As of this writing more than 49,000 signatures had been collected and some of the petition’s followers included actress Mia Farrow, former White House advisor Van Jones, and citizens from across the U.S.

The decision to visit Chicago and also meet privately with several students in a high school gymnasium suggests that the President heard the voices of Chicago youth. It also points to the shifting contours of youth political engagement.

Remaking Political Engagement: Participatory Politics

It would be a mistake to dismiss the Change.org petition drive by Chicago youth as an example of what some observers call “fast citizenship,” a reference to forms of civic engagement that seldom require sustained effort or commitment to a social or political cause. The petition is also more than a case of “slacktivism,” that is, the idea that political participation among young people has been reduced to Facebook “likes,” fleeting tweets, and comical yet ineffectual mash-up videos. The petition is a notable example of the rapidly evolving civic and political world that young citizens are making. This world contrasts sharply with narratives that maintain that young people are politically disengaged and indifferent about the world around them.

How we think about political engagement is changing, in part, because of the new pathways to political engagement and expression that youth are building. Efforts like the Change.org petition represent what researchers Cathy Cohen and Joseph Kahne refer to as “participatory politics,”defined as:

“interactive, peer-based acts through which individuals and groups seek to exert both voice and influence on issues of public concern.”

Young people’s innovative adoption of social, digital, and mobile media platforms is not only transforming how they socialize, learn, and communicate; it is also expanding the opportunities for new genres of political participation. As Cohen and Kahne explain, participatory politics can “enable participants to exert greater agency through the circulation…of political information as well as through the production of original content.”  Around the world we are witnessing the numerous ways in which social media amplifies the civic voices, aspirations, and actions of young people. Around the world young people are using mobile devices and social media to organize political protests determined to realize more equitable, sustainable, and ethical futures.

Re-Mixing the Vote

Young people’s participation in politics is more robust than ever before. And it is not only happening online or through the participatory cultures that they are creating with digital media. Many young people are making their voices heard through traditional pathways, most notably the vote. The percentage of young voters has increased in each of the last three U.S. presidential elections. According to the Pew Research Center, young people under 30 years of age accounted for nearly 20 percent of the 2012 voting electorate. Importantly, 42% of voters age 18-29 were Latino, African American, or other. “The share of young voters who are white,” Pew writes, “has declined 16 points since 2000, when 74% of voters under 30 identified as white.” Changes like these make young Latino, Black, and multi-racial voters a powerful bloc and members of what some call a new national “voting majority” in the U.S. Young people are mobilizing their peers and their voices to not simply be heard but also to be reckoned with in high-stakes political arenas like health care, reproductive rights, education, and gay rights.

DML 2013: Democratic Futures

This is the world that the DML 2013 conference, Democratic Futures, will explore as it brings together a dynamic mix of educators, political leaders, designers, and researchers to examine how the future of democracy is being made today. The various workshops, panels, Ignite talks, demonstrations, performances, and informal sessions scheduled for DML 2013 are truly inspiring. Among the many topics to be included are the creative ways young people appropriate popular culture to craft their civic identities and find their political voices; the exploration of young people’s historic influence in political reforms ranging from education to immigration; the emergence of schools, libraries, and museums as learning labs for incubating new forms of youth civic and community engagement; and how the global diffusion of participatory culture and participatory politics are leading to new notions of government and governance that emphasize openness, transparency, and diversity.

Launched in 2006 by the MacArthur Foundation, DML has evolved into a dynamic movement that includes a wide-ranging set of research activities, collaborations with some of the most influential companies and organizations in the world, and the design of schools, libraries, and museums that are not simply reimagining the future of learning but remaking it through innovation and experimentation. From the very beginning DML has maintained a commitment to understanding how young people’s navigation of the currents of societal, technical, and political change enables the rise of new cultural identities and ways of being in the world. This has been especially true in terms of supporting young people’s ability to develop the skills and dispositions to be connected and life-long learners, makers of their own pathways to enrichment, and agents of social change in their schools and communities.

It is the story of this world—a world of civic-minded makers, doers, and innovators—that DML 2013 participants will tell in unique, inspiring, and wonderful ways.

S. Craig Watkins is chair of the 2013 Digital Media & Learning conference, to be held in Chicago, Mar. 14-16.

One of the more interesting assertions of connected learning is the need to create new approaches to education that recognize the vitality of learning and the fact that it happens in many different ways. There is widespread agreement among researchers from sociology, economics, and education that the academic achievement gaps in the U.S. are attributable to both in–school and out-of-school experiences.  While there is widespread recognition of the former, there is a tendency to gloss over the importance of the latter, out-of-school learning.

What young people from upper income households do with their time out-of-school varies significantly from their lower income counterparts.  In the preparation of the Connected Learning report we were struck by the “enrichment opportunity gap” between upper income and lower income students.  Since the mid-1990s college educated parents, often a proxy for middle and upper-income status, have made steadily rising time and monetary investments in their children’s lives and activities that are non-school related.   According to Greg J. Duncan and Richard J. Murnane, in the period from 1972 to 1973, high-income families spent about $2700 more per year on child enrichment than low-income families.  Duncan and Murnane explain that by 2005 to 2006, this gap had almost tripled to $7500. Time spent in novel environments help young people develop the interpersonal competencies that are predictive of social and economic mobility later in life.

Most researchers believe that this extraordinary investment in extra-curricular activities—after school programs, summer camps, vacations, music lessons, etc.—is driven by one main motivation: the desire among college educated parents to increase their children’s odds of gaining admission to a select university.

