Growing the New Technopolis

Several things have come down the pipes lately that seem post-worthy, so I thought I’d try to list them in one fell swoop.

- The Carolina portal at iTunesU, for which Doug was mainly responsible for getting going, launched recently. Here’s an article in The Daily Tar Heel about the launch. The content itself can be accessed by pointing your browser to http://itunes.unc.edu.

This is also exciting for me because my department, Communication Studies, will have its own channel for student and faculty content. Good stuff!

- Bob came over to UNC on the day of the launch and he and I met with staff members at UNC’s service learning organization APPLES about getting them involved with Bob’s Digital Media Sandbox Consortium. Bob was very eloquent about the need for digital fluency in service-learning, and the APPLES crew was excited about the possibilities (that was my take on it, anyway). We made plans to get them involved in the podcasting tournament. Then, this week, I had a good meeting with their Associate Director to talk about how they could more sustainably integrate podcasting into their service-learning efforts.

- Finally, a little own-horn-tooting: I have had a paper accepted to the Community Informatics & Development Informatics Conference in Prato, Italy. I am collaborating with the Academic Director of the City of Knowledge at the Universidade de São Paulo in Brazil. If anyone cares to read the first draft (written for a community development class last semester) and offer feedback – well, I just don’t know what I’d do for you. It’s on my website here. It concerns the use of digital storytelling for community and economic development. And, uh, if you have a couple grand’s worth of staff development grants to fly me over there, that’d be nice too!

I’ve been feeling over-worked lately (isn’t it summertime?!), but this is all great news and evidence that some of our hard work is paying off!

The Corporation for National and Community Service is trying to get rid of $2.3M!

The details are here. Due date is May 7, 2008.

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

This is great stuff! Found on the thriving Madison, WI citizen media site, MadisonCommons.org, this feature article focuses on the summer podcasting program run for  youth out of a local community center. This is very close to the kind of work for which Bob and I continue to advocate (and apply for grants!).

http://www.madisoncommons.org/article.php?storyid=1091

Fascinating recent post on Jenkins’ blog. An interview with Youth Radio producers and student participants, in which he starts out by debunking what he feels are some of the myths surrounding the whole digital natives vs. digital immigrants construct. This also speaks to youth as active producers of high-quality digital content.

http://www.henryjenkins.org/2007/08/youth_radio.html