A new report by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center takes a look at the mobile media revolution that is changing the lives of adults, and now children of all ages, under way across the globe.
This report focuses on how new forms of digital media are influencing very young children and their families in the United States and how we can deploy smart mobile devices and applications-apps, for short-in particular, to help advance their education.
It does so in three parts: Part One discusses new trends in smart mobile devices, specifically the pass-back effect, which is when an adult passes his or her own device to a child.
Part Two presents the results of three new studies that were undertaken to explore the feasibility and effectiveness of using apps to promote learning among preschool- and early-elementary-aged children. Though designed to complement one another, each study approached mobile learning from a different angle.
Finally, Part Three discusses the implications these findings have for industry, education, and research.
Ownership of internet-enabled handheld devices increased by more than 11 percentage points between 2009 and spring 2010, with the number of students planning to purchase such a device in the next year holding steady.
As the devices have become more common among undergraduates, they have also begun to play a bigger role in students’ lives.
In 2009, fewer than half of respondents who owned an internet-enabled handheld device said they used it at least weekly, with fewer than a third reporting daily use. By 2010, 42.6% reported using the devices every day and two-thirds did so at least once a week.
According to a study from the Pew Internet & American Life project (Lenhardt & Madden, 2005), more than one-half of all teens have created media content, and roughly one-third of teens who use the Internet have shared content they produced.
In many cases, these teens are actively involved in what we are calling participatory cultures.
A participatory culture is a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices.
A growing body of scholarship suggests potential benefits of these forms of participatory culture, including opportunities for peer-to-peer learning, a changed attitude toward intellectual property, the diversification of cultural expression, the development of skills valued in the modern workplace, and a more empowered conception of citizenship.
Access to this participatory culture functions as a new form of the hidden curriculum, shaping which youth will succeed and which will be left behind as they enter school and the workplace.
This presentation looks at Africa not as a place, but as a brand and calls on African youth to make a change. With 60% of the population under 25, the role of young people in the
developing a new Africa is immense.
Thanks to Three Billion for the heads up on this excellent presentation!
Apple To Shut Down Lala: In a brief message that was just posted on the Lala.com website, Apple has announced that the
service will be shut down on May 31st, 2010. Does this mean we can start raising our hopes for iTunes in
the cloud? [TechCrunch]
What is Facebook Saying About You?: Yee’s
tool shows you exactly what data a developer would get when it asks
Facebook for info via the API, such as your name, birth date, location,
etc. and also any public information such as your “likes”, your photos and so on. [GigaOm]
Summer Music Watch: Jennifer Lopez Does a Cover of Donna Summer's "On The Radio" [Ryan Seacrest]
Millennials: This generation is diverse, educated and plugged-in: Gio
Acosta says that on any given day there are only two hours in which he
is not texting, doing something on his cell phone, or on Facebook, or
playing games on his laptop or PS3. Acosta is exactly what Kaiser Family
Foundation recently found in a study: That to say today's young people
are wired is an understatement. It’s an integral part of their daily
lives. [PennLive.com] [Barking Robot]
Guide to Creating Foursquare Events: There are some reasonable and relatively simple ways to incorporate Foursquare and encourage audience participation at your next event. [Tradeshow Insight]
Texting Poetry Inspires Kids: Once considered a disturbance in the classroom, cell phones, texting
devices and other wireless technology are being embraced by some of the
very same people who used to malign them: teachers. [Record Online]
End Bullying Now: Here's the link
to the Josh Shipp & Brooks Gibbs 'End Bullying Now'
Teleseminar! [Barking Robot]
2010 Totally Wired Teacher Award: After listening to feedback from our friends in the educator community,
we've made some important changes to this year's Totally Wired Teacher
Award provided by Dell.
Please help us spread the word to any public school teachers you are in
contact with. [Ypulse]
This is a really good report by CNN reporter Deborah Feyerick on how teachers are embracing mobile phones and using them as a learning tool in the classroom.
So many educators spend so much energy fighting against technology and trying to limit its use in the classroom. There is a digital disconnect between how students use technology in the classroom and how they use it out in the real world.
Instead of pushing forward with the "the internet (along with social networking and mobile phones) are bad" mantra that is all too prevalent in American schools, why not focus on the positive benefits of emerging technologies and find ways that they can be integrated into the classroom curriculum?
Remember textbooks? Yeah. Forget about textbooks. Students at Seton Hill University are all getting iPads and access to all their textbooks on the iBook store. I’d say it’s one of the biggest changes in pedagogy since the move from the one-room schoolhouse.
Check out Seton Hill’s website. It states, in no uncertain terms, that
“Beginning in the fall of 2010, all first year undergraduate students at
Seton Hill will receive a 13″ MacBook laptop and an iPad.”
Can you
imagine? I remember I was about to go to Clarkson University in New York
back in 1993 because they were giving out laptops. But a MacBook and an
iPad? That’s like getting a pony and a unicorn.
