reCREATE EDU

GATES & MACARTHUR FOUNDATIONS STEP UP FOR KIDS - Provide Millions to Support Digital Learning Platforms

“Digital technologies are bringing fundamental changes to how young people learn, play, socialize and participate civically,” said Julia Stasch, Vice President of U.S. Programs at MacArthur. “And, although traditional literacies – such as reading, writing, science and math – are more necessary than ever, in the new environment, young people are mastering these competencies in new ways, and in surprising places."
"With digital media, learning takes place anywhere, anytime. So we must break free of the old-fashioned notion that schools are the only places for learning and provide young people with engaging and diverse opportunities beyond the classroom,” said Robert Gallucci, President of the MacArthur Foundation. “YOUmedia is an excellent example of 21st Century learning. Bringing the model to other cities will mark an important step in motivating young people to learn and preparing them for a globally competitive workforce.”

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced in April 2011 it would be investing $20 million to bring new national education standards into the classroom using game-based learning, social-networking and other approaches to capture the imagination of bored or unmotivated students.

The new learning tools that will be ready for teachers to use during the 2013-2014 school year will include video games that build proficiency in math, reading and science, as well as a new game platform that can be used for various subjects. Game developers and curriculum writers from around the world are involved in the project.

Their announcement also included a $2 million grant for Florida Virtual School, a statewide, Web-based school, to develop four digital classes based on the new standards. Two of the classes will be math-based and two will be literacy-based, but all will be encased within another topic such as engineering or natural sciences.

One of their funded projects is the iRemix platform, a hosted, cloud-based customizable social learning platform affordably available to schools, institutions, and organizations seeking to safely and securely connect children and adolescents with curriculum, extended learning and mentorship opportunities.

iRemix began with experienced educators, who drew upon classroom and out-­of­‐school experiences and research demonstrating the predisposition of youth to learn while acquiring beneficial experience with new media tools in a social networking environment. This concept evolved into the iRemix platform, a youth-­centered social learning network providing numerous benefits to children and youth, educators, mentors, and their institutional or organizational sponsors.

ART + MUSIC Doodle

Google Celebrates Guitar Legend Les Paul's 96th Birthday with Interactive Doodle
You can play and even record a tune!

Les Paul built his first electric guitar in 1941, but he is most well-known for the Gibson Les Paul, which debuted in 1952.

"It grew out of his desire, as a musician and inventor, to create a stringed instrument that could make electronic sound without distorting," the Hall of Fame said. "What he came up with, after almost a decade of work, was a solid bodied instrument—that is, one that didn't have the deep, resonant chamber of an acoustic guitar."

Gibson Guitars, however, initially rejected Paul, referring to his creation as a "broomstick with pickups." The company was skeptical that musicians would want to carry around both an acoustic and electric guitar. As a result, Leo Fender beat Paul to the market in 1948 with his electric guitar, the Fender Broadcaster.

PC Magazine, full article
Google search engine

California in Time

CALISPHERE: A WORLD OF DIGITAL RESOURCES

Calisphere is the University of California's free public gateway to a world of primary sources. More than 200,000 digitized items — including photographs, documents, newspaper pages, political cartoons, works of art, diaries, transcribed oral histories, advertising, and other unique cultural artifacts — reveal the diverse history and culture of California and its role in national and world history.

Calisphere is a single point of access to more than 500 UC web sites that explore the diverse interests of the University of California campuses. This collection of web sites covers subjects ranging from history, math, literature, and anthropology to film, contemporary art, marine sciences, medical and health issues, and much more.

A variety of primary sources have been collected into sets that support the California Content Standards in History-Social Sciences, English-Language Arts, and Visual Arts for use in K-12 classrooms. These collections of primary sources make it easy for teachers to find the materials they need quickly.

Collections for Educators Online

Mapping Time

New Book by Photographer Mark Klett

YOSEMITE IN TIME: ICE AGES, TREE CLOCKS, GHOST RIVERS by Mark Klett, Rebecca Solnit, and Byron Wolfe.

Hardcover, 144 pages. Trinity University Press. 

Yosemite is a world-famous destination that has attracted celebrated photographers such as Eadweard Muybridge, Edward Weston, and Ansel Adams, along with environmental organizations, rock climbers, and tourists. Yosemite in Time puts this park in a new light with re-photographs of some of the most enduring images taken at Yosemite, and three essays by noted cultural critic Rebecca Solnit. The photographs and essays reconsider the iconic status of Yosemite in America's conception of wilderness, examining how the place was appropriated by its early Euro-American visitors and showing how our conceptions of landscape have altered and how land has changed — or not — over time. Arresting and incisive, Yosemite in Time is an intimate reconsideration of a park that millions of people hold dear.  For more on this project, check out the weblog, Klett & Wolfe

Youth Movement in Canada

In Canada, the Students Rule. Really.
Chronicle of Higher Education
TWEED
May 4, 2011, 3:32 pm

How green are the New Democratic Party’s new members of Parliament from Quebec? So green that—after briefly meeting the press on Tuesday under the watchful eyes of party handlers—the rookie MP’s were whisked away and will remain incommunicado while they learn how to behave as parliamentarians, receive instruction on the proper handling of the news media, and complete their salary paperwork.

According to Canada’s National Post, nine college students and three others with ties to academe were elected to Parliament from Quebec, raising the New Democratic Party from just one seat to 58. Some of them will even have to do a crash course in conversational French.

So who are these newbies?

Pierre-Luc Dusseault, at age 19, goes into the record books as the youngest person ever to be elected to Parliament in Canada, The Globe and Mail reports. He’s just finished his first year of applied politics at the University of Sherbrooke and says he knew he could win because it was important for young people to be in Parliament. He’s putting his studies aside for a while to work full time for the people he now represents.

