DIY media creation

2016

While here is ample research on how youth are connected in online spaces and how youth participate online via sharing and reviewing artifacts, yet less is known about how these social connections and contributions emerge, especially in the context of physical making and what can they contribute to learning and assessment. Thus, our symposium primarily addresses two questions: (1) How do youth connect and learn in online maker communities? and (2) How can we design online maker tools for learning in and out of schools? We share efforts examining how sharing artifacts, documenting design processes, and providing feedback via online tools can support young makers in creating physical artifacts and offer insights to new assessment models.

Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 2013

This study explores the ways adolescents create information collaboratively in the digital environment. In spite of the current widespread practice of information creation by young people, little research exists to illuminate how youth are engaged in creative information behavior or how they make participatory contributions to the changing information world. The purposefully selected sample includes teenagers who actively produce and share information projects, such as online school magazines, an information-sharing website in Wiki, and a digital media library, using Scratch-a graphical programming language developed by MIT Media Lab. Qualitative data were collected through group and individual interviews informed by Dervin's Sense-Making Methodology. The data analysis technique included directed qualitative content analysis with Atlas.ti. Findings reveal the process of information creation, including content development, organization, and presentation of information, as well as noticeable patterns by youth such as visualizing, remixing, tinkering, and gaining a sense of empowerment. This study extends our knowledge of the creative aspects of information behavior.

Proceedings of the 7th Annual Conference on Creativity and Fabrication in Education, 2017

The Maker phenomenon revolves around the technology-enabled hands-on production of artifacts, and has been consistently proposed as a vehicle for STEM education and to inculcate a 'Maker mindset' in children. While Making is physical and activities for children typically take place in physical venues like Maker camps and workshops, much information about Making resides online. To understand how virtual online resources may support inherently physical Making activity, we investigate the landscape of Maker websites for children through a perception-based study and a content analysis study. Our findings showed that Maker websites for children are of 3 types: associated with a fixed space, a transient space, or without any physical presence. These provide different support structures for learning and Maker mindset development. Further research is needed to extend the experience of children in Making activities beyond the limitations of physical visits to Makerspaces.1

Information, Communication & Society, 2009

In recent years, digital media and networks have become embedded in our everyday lives, and are part of broad-based changes to how we engage in knowledge production, communication, and creative expression. Unlike the early years in the development of computers and computer-based media, digital media are now commonplace and pervasive, having been taken up by a wide range of individuals and institutions in all walks of life. Digital media have escaped the boundaries of professional and formal practice, and the academic, governmental, and industry homes that initially fostered their development. Now they have been taken up by diverse populations and non-institutionalized practices, including the peer activities of youth. Although specific forms of technology uptake are highly diverse, a generation is growing up in an era where digital media are part of the taken-for-granted social and cultural fabric of learning, play, and social communication. In 2005, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation began a new grant-making initiative in the area of digital media and learning. An initial set of exploratory grants in the study of youth practices and the development of digital literacy programs has expanded into a major initiative spanning research, educational reform, and technology development. One component of this effort is the support of this book series. As part of the broader MacArthur Foundation initiative, this series is aimed at timely dissemination of new scholarship, fostering an interdisciplinary conversation, and archiving the best research in this emerging field. Through the course of producing the six initial volumes, the foundation convened a set of meetings to discuss the framing issues for this book series. As a result of these discussions we identified a set of shared commitments and areas of focus. Although we recognize that the terrain is being reshaped even as we seek to identify it, we see these as initial frames for the ongoing work to be put forward by this series. This book series is founded upon the working hypothesis that those immersed in new digital tools and networks are engaged in an unprecedented exploration of language, games, social interaction, problem solving, and self-directed activity that leads to diverse forms of learning. These diverse forms of learning are reflected in expressions of identity, how individuals express independence and creativity, and in their ability to learn, exercise judgment, and think systematically. The defining frame for this series is not a particular theoretical or disciplinary approach, nor is it a fixed set of topics. Rather, the series revolves around a constellation of topics investigated from multiple disciplinary and practical frames. The series as a whole looks at the relation between youth, learning, and digital media, but each book or essay might deal with only a subset of this constellation. Erecting strict topical boundaries can exclude

