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.

At one point we began to talk about how the current economic crisis is impacting public education.  At a time when schools, especially low-performing schools, need to be embracing the opportunities that new technologies afford we see historic budget cuts happening all across the nation.  There are genuine fears that an already struggling public school system will be degraded even further by dramatic cuts that include massive teacher layoffs, higher student to teacher ratios in the classroom, and  a retreat from innovative learning opportunities.

When you think about the future of students who live in poor and working class households the retreat from public education raises a number of serious questions about their preparation for a world that will demand higher-order thinking skills, technological fluency, and, quite simply, the ability to (re)learn. What is at stake?  Just as the importance of providing learning activities that enrich digital media literacies is increasing the ability of public schools to deliver those learning opportunities is decreasing.

In my conversation with Tina, I explained the dilemma  this way.  ”My concern is that as schools are now struggling with budget cuts, digital media and digital literacy is looked as a luxury as opposed to a necessity.”  I added, “I understand the enormous pressure that teachers and administrators are under, especially in the public school system. But we need to build a more compelling narrative that digital literacy is no longer a luxury but a necessity.”

Here is the full post, “For At-Risk Youth, is Learning Digital Media a Luxury?”

*  Mind/Shift re-posted my piece that considers the potential for mobile media to close the learning divides that exist between low and middle income students, “Ignore the Potential of Mobile Learning, Risk Widening the Digital Divide.“

Over the four weeks I spent several hours with the students, attended some of the fieldtrips that were arranged for them, and followed the evolution of their games from mere ideas, sketches, and paper prototypes to playable demos. I observed how digital media, peer-to-peer learning ecologies,  student-centered processes, and immersive, open, and playful educational environments can transform the lives of schools and, most important, the lives of young learners.  There was a teacher who supervised the students during the day but this was not about him at all.  This was all about the students—they conducted the research, came up with the story ideas for their games, wrote the script, did the art work, programming, and group management that kept them on schedule.

The process was not perfect but it did open my eyes even further to the promise of what innovative learning spaces for ‘the young and the digital’ can look like.

Game Creation for Everyone

Though some of the students had experience creating games most of them had never designed a game which made the four-week project especially intriguing from a researcher’s perspective.  In my conversations with the students I learned that they had varied interests and career aspirations including writing novels, music production, accounting, international business, and, of course, game design. Many of them came from homes with parents who had never attended college, underscoring important class dynamics.  While a few of them were college bound most were unsure about life after high school.

By the end of the first two days the students had created a company, established five separate teams, and crafted what would become their distinct yet flexible roles (i.e., artists, designer, programmer) within those teams.  After touring the AMD campus the students immediately went to work sketching, examining the photos they captured, discussing the notes that they took, probing the rationale of green architecture, and sharing ideas about the nature and design of their games.   In the first week students went from ideation to building their games.  After considering a number of options four of the five teams selected GameSalad as the platform for making their game.

Many of the students told me that GameSalad offered something unique compared to other options: customization.  Whereas other platforms restrict your characters and the game setting to pre-set features GameSalad allows you to create your own characters and setting.  Based in Austin, GameSalad represents one of the interesting developments in games—the creation of game authoring software that allows non-programmers to produce games.  “Not everybody can write code,” a rep from the company told me.  GameSalad’s motto while spunky in spirit—“Game creation for everyone”— highlights the rising interest among young people in not only playing games but making games.   Look beyond Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft and you might see the next great frontier in games.  The rise of platforms that encourage gamers to reimagine the world by telling stories, developing their learner voices, and problem-solving through game creation.

Even though GameSalad was the platform of choice none of the students had ever used the software.  Facing a hard four-week deadline the lack of experience with Game Salad could have led to frustration and resignation.  But this is when things got interesting.

‘Need to Know’ Learning Communities

The project was set up as a quasi-competition.  Only one team would have their game selected to be featured on AMD’s website.  But rather than turn against each other the students turned the classroom into an open and collaborative work space.  If one team member figured out a feature on GameSalad she shared it with the other teams.  If one team was uncertain about a game play feature they invited someone from a different team to play-test the game and used that as feedback.  If one person needed help figuring out Garage Band or Photo Shop someone with experience offered assistance.   Intuitively, they were building a design thinking system on the fly but it turns out that this is how many young people navigate and build rich learning ecologies, what you might call a “need to know” learning community.

