafai

Virtual worlds are experiencing incredible growth among youth, with a host of worlds having populations well into the millions. Over the next few years, we expect to see a dramatic increase in both the number of virtual worlds for youth and a significant increase in that age group’s participation in them. Because these spaces provide large scale social environments, they are often used as resources for peer networking and information sharing as well as a site of identity formation and exploration. This project aims to understand how tweens, an understudied but growing group of online players, approach topics pertaining to reproductive health in their online life.

Whyville, one of these virtual worlds, is an informal science site that has currently over 3.3 million registered players ages 8-16 with girls representing over 68% of Whyville participants. Our goal is to better understand the online practices of this group of tweens and to examine what kinds of resources they rely on for information about sexuality, reproductive health, and romantic relationships. This demographic is ideally suited for a project on tween reproductive health because it is a group that is prone to receiving misinformation primarily through social networks about these issues and it is a group which is difficult to reach through other venues. It is also a time period when tweens’ growing physical maturity is accompanied by an increased interest in sex and reproduction. This results in tweens exploring their curiosity about sex through talking, reading, and flirting with others. Virtual worlds such as Whyville serve here as a digital public for this exchange, perhaps because of the anonymity of chat and the perceived absence of adults. An interest in romantic relationships, also called pairing off, often accompanies these interactions. Based on online and offline observations of hundreds of tweens over several months, we will examine concerns about these issues discussed by the tweens themselves. 

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From June and July we bring you Sandra Day O’Connor, Digital Privacy, many extraordinary conferences, and more. Enjoy.

1. Logic+Emotion: Learning By Doing - Post on John Seely Brown‘s talk at the Institute of Design’s Strategy Conference held at the end of May.
2. Sandra Day O’Connor’s Plan for Joystick Justice. From The New York Times Bits Blog, discusses the Our Courts project and her address at last month’s Games for Change Conference.
3. CCDP: Computers & Composition Digital Press. New press committed to digital literacy and scholarship.
4. In virtual worlds, child avatars need protecting. From the Los Angeles Times, discusses the work of Professor Yasmin Kafai in Whyville.

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The Our Courts Project is the inspiration of former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. The Justice-appalled by the fact that many young people today know the names of American Idol judges but not the justices of the Supreme Court and by the hostility citizens and politicians have directed at the Supreme Court (e.g., “Who elected them?"-which shows a profound misunderstanding of the whole point of the court)-wants to engage kids with civics through digital learning rather than textbooks. In today’s schools civics, social studies, and history are often marginalized or untaught, thanks to the fact that they are not tested under No Child Left Behind strictures. Further, these subjects have often been taught in boring ways that have left them the least popular subjects in schools. The Our Courts game will put young people in the midst of historically important cases, where they can experience different perspectives on these cases and-in part in a Phoenix Wright like way-argue them themselves. The ultimate goal is based on a specific view of learning. Schools treat subjects like physics as if they were just a set of facts and information ("content"). But physics is not first and foremost a set of facts, it is first and foremost a set of activities through which people engage with the world and see it and understand it in new ways. So, too, with “civics.” Civics is not first and foremost a set of facts, it is a set of activities through which people can participate in the societies and transform them. We want to make civics part of an engaging game that ultimately spills out into the real world in demands for justice.

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The Our Courts Project is the inspiration of former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. The Justice-appalled by the fact that many young people today know the names of American Idol judges but not the justices of the Supreme Court and by the hostility citizens and politicians have directed at the Supreme Court (e.g., “Who elected them?"-which shows a profound misunderstanding of the whole point of the court)-wants to engage kids with civics through digital learning rather than textbooks. In today’s schools civics, social studies, and history are often marginalized or untaught, thanks to the fact that they are not tested under No Child Left Behind strictures. Further, these subjects have often been taught in boring ways that have left them the least popular subjects in schools. The Our Courts game will put young people in the midst of historically important cases, where they can experience different perspectives on these cases and-in part in a Phoenix Wright like way-argue them themselves. The ultimate goal is based on a specific view of learning. Schools treat subjects like physics as if they were just a set of facts and information ("content"). But physics is not first and foremost a set of facts, it is first and foremost a set of activities through which people engage with the world and see it and understand it in new ways. So, too, with “civics.” Civics is not first and foremost a set of facts, it is a set of activities through which people can participate in the societies and transform them. We want to make civics part of an engaging game that ultimately spills out into the real world in demands for justice.

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Club Penguin. YouTube. Twitter. MySpace. The digital media that runs through the middle of kids’ lives is evolving at a dizzying pace creating opportunities and challenges for young people that baffle many in their parents’ generation. Parents express concern about the potential risks of kids engaging in new media (from cyberbullying to risky sexual behavior) at the same time that they recognize its potential to inspire creativity, collaboration, and learning. And they struggle with how to help their children grow and thrive in a 24/7 digital world.

In this new project, Common Sense Media is developing a comprehensive digital media education program for parents that helps them gain the knowledge, skills and confidence to safely and positively guide their children through this new media world. As part of this work, we will survey parents to better understand their hopes and concerns and we will introduce them to emerging research on digital media’s impact on young people’s learning and development. We will collaborate with other MacArthur grantees that are developing new media literacy curricula for youth to create complementary materials to educate parents. These materials will include new online and print content such as parenting videos (http://www.commonsensemedia.org/videos) and tips on digital media topics (e.g. cyberbullying, “how to twitter”, avatars and your child’s sense of identity), new reviews and recommended lists (e.g. all about anime, online games that promote global awareness, best websites for tinkerers and inventors), casual games that teach families digital citizenship, and a comprehensive parent guide to young people’s digital lives.

Additionally, we are developing new interactive and community features on our website that will enable the growth of a vibrant online community of parents and educators that pose questions, share concerns and best practices about digital media. We plan to leverage Common Sense Media’s website (http://www.commonsensemedia.org) and distribution partnerships with online, cable and media retailers, as well as our outreach into the schools to bring this research and curricula to a broad audience across the country.

Our ultimate goal is to encourage parents and educators to embrace children’s digital lives, understand both the perils and possibilities, and work together to raise a generation of young people that are safe, smart and ethical creators and consumers of new media.

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Related Links
(1) Slides covering a joint poll from CSM and the Cooney Center called “Growing Up Digital” (also see their announcement)
(2) Video from CSM’s public forum “From MySpace to HipHop”, held with MacArthur this past spring