2010

Schools remain notorious for co-opting digital technologies to Ğbusiness as usualğ approaches to teaching new literacies. DIY Media addresses this issue head-on, and describes expansive and creative practices of digital literacy that are increasingly influential and popular in contexts beyond the school, and whose educational potential is not yet being tapped to any significant degree in classrooms. This book is very much concerned with engaging students in do-it-yourself digitally mediated meaning-making practices.

International Journal of Information and Learning Technology

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore how a small group of adolescents in an alternative care and treatment program develop digital literacy skills over time while immersed in a rich media setting. It also explores how the students use new media tools and affordances to “perform” their identities and to present themselves within their classroom community. Design/methodology/approach This ethnographic case study research involved seven students from a Canadian alternative school that provides educational programming for students from government approved care, treatment, custody and correctional facilities. Through an integrated arts-based curriculum, with a thematic focus on community and identity, the students used a variety to digital tools and media to create an “All About Me” book. Findings The students used inquiry-based learning and multiple modes of expression, facilitated by the multimodal, multimedia nature of digital media, including both screen-based and tangible...

Georgetown University-Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, 2013

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) disciplines have become a ubiquitous curriculum focus for American educators and children’s entertainment producers, but are the ways in which children are introduced STEM truly engaging? This study set out to explore factors that affect a positive learning experience with STEM and the ways in which children are creating interactive content. In this study, girls and boys from 9-12 years of age worked as partners to produce original and remixed digital works of art using Scratch. Each participant in this study had four Scratch lessons. There were six classes of students (two from each grade: fourth, fifth, and sixth) and each class had one Scratch session per week. In total, the experimenter ran 24 instructional sessions for 98 participating students. What it means to be a digital game designer today is an ever-expanding construct because of the rise of kid-generated content and the popularity of remix. The relationship between gamers...

Proceedings of the International Conference on Computers in Education, 2011

Abstract: Online creative production has received considerable attention for its success in creating Wikipedia and Free and Open Source Software yet few youth participate in such voluntary online collaborations, in particular in programming contexts. In this paper, we describe how youth programmers organized collaborative groups or collabs in response to a design challenge in the Scratch Online Community. We report on participation in the “Collab Challenge” in the Scratch community at large and with particular groups, designers' efforts ...

Children and teens have valuable insights to offer in the design of sociotechnical learning tools and environments. Prior work has identified a range of participatory design (PD) techniques that have been used successfully to engage youth of various ages in the design process. Less understood is how youth experience and learn from their engagement in specific PD techniques. Although recent work has begun to address this understudied area, it has focused primarily on children, not adolescents. In the current study, we document the learning opportunities experienced by a group of high school students who participated in a series of six PD sessions focusing on the design of a digital badge system that recognizes and rewards out-of-school science learning. We discuss how these learning opportunities, actualized through scaffolded reflection, contributed positively to the design of the digital badge system. This work advances knowledge of how and why engaging youth in PD can contribute to effective designs of sociotechnical learning systems.

2018

We explore the roles children play in the design and evaluation of technological tools in a formal educational environment. In order to do so, we describe two separate projects set in a formal educational context: primary schools, with children aged 8–10, in Switzerland (called PADS), and with older students, 11–12, in Scotland (called CHIS). In the first case the teacher and pupils were co-designing a novel application to support the creation of multimedia fairy tales, where in the second students and teachers worked towards the definition of new tools to assist them in searching for information. The tasks were different but comparable in terms of complexity and level of interest expressed by children. Researchers followed a similar approach in order to interact with the stakeholders. We here describe the different attitudes and assumptions of the adults involved. In the Scottish study these encouraged students to make choices, propose solutions and work independently. In the Swiss...