One young student, an aspiring accountant, was charged with being the programmer for his team.   “I was nervous,” Gregory told me, “because I had never used GameSalad.” When I asked him how he figured it out his answer was eye-opening.  After talking with other students Gregory went to YouTube. (Early on the students petitioned their teacher to have the world’s biggest video-sharing site unblocked—“schools need to stop blocking YouTube!” one young woman told me.  “They need to stop being afraid of technology.”)  On YouTube he found several GameSalad tutorials and began studying them carefully.  Gregory was building an extended, virtual, and personal learning network, charting a pathway to learn what he needed to know in order to do what he needed to do.  “If you had given me a manual and said, ‘here, learn how to do this,’ it would have taken me two months to figure it out,” he explained.

Like a number of his peers Gregory jumped in and began tinkering with the game creation platform.  Within two weeks he had built the basic frame for the game.  As the main character your goal was to kill the invasive species that threatened AMD’s attempt to preserve the native plant species that populated the land that hosted their 58-acre complex.

Games, Grit, and Motivating Learning

A number of the students displayed what elsewhere Angela L. Duckworth et al. (2007) call grit.  In a 2007 study published in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology the authors conclude that grit, or perseverance and passion for long-term goals, is just as important in academic achievement as talent or high test scores.   But grit usually happens when students are motivated to learn.  Education scholars have known for some time that students learn best when they want to learn.  Typically the motivation in school is extrinsic or determined by an external force.  Maybe it’s to score high on a standards test, please a teacher, or do better than the student sitting next to you.  The best source of motivation is intrinsic, that is, students learning because they are internally driven, curious, and passionate about what they are doing.  Grit is more likely to be sustained in learning environments that figure out how to foster intrinsic rather than extrinsic motivation by tapping into passions and allowing students to find their voice and place as learners.

By their own admission many of these students were not the most talented in their school but in this instance it would have been difficult to find students working any harder, longer, or smarter.

Earlier this week National Public Radio’s “Tell Me More” aired a conversation that I shared with Tony Cox about the digital divide. We talked about the ways in which the digital divide is evolving and how the shifting digital media terrain, especially the steady adoption of technology by a growing diversity of young people, is redefining how we think about issues related to technology, diversity, and equity.

I am exploring these issues in a series of new projects that I will be reporting on over the next year.  The projects are designed to examine the digital media lives of diverse young people and how, among other things, their adoption of media technologies are redefining what it means to be a young learner or citizen.

After I explained that the emerging challenges around digital media are more about quality of engagement, particpation, and expanding the pathways to digital media literacy among a greater diversity of young people, Tony asked me, “What can be done to get more people involved in myriad ways of using the Internet and digital media?”  Here is my response:

WATKINS: It seems to me that the richest and most promising attempts to do this are really kind of happening in the informal learning spaces. So they’re happening in after-school programs, they’re happening in the summer camps, summer workshops, which is interesting and raises a whole other set of questions about why schools aren’t able to provide these kinds of opportunities.

But I think it’s happening right through community, technology leaders. I think it’s happening through social entrepreneurs who have decided, right, that these issues are so important that the digital divide today is really about digital literacy, right, and how do we begin to create environments, create spaces that encourage and support kids’ ability to develop the kinds of digital media skills that they will need in the 21st century in what I call kind of islands of kind of innovation, right?

It’s happening, you know, maybe in a couple places, you know, here or there. I’m seeing it in Washington, D.C. I’m seeing it in Oakland, here in Austin, in Chicago. I mean it’s happening in a variety of places, but it doesn’t seem to be, right, a kind of cohesive or kind of coherent effort. But one that’s kind of scattered across different communities driven primarily by visionaries, driven primarily by social entrepreneurs who have decided that it is a space that they want to step into, a space that, again, schools have been inadequate in servicing.

You can read or listen to our entire conversation here.

