If you’re looking for a blog to add to your reader, some of the most useful resources I’ve seen lately have come from Educause Connect, where they like to “transform education through information technology.”
Not too long ago they posted a presentation about a project going on down Tobacco Road at Duke called “Integrating Community History, Technology, and Service Learning: The Digital Durham Project.”
This presentation focuses on a collaborative local history project between Duke University undergraduates and Durham eighth graders. Through their research seminar, Duke students conduct original research in local archives and then mentor eighth graders in how to use technology, particularly the Digital Durham website http://digitaldurham.duke.edu
I love that the project involves eighth graders. One thing I’d like to spend more time thinking about is: how early should digital literacy efforts begin and what do good adolescent curricula look like? I’d venture to guess that right now most kids are learning digital skills on their own, with their friends, or with their parents long before anything is introduced formally at school.
Another great aspect of Digital Durham is that, according to Director Trudi Abel, it is a “highly replicable project.” In her presentation, she says:
My hope is that the Digital Durham project can serve as a model for how to digitize historical materials into a community history research experience for undergraduate students as well as public school students and teachers.
I believe replicability will have a large role in bringing digital literacy-oriented service-learning projects to mainstream education and higher learning institutions. People will want to see something that works and be able to have a model they can replicate. I know at least one other model: www.tnsandbox.com
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