Parental investment in extracurricular activities requires two things that poor and working class parents seldom have: extra time and extra money.  Consequently, low-income families are much more likely to rely on schools and other public resources to provide access to extracurricular activities.  This was certainly true of the lower-income families in our study at Texas City High School (TCHS). Along with usual suspects like sports, students at TCHS had access to, for example, the culinary arts, debate, fashion, and even a gay and lesbian student leadership group.  We spent most of our time in the after school space with students pursuing interest in another area, the digital media arts.   After school options like these are offered to close the enrichment opportunity gap while also expanding the pathways for learning and achievement at TCHS.

In a report titled, Learning at Not-School, Julian Sefton-Green makes a case for what he calls “not school learning.”  What is not-school learning?  It is a reference to learning settings were teaching and learning—at least how it happens in school—are not understood to be the primary purpose of what takes place.  Equally important, “not school” learning settings suggests that learners possess agency and choice in the activities that take place.  “Not-school” learning is exactly what it sounds like, an approach to learning that differs significantly from the forms of learning—teacher-centered practices, sorting by age, emphasis on test-taking skills—that currently dominate what David Tyack and Larry Cuban call the “everyday grammar” of schooling.

The Miracle of Education

The ability of schools like TCHS to provide students opportunities for out-of-school learning have come under increase pressure due, in part, to the drastic budget cuts pursued by many state legislatures around the country. In response to drastic cuts in Texas education in 2012 more than six hundred school districts across the state filed a lawsuit claiming that the funding for public education in the state is unconstitutional because it fails to provide adequate resources to support students ability to reach state-mandated academic standards.  On February 5, 2013, Texas State Judge, John Dietz ruled in favor of the school districts.

During a statement that framed his judicial and moral reasoning for siding with the school districts Judge Dietz asked those present in the courtroom, “what do we know of Brownsville, Texas?”  Sitting on the southernmost tip of the U.S. and Mexico border, Brownsville is 93% Latino and has the unfortunate honor of being consistently recognized as one of the poorest congressional districts in the U.S.   Recently, however, Brownsville has developed a more inspirational reputation.  According to Judge Dietz, “the United States Chess Federation recognizes Brownsville as the most active center of chess in the United States.”

In 1989, JJ Guajardo, a teacher in Brownsville was looking for a way to spark many of the students at Russell Elementary School.  He started teaching them chess before the school day began.  Within a year several students started arriving to school early to play chess. Four years later the students won their first state championship. Russell Elementary School became a chess dynasty winning seven state championships in a row and competing successfully against students from all over the U.S. and the world.  Today, more than 4,000 Brownsville students play chess.  The game has become a badge of honor for an entire community and one of the bright spots in the public schools throughout the Rio Grande Valley.

Eddie Seal for the Texas Tribune

Facing tough budget decisions education officials, fortunately, elected to keep funding the chess program, which has been covered by, among others, the New York Times and HBO and even landed some Brownsville students in the White House to attend a 2010 Latino Excellence in Education initiative launched by President Barack Obama.  Inspired by the success of the program The University of Texas at Brownsville is one of the few U.S. universities to offer scholarships for chess, further recognizing and rewarding the efforts of students and their schools.

In his ruling against the state, Dietz explained the need to support teachers like Mr. Guajardo and initiatives like the chess program.  Opportunities like the Brownsville chess program embody what the judge calls, “the miracle of education” which is, in his words, providing avenues for children to succeed “by unlocking the potential in every child, as you find them.”

Judge Dietz’s statement illuminates the value of out-of-school learning.   The program offers students an activity that while not explicitly academic nourishes outcomes often credited with supporting academic success—self discovery, confidence, self-esteem, hard work, persistence, and discipline. The chess program in Brownsville is a powerful testament to how connected learning can transform an entire community by creating spaces where every student can participate, learn by doing, foster a need-to-know, and share their skill and knowledge in ways that boost learning and social connections.

This, in many ways, is the miracle of connected learning.

Like so many  schools populated by students from low-income households TCHS struggles with the stigma that its students are low-performing and “at-risk.” And yet outsiders might be surprised to see the range of technologies—iMac computers, game authoring software, FinalCut Pro, digital cameras, and audio recording equipment—available to students in a Technology Applications class that our team worked with during the year.

The Tech Apps class is a classic case of what Jane Margolis calls “technology rich, but curriculum poor.”  This is a reference to the fact that even when students in low-income schools have access to technology hardware, software, and courses they may not have access to fully developed curricula that can leverage those resources in ways that adequately support their ability to engage the higher-order thinking and doing skills that prepare them for the classrooms, workspaces, and challenges of tomorrow. The teacher that we worked with was hard working and caring but lacked access to the professional development resources that support rigorous curriculum planning.

After spending a year in the school we took on a unique challenge:  creating a connected learning space at TCHS.

Critical Design, Critical Dispositions

The design challenge for our students was to create an iBook that tells a research-driven, community engaging, and interactive story about the childhood obesity epidemic.  Students would learn by doing things like research and data collection, writing and analysis, and producing a variety of digital media artifacts—interactive maps, podcasts, video, photo galleries, graphic art—that conveyed their ideas, arguments, and vision for a healthier community.  Digital media production in this context went beyond simply making things. We wanted to create a context in which designing and making reflected a disposition that was at once creative and critical of the challenges their community faces.  This approach to production embodies a shift in our thinking about equity in the digital world.  It is no longer enough to provide students access to computers. Young people in edge communities will face many challenges in their lifetime. Developing the competencies to use digital media technologies to collect and analyze information, document evidence, persuade, and tell stories will be invaluable in an information dominant world.  Consequently, educators must establish access to learning opportunities that emphasize critical engagement, high cognitive demand, and opportunities to apply lessons learned and skills attained in creative and novel situations. I call this, ‘critical design literacy.’

Not Another History Teacher: http://notanotherhistoryteacher.edublogs.org/category/digital-storytelling/.