As far back as 2007 data started to emerge that suggested that black and Latino households were much more likely to go online via a mobile phone than a desktop or laptop computer.  We are also learning that a surging number of poor households are choosing to go with a mobile phone over a landline, largely because they cannot afford both. My fieldwork is consistently suggesting that the future of black and Latinos digital lives are linked, for better or worse, to mobile devices.   The growing appeal of the mobile phone among African Americans and Latinos has not gone unnoticed by the press.  In fact, several news outlets have even reported that mobile phones may be closing the digital divide.  Is this true?   Is there any evidence, empirical or anecdotal, that mobile is closing the digital divide?

The answer to that question depends on how you define the digital divide.  For example, if you define the digital divide as largely a question of access to technology than the answer, arguably, is yes.  Internet capable phones, to the degree that poor and working class communities can afford them, certainly bridge the access gap.  In 2009 the Pew Internet & American Life Project reported that African Americans were more likely than any other racial or ethnic group to go online via a mobile phone.  But what if you define the divide in terms of participation rather than access?  Is it possible that mobile devices are reproducing some of America’s most enduring inequalities?  Truth is, there are some large gaps in our knowledge that make answering this last question difficult. But here is a start.

Much of the empirical data over the last three to four years consistently suggests that when it comes to using their mobile devices to play games, watch video, listen to music, or manage their online social networks that black and Latino youth are much more active than their white and Asian American counterparts.  Nielsen recently reported that African Americans are thirty percent more likely to visit Twitter than any other racial or ethnic group.  We began reporting two years ago that black and Latino teens were using Twitter largely via their mobile phones.

It is unclear what kinds of phones black and Latino teens from low-income and working class homes are adopting.  Are they more likely to own smart phones or feature phones?  The functionalities of the former afford powerful social, recreational, and informational opportunities while the capabilities of the latter are much more limited.  And while we know that black and Latino youth have turned to mobile as a source of anytime, anywhere media does this mean that they are largely consumers rather than creators of content?

As we begin to learn more about the media ecologies of black and Latino teens an inevitable question arises: is there any evidence that their engagement with media technology is producing behaviors and learning outcomes that might impact the academic achievement gap?  There is an abundance of evidence that suggests that the informal learning environment (i.e., leisure, extracurricular and enrichment opportunities) of middle income students is just as important as the formal environment (i.e., schools) in their academic achievement.

The academic achievement gap takes root in early childhood and is related to the formal and informal learning ecologies that kids navigate throughout life.  Different parenting practices and household resources mean that middle income kids enter kindergarten with richer language skills and greater exposure to books than their low-income counterparts. Throughout schooling these early learning divides expand. What role, if any, do digital and mobile media platforms play in America’s learning divides?

The issue, of course, is not that young people’s adoption of mobile phones causes an achievement gap that began long before any of us ever heard of the Internet or mobile phones.  Rather, what is the potential for learning and engagement with mobile media in closing the learning divides that exist between low and middle income students?  The mere adoption of mobile phones is certainly not the solution to the achievement gap.  Technology—social network sites, laptops, smart phones, games, tablets, interactive books and maps—alone will never close America’s learning divide.  This is the myth of the “digital native” narrative, the notion that youth can thrive in the digital world without any adult support, mentoring, or scaffolding of rich learning experiences.  While a greater diversity of young people are using digital and mobile platforms than ever before not all media ecologies are equal.  Thus it’s very possible that if poor and working class students adopt technologies like mobile phones in environments that do not offer adult engagement and scaffolding the potential benefits in terms of learning and empowerment may not be realized.

Currently, I’m involved in a series of case studies that examine how adult educators and mentors are creating innovative learning experiences that encourage young people, for example, to view their mobile device as a powerful data collection resource and gateway to cultivating new literacies and forms of civic engagement.  What I see is promising in terms of igniting young minds and young citizens. While only a small percentage of young people are using mobile devices as a powerful learning tool today the percentage is growing.  The real challenge is not if rich and meaningful mobile learning ecologies will develop.  As a 2011 NMC Horizon report shows, they already exist.  Rather, the real question is, will they be distributed in ways that close or maintain America’s learning divide?