Reimagining Learning: The Digital Media and Learning Competition

It is a little late to get involved this year, but check out The Digital Media and Learning Competition.  The focus is to promote learning through innovative digital media projects.  It got me excited, so I hope it happens again next year because I want to get involved.  --- Cornell

From the website:

HASTAC and the MacArthur Foundation are excited to launch the third year of the Digital Media and Learning Competition. Today, young people are learning, socializing, and participating in civic life in dramatic new ways and assessing information in ways never before imagined. They are reimagining learning on a daily basis and are engaged in what is called "participatory learning." The 2010 Digital Media and Learning Competition challenges designers, entrepreneurs, practitioners, researchers, and young people to put participatory learning to work on behalf of science, technology, engineering, math and their social contexts in the 21st century.

The Digital Media and Learning Competition, created in 2007, was designed to find "and to inspire" the most novel uses of new media in support of learning. Projects explore how digital technologies are changing the way people learn and participate in daily life. Awards have recognized individuals, for-profit companies, universities, and community organizations using new media to transform learning.

The 2010 Competition, launched in partnership with National Lab Day, challenges designers, inventors, entrepreneurs, practitioners and researchers to build learning labs and/or learning experiences for the 21st Century, environments that will help young people interact, share, build, tinker, and explore in new and innovative ways.

Here is an example of one of the submissions:

Why this focus?

President Obama has called for a renewed focus on science, technology, engineering and math education in the United States. The headlines of 2009 highlight the need for urgency: Whether it is epidemic disease, clean energy, climate change, new economic models, or innovative responses to local and global problems, the next generation will experience a rapidly changing world of daunting challenges. The complexity of such challenges will require sophisticated critical thinking and an ability to understand and affect the multiple systems that shape the economy, society and even life itself. Today’s young people will be called upon to demonstrate the dispositions and habits of mind that have always been at the heart of innovation and achievement – creativity, persistence, imagination, curiosity, storytelling, tinkering, improvisation, passion, risk-taking, and collaboration. These are the very dispositions and habits of mind that are nurtured by the exploration and understanding of science, technology, engineering and math.
This is also a time when the way young people learn, socialize, and participate in civic life is changing dramatically. Today, young people are accessing information in ways never before imagined. Young people are contributing, producing, and making things as they participate in local and global networks. They access just-in-time information while engaging in three-dimensional simulations and global networks. They also collaborate and contribute high quality peer-reviewed work in global “pro-am” communities, and ascend to leadership positions in complicated multiplayer team-based games. Recent studies of young people’s participation with digital media – including games, mobile devices, social networks, and virtual worlds – suggest that young people are re-imagining learning on a daily basis. They are engaging in what is called “participatory learning.”

The 2010 Digital Media and Learning Competition challenges designers, entrepreneurs, practitioners, researchers and young people to put participatory learning to work on behalf of science, technology, engineering, math and their social contexts in the 21st century. Awards will total $2 million.

 

http://www.dmlcompetition.net/index.php