Supporting Connected and Interest-driven learnin

Consistent with theories of interest-driven learning many of our young designers came to the project with interests and identities that they have been cultivating. Take Alberto, for example.  He was a music enthusiast.  Alberto had spent some time as part of a band and was a fan of music videos. Not surprisingly, Alberto figured out a way to translate his passion for music into a piece for the project. He wrote the script to a music video, recruited friends as actors, used a music software program to compose some original beats, and wrote lyrics to lay over his tracks.

During the three weeks Alberto sought out ways to personalize his learning.  He stayed late in the afternoons to work on projects and checked out equipment–laptops, audio, digital cameras–so that he could work at home.  Like other students Alberto documented his food environment through pictures, video, and interviews.  He also pursued independent research that explored the differences between simple and complex sugars. Alberto was making vibrant connections across the nodes in his learning ecology—peer, summer camp, home, online, and popular culture—that our instructors never could have envisioned.

Alberto’s learning ingenuity animates one of the major tenets of connected learning: a vision that supports the ability of students to build learning pathways that are authentic, interest-powered, and academically engaging. Once students begin to see learning as something that connects to the people, places, and things that they care about, the possibilities for what can happen from a learning perspective are endless.

Over the course of the entire previous semester we observed students in technology classes at TCHS struggle to produce a single piece of work. In a three week span Alberto produced a short informational video that explained some of the myths and clinical aspects of childhood obesity; a music video that creatively integrated some of the facts, trends and lifestyle implications of childhood obesity; an interactive graphic that generated information about the sugar content in foods commonly found in American homes; and a brief informational piece explaining the role of simple and complex sugars.  In addition to the quantity of products that Alberto created we were impressed with the quality of the work. It was research driven, informative, creative, and engaged with his community.

Connecting Learning to the Real World & the Real World to Learning

We were not the only ones that were impressed with Alberto’s work. He has been invited to talk about his involvement in the project in several venues including a local television news program, surrounding schools, and two Austin area conferences on technology and education.  After his team presented the iBook to a local area hospital a doctor from the Dell Children’s Hospital invited Alberto to submit work for a city-wide campaign called the “No Soda Challenge.” These are all powerful endorsements of the work that Alberto did, the kind of credit, recognition and respect that can make a significant difference in the path that a young person takes in life.

Alberto’s engagement embodies the true vision of connected learning: the ability to help students take a controlling interest in their learning by expanding the opportunities to pursue their passions in ways that are personally reaffirming, community enriching, and academically empowering.

This summer I attended summer school…well kind of.  For three weeks in June I worked with a great team to implement a digital media and design project with high school students.  We followed that project with a two-week game design camp in July at the University of Texas with middle school students. Both projects are what you might call ‘connected learning’ design pilots. What exactly is that? The goal of each project was to put into action some of the ideas that we have been theorizing about in our work with the Connected Learning Research Network. In this, the first of two reports, I reflect on the high school project.

Connecting Learning: From Theory to Design

After spending most of the previous academic year in Texas City High School (TCHS) we observed a range of challenges including the consequences of blocking social media in schools; the daunting and daily task of keeping students academically engaged; the corrosive effects of chronic absenteeism in the classroom; the impact of economic and familial instability on students, teachers, and schools; and the creative ways youth from poorly resourced schools and households are using digital media.  Our work in the classroom was a real awakening.  It was through working side-by-side with students and teachers that we observed first-hand how dwindling resources diminish support for innovation in curriculum design and instruction.  In many instances learning at TCHS is rote, high-stakes testing, uninspiring, and, quite frankly, detached from the sweeping changes that are remaking what it means to be a learner, citizen, and worker in the 21^st century.

Photo Credit: Mark Brannan, Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/heycoach/1197947341/sizes/z/

Drawing inspiration from our fieldwork in the school we asked one simple question: could we work with teachers and students to create a more dynamic learning environment?   We had seen evidence of connected learning at TCHS but it was typically improvised and out-of-school rather than scaffolded in ways that could genuinely penetrate the academic and learning climate at the school.  Also encouraging was the fact that the teachers that we worked with as well as the principal and key school board members appreciated our efforts to support the introduction of innovation into the curriculum wherever possible.  Intrigued by the prospects of working with a group of students and a teacher we immersed ourselves in the design principles—shared purpose, openly networked, and production-centered—central to our theory of connected learning. Our research network has formed a series of ideas about how connected learning can transform lives by transforming learning. We decided to test those ideas by putting them into practice. While still preliminary the results from the summer pilots are eye-opening.

The Learning Context

We had an interesting mix of students. Whereas some were college bound others were uncertain about their futures after high school.  A few of the students appeared to be intrinsically motivated while others clearly lacked academic motivation.  And yet, there were a number of examples of interest-powered learners in domains as diverse as fashion and film production. After one year at TCHS we anticipated that there would be some real challenges to creating the kind of learning ecology that we envisioned: one that was social, community engaged, student-centered, hands-on, and production oriented. In one class that we worked with during the previous semester Mr. Rodriguez, a caring and inspiring presence for many of his students, struggled to get his students to produce video shorts and PSAs.  A combination of absenteeism, low academic engagement, and low expectations throughout the school made executing class projects a daunting challenge.  When it became clear that students would not be able to produce one video short for the semester Mr. Rodriguez asked them to produce a 30-second trailer.  When it became clear that another group of students would not be able to produce a 30-second PSA he asked them to storyboard their ideas.  Even these tasks proved difficult for some of the students to complete.  Our challenge: to get some of these same students who struggled to complete a 30-secon PSA in nine weeks to produce an iBook filled with a range of digital assets in less than three weeks.

Critical Design Literacy

During the pilot students pursued answers to one question: is the pervasiveness of sugary foods and beverages creating a toxic food environment?  Medical researchers and obesity experts are pointing to sugar as a main culprit in America’s battle against obesity. Many of the students at TCHS live in communities that are disproportionately impacted by the childhood obesity epidemic. Consequently, we wanted students to tell powerful, personal, and local stories that demonstrated engagement with issues related to food justice, food equity, and the struggles that their families and communities face.