The Montreal Gazette reports that five of the students elected were from McGill University, which is almost certain to be a record. While their competitors were working the campaign trail, the students were working on their final exams.

For more on this story, check The Chronicle online.

Multiple Platforms + Varied Narratives

See also"What is transmedia?"

Digital Media - New Learners Of The 21st Century:
Featuring the foremost thought leaders, innovators and practitioners in the field, the video "Digital Media" is a startling preview of a 21st Century education revolution. Sponsored by MacArthur Foundation, Pearson Foundation, Adobe Education, and Adobe Systems.

Watch the full episode. See more Digital Media - New Learners Of The 21st Century.

Transmedia Storytelling

In his book Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, MIT professor Henry Jenkins describes transmedia storytelling as storytelling across multiple forms of media with each making distinctive contributions to a fan's understanding of the story world. By using different media formats, transmedia creates "entrypoints" through which consumers can become immersed in a story world. The aim of this immersion is decentralized authorship, or transmedial play.



To companies selling products, transmedia storytelling is an experience of telling stories across multiple platforms and formats, to develop media franchises. Marsha Kinder writes that "transmedia intertextuality works to position consumers as powerful players while disavowing commercial manipulation." In 2003, Jenkins used the term in his MIT Technology Review article "Transmedia Storytelling," where he reflected Kinder's assumption, via analysis of mass-market entertainment, that the coordinated use of storytelling across platforms can make the characters more compelling. Stephen Dinehart suggests "true" transmedia is designed in preproduction with the intent of immersion for maximum return on investment (ROI). -- Wikipedia 2011

On another note: The writer's guide to making a digital living, a report from the Australia Council for the Arts, looks at writing, collaboration, copyright, marketing and distribution and business models, and how to develop projects from concept to commercial. It includes case studies from Australia's rising generation of poets, novelists, screenwriters, games writers and producers who are embracing new media and contains audio and video content from seminars and workshops, as well as extensive references to resources in Australia and beyond.

Street Smarts

Picturing Health: Photographs by Teens in Central and Southern California

Opens March 12, with a reception and talk with several of the young artists from 5:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. at Venice Arts gallery. Open through April 30, 2011.

Picturing Health visually explores both the strengths and challenges of 8 Central and Southern California communities as seen through the eyes of teens. Through a two-year project run by Venice Arts with the support of The California Endowment, 80 youth from 8 Central and Southern California communities explored what they felt were barriers to a healthy life including trash-filled streets, lack of park space, teen pregnancy, and the presence of gangs. They also documented community heroes, vibrant culture, friendship, and family.

Please join us as we celebrate their achievements. http://www.venice-arts.org/

MANufacturing

Rapid prototyping is a process of making models using synthetic materials fed into a 3D printer. The process brings the digital aspirations of 3D modeling out of the computer into everyday reality. Similar to the brush fire set off by the personal computer, 3D printing has set off a wave of "small manufacturing" by artists, designers, engineers, and craftspeople. Many see this as an opportunity to jumpstart the stalled world economy through innovation and micro production. In his book Makers, best-selling Sci-Fi author Cory Doctorow fast-forwards through the boom and bust of a post-modern industrial revolution to probe the heart of a designer.

UK book cover, MAKERS

US book cover, MAKERS

  
"Makers is a book for the lovers of technology, for the gleeful optimists more than the cynics. It's for the people who love the kooky engineering projects you see on Boing Boing, for the people who believe that, as the poster says, "The future belongs to the few of us still willing to get our hands dirty." It's for the people who can't wait to own a 3D printer, and who believe that while technology has its missteps, it's going to change our lives in wonderful and unexpected ways.

It's for the people who hate Disney's corporate tactics, but still get a thrill at the idea of visiting the Magic Kingdom; for the people who believe that, even if they can't change the world, they can at least improve their little corner of it. It's for the people who think that, while the future may not be all jetpacks and hover cars and all the world's people singing Kumbaya, we as individuals have the power to make it awesome in its own right."  -- Lauren Davis, IO9

Hooked Up

LONDON WALLS PHOTO EXHIBITION - ICA
Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Image via ICA

Some of the UK's best streetart and graffiti photographers will display a selection of their photos tomorrow evening as part of the Shunt Live weekend at the ICA. The London Walls photography exhibition will feature pictures from Delete, NoLionsInEngland, Leeone102, HowAboutNo, Buddz909 and Joeppo. All six photographers have been documenting the ephemeral graffiti and street art that constantly ebbs and flows across London's streets, rooftops and tracksides.

The London Walls show brings together for the first time a selection of high quality photographs which capture the work of London's finest writers, bombers, and street artists. Also see HOOKED - Hooked blog started in 2005 as a place to share a love of Street Art, Art, Stencils, Grafitti, Tags, Screen Printing, Illustration, Exhibitions, Zines and everything and anything in between! Read more: Institute of Contemporary Arts | The Mall | London SW1Y 5AH

Gamings No Joke

Training THE NEXT GENeration

This landmark report sets out how the UK can be transformed into the world’s leading talent hub for video games and visual effects.

At over £2 billion in global sales, the UK’s video games sector is bigger than either its film or music industries, and visual effects, the fastest growing component of the UK’s film industry, grew at an explosive 16.8 per cent between 2006 and 2008. High-tech, knowledge-intensive sectors and, in the case of video games, major generators of intellectual property, these industries have all the attributes the UK needs to succeed in the 21st century.

Yet, the sad truth is that we are already starting to lose our cutting edge: in just two years, it seems the UK’s video games industry has dipped from third to sixth place in the global development rankings.

For the full education plan or more on INNOVATION IN THE UK, see NESTA website.