PRESIDENT'S ESSAY
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The most dramatic break with MacArthur’s past comes in the field of education. Like many other foundations, MacArthur has invested heavily in efforts to reform public school systems as we know them. That remains a worthy objective and the Foundation will continue to work with the Chicago Public Schools as part of a comprehensive effort to revitalize neighborhoods in our hometown. Going forward, however, MacArthur’s major focus in education will be called Digital Media, Learning, and Education.³

We assume that young people are acquiring knowledge, analytical skills, and values during their use of digital media outside of school. About 83 percent of young people between the ages of 8 and 18 play video games regularly, and 72 percent use instant messaging. On a typical day, more than half of U.S. teenagers use a computer and more than 40 percent play a video game. Using websites like MySpace and Xanga, young people are sharing photos, videos, music, ideas, and opinions online, connecting with a large group of peers in new and sometimes unexpected ways.

We want to understand these phenomena better. What are the effects of digital media on how young people learn? What are the implications for education and other cultural and social institutions?

We begin with a hypothesis to be tested:

Digital media has advanced significantly in recent years and enables new forms of knowledge production, social networking, communication, and play. Through digital media, young people are engaged in an unprecedented exploration of language, games, social interaction, and self-directed education that supports learning. They are different as a result of this exposure to and experience with digital media and these differences are reflected in their judgment, sense of self, how they express their independence and creativity, and in their ability to think systematically.⁴

The aim of MacArthur’s new initiative in digital education is two-fold. First, we want to explore how young people are actually incorporating digital media in their daily lives and to gauge the effects. Second, we want to help them navigate, judge, and learn to use digital information and tools — in school and beyond.

Although decent information exists about the number of young people using technology, much less is known about how they are using it, how they think about it, and what it means to them. To help fill these gaps in our knowledge, MacArthur is funding several research projects.

A large-scale ethnography of young people is under way at the School of Information Management and Systems at the University of California Berkeley and the Annenberg Center for Communications at the University of Southern California. The study will provide a broad portrait of the digital generation: technology’s influence on their social networks and peer groups, their family life, how they play, and how they look for information. A companion grant to the Institute for Civic Leadership at Mills College funds an examination of civic commitments and engagements. Little is currently known about whether, when, or how digital media influences young people’s civic identities. Does participation in virtual communities lead to broader civic and political activity, or do such communities divert young people from engaging in public life? Together, these projects represent the most significant, coordinated attempts yet made to explore the influence of digital media on youth.

We expect this data to shape a full agenda of future research. What is the role of video gaming and play in learning? What are the unintended consequences of using digital media? How do young people judge the credibility of information? How do digital media influence national citizenship and global awareness? What effect does using digital media have on individual identity and on notions of race and ethnicity? The MacArthur Series in Digital Media — run jointly by the New Media Consortium and the Monterey Institute for Technology and Education — will help build the field of digital education by publishing edited volumes in print and electronic form on these questions, and by hosting conferences and online events.

We already know that one of the most important challenges is how to help young people learn to evaluate information they obtain online or through other forms of media. Research MacArthur funded at the American Library Association shows that young people most often judge a website’s information by the quality of its design and the speed of its response. Even well-educated adults often neglect to ask key questions about the source of information and its accuracy, when it was produced, if it is still up-to-date, and the likely motivation of the author.

MacArthur is exploring tools that will help adults assess the quality of information on the Internet, but a long-term approach also requires teaching media literacy to young people. The Foundation’s initiative on digital learning is helping identify the critical skills that are needed and testing ways to cultivate them.

With MacArthur assistance, Professor Henry Jenkins and colleagues in the Comparative Media Studies Department at MIT are studying media literacy, exploring ways to teach it in the classroom and through after-school activities. The aim of the MIT project is to help young people learn how to filter, judge, synthesize, and use information available on the Internet and from other sources.

One of the MIT project’s boldest suggestions so far is that the best way to teach such media literacy might be through instructing young people how to make their own digital creations, including blogs, pod- and videocasts, and games. Building on this insight, the Academic Advanced Distributed Learning Co-Laboratory at The University of Wisconsin-Madison is developing “Game Designer,” a software application for young people. As students use it to create games, they learn about ethical judgment, aesthetic design, systemic thinking, and collaborative problem solving.

New curricula are also being produced to help incorporate digital media into classrooms. A grant to the Center for Urban School Improvement at the University of Chicago is helping MIT test and implement its ideas in new charter schools being opened on Chicago’s South Side, existing public schools, and in after school programs. Ultimately we expect the center’s programs to serve as national models for media literacy programs for middle and high school youth.

Digital tools will not replace the book, paper and pen, face to face interaction, or all the other ways that we socialize, learn, and communicate. But they are taking their place alongside these other means and modes of education, and they are changing the way young people are learning and how they expect to be taught. The net effect of these technologies is to make learning more participatory, at once more self-directed and more collaborative. Students today need to be more skeptical of what they see and hear, more willing to ask questions, more active in synthesizing what they find, and more creative in what they design, build, and produce. Such changes may be driven by technology and its effects, but ultimately they also require a shift in the paradigm for teaching and learning. MacArthur’s work in education aims to help students, parents, schools, and communities adapt to a new reality.

PRESIDENT'S ESSAY
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