We saw evidence of this happening in the research projects that students pursued, the conversations that they were having with each other and at home, and in the content (digital and non-digital) that they created for the iBook.  Part of the research students did required them to turn their own homes into a research lab as they searched for added sugars in unsuspecting foods like steak sauce, salad dressing, and peanut butter.  Design challenges like these resonated with many of our students and enabled them to make powerful connections between what they were studying and how they were living.  I knew that we were on the right track after an exchange with a young Latina following one of our scheduled field trips.

After first visiting a Whole Foods Market on one side of town and then a two block area populated primarily by fast food options and convenient stores on the other side she reflected poignantly on the role of class and ethnicity.  “It looks like mostly low-class people shop here,” she noted referring to the people we observed in a small Mexican market along the two-block food swamp.  She added, “I consider myself low-class and this is the kind of place where me and my mom shop.”  By low-class she was referring to families like hers that deal daily with what researchers Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb call the “hidden injuries of class.”   Among the contributions to the interactive book were a series of podcasts, videos, and digital photo galleries that reflected on the field trips and the kinds of issues that it raised about food, equity, and geography. These kinds of observations and the work that students engaged in established a framework for critical dialogue and critical design literacy, that is, an opportunity for students to brainstorm, learn from touching the world around them, and produce content that demonstrates substantive engagement with some of the challenges facing their community.

Mobile + Learning: Mobilizing Youth Voices

On our very first day we issued each student an iPod Touch because we wanted learning to be mobile, social, personal, and communal. In other words, we wanted to create a connected learning experience. At its core connected learning is based on the belief that real and meaningful learning happens when students are engaged, active, and able to link their learning practices and identities across the different nodes– school, peers, community, online world, interests– in their learning ecology.  This was certainly the case with our field trips which were organized to situate learning as dynamic, experiential, and real-world based. Before visiting The Texas Center for the Prevention and Treatment Childhood Obesity at the Dell Children’s Hospital, for instance, students had to conduct some preliminary research on the expertise of the staff.  When they arrived at the site they used their iPods (and other devices) to capture photos, videos, and interviews with the hospital staff.  What they captured served multiple purposes: it was primary research material as well as content that could be used in photo galleries, video productions, and the interactive maps that they created.

Similarly,  when students needed to document the pervasiveness of sugar in their homes, school, and neighborhood mobile was a great tool for collecting evidence. The iPods were used as a tool to support the learning goals associated with the field trips and to help students connect to our childhood obesity theme and their community in ways that were purposeful.  During the course of the project we observed how mobile supported engagement and learning across the diverse nodes in their learning ecology including school, home, peers, online, and the community.

Students also used mobile apps to communicate and share content with their team members. When Robyn had to be away from her team for two days to attend college orientation she sent them photos of the places where she and her mom dined.  The iPod helped her keep track of where they went, what they ate, and her thoughts about it all. Some of her pictures, audio recordings, and insights from the two-day trip were used in the iBook. In addition to photo-sharing apps Robyn and her team used Evernote, DropBox, and Tumblr to post, share, and archive their digital content and ideas.

In essence, mobile was as a learning node that expanded the classroom into the world and, likewise, brought the world into the classroom.  Mobile also expanded the repertoire of identities that students took on during the project: they became engaged citizens, field researchers, collaborators, ethnographers, food spotters, reporters, and designers. It was as if looking through the lens of a mobile device situated new ways of seeing the world and being in the world.

Learning from Our Mistakes

The purpose of going to school is to learn and that was exactly how we approached our connected learning pilot projects.  During our time with the high school students we constantly evaluated our design and probed our assumptions.  Now that the pilot is over we are diligently unpacking what took place.  Not surprisingly, there are some things that we would definitely do different, especially from an instructional perspective.  For example, during the field trip comparing Whole Foods to a two-block area that embodied many of the characteristics of a food swamp we wanted students to take on the role of investigative reporters.  The idea was for them to use their iPods to collect evidence/data and then produce investigative type commentaries that compared and contrasted the two environments.

During the field trip I realized that we did not spend sufficient time discussing the core elements of an investigative report. Just like it is important to help students learn the basic structure, elements, and conventions of an argumentative essay (i.e., controlling idea, use of evidence to support our argument, recognition of opposing views) it is also important to be that precise when it involves the production of digital media content.  Rather than assume that simply because students have technology, production skills, and the autonomy to create content they still need instructional laddering, support, clearly defined standards, and feedback on the digital media artifacts that educators expect them to produce.

Needless to say, there is much to learn from our pilots as we begin to comb through the mountain of notes, pictures, video, and student work to better comprehend what took place. Ultimately, our goal is to analyze our connected learning principles while also illuminating the power and the potential of connected learning practices.

This is the first of two reports based on our connected learning summer pilots.

What is critical design literacy?

Critical Design Literacy

The concept is informed by design thinking, a rich and dynamic process that emphasizes inquiry, innovation, ideation, building, and problem solving.  Critical design literacy applies the protocols of design thinking to practice social innovations that lead to social transformation. In the learning environments that we will pilot we want students to become literate in critical thinking and critical designing.  The former encourages students to look at their community through an inquisitive lens while the latter encourages students to design for community impact.

Critical design literacy challenges some of our most ‘common-sense’ notions of schooling.  In general schools seek to produce good, loyal, and dutiful citizens.  But what if the mission of our learning institutions is to create engaged, critical, and future-building citizens? Keri Facer reminds us that future-building schools must do more than train students to inhabit some pre-determined future.  Schools should be community resources and laboratories that help students develop the competence and the experience to intervene in the making of a future that is more equitable, desirable, and sustainable.

Critical design literacy also challenges the notion that the primary role of schools is to prepare students to get jobs in the global economy.  Because a majority of the students at Texas City High will not attend college there is a tremendous amount of pressure on teachers and administrators to focus on career readiness. Critical design literacy strives to do more than prepare students for participation in the economy; it strives to prepare students for participation in their community. There is something extraordinarily empowering about seeing the world through the lens of critical design, a lens that encourages students to do what designers do: develop the skills to change existing situations into preferred ones.

Additionally, critical design literacy embraces the learning and design principles of connected learning, a interdisciplinary research network that believes,”that the most meaningful and resilient forms of learning happen when a learner has a personal interest or passion that they are pursuing in a context of cultural affinity, social support, and shared purpose.”

Photo from Shutterstock

Practicing Critical Design Literacy

What would critical design literacy look like in practice?  Here are a couple of ideas:

1. Schools would be required to ask their students to identify a social, local, or communal situation and make a case for making change.  In addition to identifying the situation, students would engage in a process of inquiry in order to gain some degree of content mastery.  For example, they might grow their knowledge of issues like food justice, public health, or digital citizenship.  In addition, students would have to generate a series of ideas and low-resolution prototypes that propose ways of creating a more desirable situation.  Along the way students begin to not only study a local problem but intervene in a meaningful way.

2. Libraries, museums, and other public institutions could offer design challenges that encourage young people to create ways of enhancing the quality of life in their communities.  This year the National Endowment for the Humanities, American Library Association, Institute of Museum and Library Services, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation convened a meeting in Washington, DC to consider the role of libraries in transforming communities.  The conversation was shaped, in part, by the knowledge that learning in the networked age is evolving in ways that compel educational institutions to rethink their mission and how they can support today’s young designers.  Building opportunities for critical design literacy is one way that libraries can engage the designer disposition by becoming a laboratory for social exploration and connected learning.  Done properly, these design challenges can become dynamic learning hubs and social innovation incubators that play a crucial role in the lives of the communities that they serve.

Redesigning K-12

Designers often claim that, “design is too important to be left to designers.” Across the U.S. and the world designers are making a case for bringing design thinking into K-12 environments. The design consultancy IDEO has been working with schools to integrate design thinking in ways that reimagine how teachers teach and learners learn. Emily Pilloton’s Project H has brought socially engaged design thinking to high school students in Bertie County, North Carolina.  In a conversation that I shared with Pete Maher, COO of the LUMA Institute, he consistently maintained that designers should be connecting with educators. Chris Pacione, Director of the LUMA Institute, believes that design should be as pervasive as reading, writing, and arithmetic. In a 2010 essay Pacione lays out the case for design literacy: “pervasive competency in the collaborative and iterative skills of ‘looking’ and ‘making’ to understand and advance our world” could represent a breakthrough moment in the history of common literacy.

Designing for Equity

Finally, introducing critical design literacy across a diverse spectrum of young learners expands the possibility to remix and revitalize the pathways to youth participation in their communities by addressing what Joseph Kahne and Ellen Middaugh refer to as the civic opportunity gap in our schools. In a 2008 study Kahne and Middaugh found that the chances for high school students to participate in the civic life of their communities are unevenly distributed.   Students, for instance, with parents of higher social and economic status are more likely to be involved in service learning or civic oriented classes, clubs, and organizations compared to students with parents in low status employment. Rather than helping to equalize the capacity for democratic participation Kahne and Middaugh argue that schools may actually be widening the gap by providing more preparation and experience for students who “are already likely to attain a disproportionate amount of civic and political voice.”

The need for critical design literacy has never been more urgent than now. There is one clear and dominant trend in the most populous metropolitan areas of the U.S.: growing racial and ethnic diversity.  These areas are also ground zero for some of our country’s greatest challenges in education, civic engagement, and public health.  The problems that these communities are facing require a broad array of resources, skills, and social innovations. Crucially, the individuals living in these communities must become the change that they want to see. Their very survival will be dependent on the ability of educators to make the skills and learning principles that critical design literacy promotes accessible to the students and communities that need them the most.

The conversation was designed to explore the various barriers–social, financial, educational, racial–to technology related industries.  Ron began by sharing some of the statistics on the strikingly low number of African Americans in tech related fields, the growing absence of black males in higher education, and the paltry number of black women in fields like engineering and computer science.  Denmark West was one of the invited speakers.  With his background in digital strategy for companies like Microsoft, BET, and MTV Denmark’s comments focused on bridging industry with important community initiatives.  Denmark made references to the dearth of media representations of black success in technology industries.  Black youth, he explained, grow up seeing successful athletes and rappers but not high-tech professionals.  He also referenced some of the work that I have been involved in related to digital media literacy and noted that education or, more important, learning is a crucial element in any effort to grow a more diverse body of professionals in the high tech sector.

I was glad to see Baratunde Thurston, another invited speaker.  Baratunde spoke about how his mother’s resiliency as a single-parent exposed him to hard work, technology, and, eventually, higher education.  Baratunde is a comedian and the author of How To Be Black, an uproarious play on the peculiar ways in which ideas about race shape our everyday lives, norms, and experiences.  He made another comment that I thought was revealing.  A few years ago he hosted a TV show on the Discovery Channel about technology in the future.  According to Baratunde, network executives insisted that his audience was white men in their middle ages.  But when young black males would stop and greet him on the streets in Brooklyn with, “hey, you are that brother from the future,” it suggested to him that something very different was happening with his show.  His point resonates with one of my observations during the conversation: the digital media landscape has shifted in some noteworthy ways and conventional notions about who is invested in technology and who uses technology do not recognize how the digital world, and especially the participation of black and Latino youth in that world, is evolving. I explained that it is not that black and Latino youth do not want to succeed in school or the high tech industry.  Rather, they often do not have the social and cultural capital that creates the pathways to success in these and other sectors.

Ingrid Sturgis talked about her efforts to build a digital media learning community in the department of journalism at Howard University. Ingrid has worked with various online ventures at the New York Times, BET, AOL, and heartandsoul.com.  Part of Ingrid’s work involves building a community of practice around technology with an emphasis on content creation.  When you look at the racial gap in college attendance in the U.S. institutions like Howard will play a pivotal role in building the social networks, human capital, and experience that will help young blacks successfully navigate a steadily evolving future.

I spoke about the work that we are doing with the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning initiative.  The gap between in-school and out-of-school learning is especially pronounced in low-performing schools.  In the work that I am doing which is supported by the MacArthur Foundation and the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement and the College of Communication at the University of Texas the goal is, first, to develop a better understanding of the learning divides through rigorous research and analysis.  The ultimate goal, of course, is to design learning futures–classrooms, after school programs, libraries,  museums, summer camps–that close the learning gaps.  London-based scholar David Buckingham argues that the dynamic learning experiences that students encounter in their engagement with digital media out of school and the demoralizing learning experiences–memorization and relentless standardized testing–that takes place in school help to structure today’s generational and digital divides.

In our field work it has become clear that students in low performing schools have high aspirations but are often fighting against low expectations.  They want to work in game design companies and tech related industries but they are typically tracked into schools and classes that do not prepare them to enter these professions.  There are many points along their social, personal, and educatioal journey that block access to meaningful participation in the industries of the future.  Perhaps none is more important than the failure of public education to produce the kinds of learners, citizens, competencies, and social networks that are the gateway to the rich, diverse, and meaningful opportunities that are emerging in the  21st century.

From Digital divides to particpation gaps: ”In years past the great fear was that the digital divide would leave black and Latino youth disconnected from the social, educational, and civic opportunities the Internet affords. However, some of the most urgent questions today are less about access and more about the context and quality of engagement. Specifically, how do race, class, gender, and geography influence the digital media practices of young people? Even as a growing diversity of young people adopts digital media technologies, not all digital media ecologies are equal… Investigations of the digital lives of black and Latino youth must focus less on the access gap and more on the “participation gap.” Whereas the former defines the issues of technology and social inequality largely as a matter of access to computers and the Internet, the latter considers the different skills, competencies, knowledge, practices, and forms of capital that different populations bring to their engagement with networked media.”

The influence of hip hop in digital media culture: “The origins of hip-hop bear a striking resemblance to the participatory norms and practices of early 21stcentury digital media culture. Some of the most iconic creative practices associated with early hip-hop—aerosol art (graffiti) and turntablism—reflect a serious social and creative investment in technology for the expression of identity and community. Early hip how was interest based, peer driven, and propelled by a rich informal learning ecology…[T]he technological aspirations of black and Latino youth are long-standing.  Nowhere is this more evident than in the context of hip-hop culture… Hip-hop culture is the dominant medium through which black and Latino teens construct their digital identities, master unique online linguistic practices, assemble social ties, and navigate their interest in pop music, videos, fashion, sports, and civic life.”

Black males and digital media. “The digital media identities, performances, and self-creation practices of young black men–how they navigate the popular culture landscape to gain recognition and prestige–is based largely on the desire to gain respect from their male peers. This bid for respectability is visible across the many platforms that converge in the use of sites like MySpace and Facebook, including music, video, photos, animation, wall posts, and status updates…The digital media practices and identities of young black men reflect the extent to which they covet the fantasies of fame, wealth, and status that color the most popular expressions of black masculinity in the production of corporate hip-hop. In this context content creation and authorship with digital media develop culturally specific notions of authenticity, social currency, and cultural capital within a distinct peer community.”

Creating and critiquing with digital media.  “In addition to observing them creating with digital media, my research has also observed black and Latino youth critiquing with digital media…These are not necessarily explicitly organized acts of civic engagement but rather casual reflections, content, and modes of expression that broaden the scope of youth digital media practices.  Whereas friendship-driven genres reflect how digital media are used to negotiate the inward-looking world of peer cultures, the civic-oriented genres illuminate some of the distinct ways in which digital media are used to look outward and critically at the world… By bringing distinct cultural sensibilities, social critiques, and lived experiences to their engagement with digital media, black and Latino youth are not only remaking the digital divide; they are also expanding the genres of participation that marks young people’s engagement with digital media.”

The mobile phone. ”For Latino and African American youth the mobile phone has become an alternative gateway to the kinds of digital media activities they prefer—social networking, status updates, sharing photos, and consuming media like games, music, and video. But is this path to the online world limited?  While mobile phones can be a tool for creativity, learning, and civic engagement, credible concerns have been raised that teens who are restricted to mobile phones for home internet use may also be restricted to media ecologies and social networks that rarely, if ever, afford access to these kinds of experiences…The issue is not whether rich or meaningful mobile learning ecologies will develop…they already exist.  Rather, the real question is, will these mobile leaning ecologies be distributed in ways that close or maintain America’s learning divide?”

Digital Media, Literacy and the Achievement Gap.  ”Even as black and Latino youth have built a robust informal media ecology, a debate has emerged: To what extent does their participation in digital media culture enhance learning outcomes such as motivation, grit, and academic success while also encouraging the development of hybrid learner identities such as writers, designers, journalists, scientists, researchers, and teachers? And what evidence exists that Latino and African-American engagement with media technology produces behaviors and learning outcomes that might impact the academic achievement gap?… Even as digital and mobile media platforms are available in a greater diversity of households, the different cultural environments in which young people use technology leads to different intensities of engagement and, ultimately, to different learning outcomes.”

You can read Digital Divides: Navigating the Digital Edge, here.

Education administrators block social media because they believe it threatens the personal and emotional safety of their students. Or they believe that social media is a distraction that diminishes student engagement and the quality of the learning experience.

Schools also block social media to prevent students from accessing inappropriate content.  I have often wondered what are schools really blocking when they block social media. Working in a high school this year has given me added perspective.

In one class my graduate assistant and I are working with a teacher in a Technology Applications class.  Our goal is to reinvent the classroom and, more important, the learning that takes place. We structured the learning to be autonomous, self-directed, creative, collaborative, and networked.   We decided to let the student teams pick which digital media project they wanted to pursue.  Some students elected to team together to produce a series of Public Service Announcements (PSAs) that target teens. These students liked the idea of using digital media to tell compelling stories about the challenges of teen life.  Other students wanted to produce short narratives.  They were excited about creating worlds, characters, and narrative dilemmas that allowed their artistic identities to flourish.

In one of our first activities we selected a sample of teen produced PSAs and narrative shorts for the students to study.  We asked them to view and critique the different styles, aesthetics, narrative strategies, and technical approaches to digital media storytelling.  The teacher posted the links to the videos online and provided the instructions.  Suddenly one student raised her hand.  She could not access some of the videos.  Another student raised her hand.  She was having the same problem.  At least two of the videos that we asked them to critique were posted to YouTube.  The teacher and I had overlooked the fact that YouTube was blocked. A few students used proxy servers to access the videos, a typical workaround in this school.  As we struggled to figure out a way to proceed with the learning activity it was clear that we needed to recalibrate the design of the class.

We faced a similar challenge in a game design class that we are working with. Some of the students were intrigued by the prospects of using a Facebook poll to conduct research to build ‘user personas’ of their peers.  We thought that the poll would be useful in teaching them some of the principles of human-centered design and also expand their social media repertoire. But because Facebook is blocked the poll could only be conducted outside of school.  This prevented us from working with them in the classroom.  It also posed a problem for some of the students who either lacked access to the internet at home or have to share computers with parents and siblings.

We are learning a lot about how young people from this community, which has been hit especially hard by the recession and the growing wealth gap in the United States, are managing their participation in the digital world.  The old theories about the digital divide—the access narrative—only explain a small part of what is happening in edge communities.

The real issue, of course, is not social media but learning.  Specifically, the fact that our schools are disconnected from young learners and how their learning practices are evolving.  The decision to block social media is inconsistent with how students use social media as a powerful node in their learning network.  Can social media be a distraction in the classroom?  Absolutely.  Will some students access questionable content if given the opportunity?  Yes.  But many students use social media to enhance their learning, expand the reach of the classroom, find the things that they ‘need to know,’ and fashion their own personal learning networks.  We have met students who have used YouTube to learn how to play a musical instrument—a not so insignificant fact for students whose  families can not afford private music lessons.   We have seen students use YouTube to help them pursue an interest in building their own gaming computer or share a multi-media project that they developed.   Last summer I wrote about students from this same school and how they created a dynamic learning community to support their interest in creating games.  Many of them shared YouTube videos with each other in order to learn how to use the game authoring software, GameSalad.  (Because it was a summer program, the students and their teacher successfully lobbied to have YouTube unblocked).

A key part of the work that we are doing with students reaches beyond the typical new media competencies such as computer, information, and digital literacy.   The teacher believes that network literacy is also crucial.  That is, teaching students what Henry Jenkins explains is, “the ability to effectively tap social networks to disperse ones’ own ideas and media products.”  Cathy Davidson’s students at Duke made a case for network literacy, that is, “using online sources to network, knowledge-outreach, publicize content, collaborate and innovate.”  A number of these students are creators and makers.  They design blogs, websites, games, and graphic art. By blocking social media schools are also blocking the opportunity:

1)    to teach students about the inventive and powerful ways that communities around the world are using social media

2) for students and teachers to experience the educational potential of social media together

3)    for students to distribute their work with the larger world

4)    for students to reimagine their creative and civic identities in the age of networked media

In the not so distant future the notion that schools should block social media will become difficult to defend.  Before that happens schools will have to reimagine their mission in the lives of young learners, the communities that they serve, and the extraordinary possibilities of networked media and networked literacy.

Part of our research is designed to explore the opportunities for and influence of “connected learning” in the lives of teens.  What is connected learning?  It is a concept that the Connected Learning Research Network, a group of researchers supported by the MacArthur Foundation, will be working to develop and refine. Broadly speaking, connected learning refers to the increasingly complex ways in which young people’s learning ecologies are evolving.  It is the notion that in addition to happening anytime and anywhere learning happens across the many different networks that teens’ navigate.  School is an obvious node in a young learner’s network.  But school represents only one node among many others which includes after school sites, extracurricular activities, online communities, libraries, family, and peer communities just to name a few.  When the lines that distinguish each of these is blurred and learning happens fluidly across the different nodes we believe that connected learning–learning that is social, mobile, engaged, efficacious, student-driven, adult supported, or civic-oriented—is happening.   One obvious example of connected learning involves students who are able to connect their out of school or informal learning with the learning activities that are situated in formal learning spaces, namely schools.

A number of questions frame our examination of these learning practices: What are the factors that lead to connected learning?  Are some youth more likely than others to experience connected learning?’  How do various social indicators like race, ethnicity, class, gender, and academic orientation influence the likelihood of connected learning occurring?  How can schools encourage connected learning? What is the value of creating opportunities for a greater diversity of young people to experience connected learning?

The Site

The high school that we are working with is an incredibly diverse environment. The school is a majority-minority site with whites making up about twelve percent of the overall student population.  More than twelve percent of students are designated as English Language Learners.  There is some degree of economic diversity though more than half, 55%, of the students are designated as low-income.  In many respects the school’s demographics reflect the population shifts that are transforming the eighteen year old and younger population in the United States; specifically, the degree to which U.S. children are more racially and ethnically diverse than ever before.

What are we learning about connected learning in this community?

Evidence of Connected Learning 

There will be more extensive data collection, analysis, and formal reporting to come but we are beginning to see evidence that connected learning is happening among our students and in a school that is struggling to keep students academically engaged and prepared for meaningful participation in a 21^st century information-oriented economy. Some of the early evidence suggest that young people in the social and economic margins are actively building pathways for connected learning for a variety of reasons: to supplement what they view as poorly stimulating classroom experiences; to create rich and rewarding peer and social networks; to move into interest-driven offline and online communities; to develop their digital media production skills in areas such as graphic arts, game design, video, and music production; to foster the development of the civic self; and to develop the skills and competencies that they believe hold the key to greater social and economic mobility.  Not all of the students that we have met fit this description but those distinctions make this community especially fascinating.  Why is that some are developing an orientation toward connected learning and others are not?

In just a short period of time we have discovered that young people who are grappling with the hidden and not so hidden injuries of race, ethnicity, class, and language barriers are practicing very distinct notions of connected learning for reasons and in contexts that researchers currently have not explored with much rigor.  Doing so will help provide data and insight to those concerned about the learning divides that are contributing to historic social, educational, and economic inequalities.  We believe the answers to these and other questions can help address the inequities that continue to shape the lives of the young and the digital.

During my visit I had the opportunity to tour a school in Ituzaingo, a Buenos Aires municipality.  As we entered the school I was struck by how education or at least the model of what a school looks and feels like in Argentina was strikingly similar to the United States.  For example, students:  are organized by age, attend class for a fixed period of time during the week, and sit in classrooms that are arranged in orderly rows facing an instructor located at the head of the classroom.

The school is populated by students from low-income households. In Argentina many students from poor communities drop out before completing secondary school.  The Director of the school explained that about thirty percent of the students entering the 10^th grade in her school will drop out.  If a student makes it past 10^th grade the odds of continuing through the twelfth grade improve. Many of the students in this school will not complete all of the requirements to earn their secondary degree.  In some cases they will abandon school because of a loss of interest. Others will cut their education short in order to enter the workforce to help support their families.  Only about five percent of the students will finish college.

When I asked the Director how she hoped Conectar Igualdad would impact her school she did not hesitate.  Speaking through a translator she explained that the availability of the netbooks and the chance to gain a least some basic computer literacy—the use of spreadsheets, word processing—would convince some students to continue their education.  In fact, many of the students persuaded their parents to attend this school precisely because the netbooks would be available.  Conectar Igualdad has promised to give each student who finishes school a netbook.  The opportunity to connect learning to young people’s digital lives is often regarded as a source of motivation to further develop a learner identity. Like many other parts of the world some of the most economically disadvantaged communities in Argentina view technology as essential to getting a quality education.

What is the future of one-to-one computing in Argentina’s schools? What the architects of Conectar Igualdad are beginning to realize is that as difficult as it has been to get computers into the hands of students the most daunting challenge lies ahead: developing a culture and a curriculum that promotes digital literacy that is authentic and empowering.  Here are three challenges that Argentina and many other nations, including the United States, face in the drive to build a more equitable digital future.

1. Teacher Support and Development. In the school that I visited there is still resistance among some teachers to embrace the newly distributed netbooks.  Many teachers are simply not convinced that the integration of networked media into the classroom is necessary.  Similar to other countries Argentina has to deal with the generational divide—the gap between adult engagement with digital media and student participation in digital media culture.  In some respects this represent a genuine cultural and behavioral disconnect between teachers and students.  In other cases it illustrates a skills gap that limits the ability of teachers to fully exploit the learning opportunities that digital media affords. Successful implementation of a one-to-one computing model certainly requires teacher investment and involvement but it also requires teacher training and development.  Building 21^st century school also demands that we develop 21^st century teachers, that is, teachers who integrate technology into the classroom in ways that are purposeful and capable of scaffolding powerful learning experiences.

2. Education, Cultural Capital, and Social Inequality.  School is only one node in a young person’s learning network.  Research consistently shows that students who live in homes and communities that provide educational resources such as books, libraries, museums, and opportunities for civic engagement accrue important learning advantages.  The literacy environment for many of the students that I met in Argentina does not easily support the opportunities to engage networked media as makers rather than consumers of information.  According to the Director, eighty percent of the students in the school had never owned a computer.  The students did not take their netbooks home, in part, because they do not have internet access at home.  Conditions like these further diminish their opportunity to cultivate digital literacies informally and in the peer-to-peer learning ecologies that encourage exploration and experimentation.  Transforming schools and the learning that happens there is not simply about what happens in between the four walls of the school building.  It is also about what happens in the larger social ecology that kids navigate and the extent to which other nodes in their network support learning across multiple sites, both formally and informally.

3.  Transforming schooling and literacy in edge communities.  The ultimate challenge is building a curriculum that develops and realizes a broader vision and mission for literacy in edge communities.  The school I toured focuses on lower-order computing skills, that is, teaching students to use some of the most basic applications available on their notebooks.  But beyond this basic literacy is the need to support a vision that defines digital literacy as a life skill that is connected to the everyday lives and situations of students and their families and communities.  Call it ‘design literacy,’ that is, the capacity to engage in higher-order thinking, critical thinking, and real-world problem solving.  Whereas ‘tools literacy’ is foundational, ‘design literacy’ is transformational.

Argentina is one country among many in South America that is mobilizing a renewed commitment to educating young people.  While their notion of digital literacy must certainly evolve it is refreshing to see countries that are investing in the future by funding new educational initiatives today.