Hanging
Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out was written as a collaborative effort by members of the Digital Youth Project, a three-year research effort funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and conducted at the University
of California, Berkeley, and the University of Southern California.
Conventional wisdom about young people’s use of digital technology often
equates generational identity with technology identity: today’s teens
seem constantly plugged in to video games, social networks sites, and
text messaging. Yet there is little actual research that investigates
the intricate dynamics of youth’s social and recreational use of digital
media.
Hanging
Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out fills this gap, reporting on
an ambitious three-year ethnographic investigation into how young people
are living and learning with new media in varied settings-at home, in
after school programs, and in online spaces.
This project was one of many funded by the MacArthur Foundation to
explore digital media and learning. New projects in this area are being
aggregated through the Digital Media and Learning Hub.
Partnering with youth marketers, culture and trend experts from around the world, Graham Brown (the force behind mobileYouth) have crowd-sourced an impressive amount of research on global youth trends and shared his findings in a series of three presentations.
What Youth Think: 2010 Youth Trends Report presentations are a must see for youth marketers, media planners, educators, youth pastors and anyone else who works in the youth space.
So sit back, take notes and enjoy. Then let's all meet up at the Carrot Mob!
Explaining the Hype Around Augmented Reality:
Tech circles are abuzz about augmented reality and the future of mobile utility and marketing.
AR, as it's called, marries real-time video and digital information. On
phones, it uses GPS coordinates and the mobile camera to activate
additional text, photos or hyperlinks relevant to a location. [Ad Age]
Gossip Girl Makes NYU Look Like a State School: All in all, NYU officially owns Gossip Girl, and the show will
now only drive up the rate of bratty midwestern teens lusting after an
NYU degree because they think it means glitz and glamour instead of
$200,000 of debt. [NYU Local]
How age impacts social-gaming monetization: New data released by Gambit, a
micro-transaction platform provider, illustrates the complexity of both
customer targeting and analyzing micro-transaction buying patterns. The
major takeaway: older players seem like a good target market until you
dig in to find out that they don't spend a whole lot. [CNET]
Social Sites & Video Games Can Raise IQ: After two months in the program, a group of "slow-learning" students
aged 11-14 in the Durham area "saw 10 point improvements in IQ,
literacy, and numeracy tests," and some who were at the bottom of their
class at the beginning finished the program near the top, according to
The Telegraph. [NetFamilyNews]
A Virtual Revolution is Brewing for Colleges: Undergraduate education is on the verge of a radical reordering.
Colleges, like newspapers, will be torn apart by new ways of sharing
information enabled by the Internet. The business model that sustained
private U.S. colleges cannot survive. [Washington Post]
Tweet O' The Week: "Zombie community leader angrily denies Twitter reports of zombie attacks during the #SydneyDustStorm". via @darrylmason
Americans Serious About Casual Game Play: Solitaire may be as sticky as World of Warcraft. While users
of casual electronic games (card games, puzzles, etc.) spend less time
per session playing them than those playing non-casual games (role
playing games, shooter games, etc.) they are just as likely to return
to them months later. Read the Executive Summary. [Nielsen Wire]
Back to school with RIAA-funded copyright curriculum:
With a new school year in full swing, Ars takes a look at the RIAA’s
newly updated copyright curriculum. Your kids could be learning from
it—so what does it say? (This is a total #FAIL) [ArsTechnia]
E-Reader Wars Heating Up: We believe that Apple will be in an excellent position to capture
these younger customers due to its overwhelming success in capturing
this market with their IPod and other products. Not only is Apple a
Generation Y (and to some extent Gen. X) brand of choice, but many of
these younger potential e-readers will be disdainful of Amazon’s
proprietary, or “closed,” format (thanks Ypulse!). Also related: A Kindle in Every Backpack. [Seeking Alpha][Barking Robot]
MySpace Beats Facebook with Twitter Sync: MySpace began rolling out new functionality today that allows users to sync their MySpace status updates with a Twitter feed. [HypeBot]
A concept paper published in July by former members of the Obama-Biden
transition team, titled A Kindle in Every Backpack: A Proposal for
eTextbooks in American Schools, suggests we consider an innovative plan to spread
eTextbooks around the country, rapidly scaling up employment of the
technology so that we can learn, adapt, and perfect its use quickly. It
describes the case for an eTextbook system in three parts.
In Part One, the report discusses the multiple reasons why eTextbooks like Amazon's Kindle are a much better approach for our nation’s students.
The reasons they are superior include the ability to update eBooks
relatively cheaply and easily, environmental and health benefits (such
as reducing loads on young backs and shoulders), and the enormous
opportunity to make texts more exciting and interactive—like the other
tools children use today and that compete for their attention.
In Part Two, this paper discusses the economics of this approach.
Cost estimates in the education world are notoriously sketchy and often
self-serving, but it seems clear that over time an investment in these
tools would produce big savings.
Also of interest is an article in the September/October 2009 issue of Scholastic Administrator Magazine titled, "Will the Kindle Change Education?" The article does a really good job of weighing in on both the pros and cons of using the Kindle in the classroom.
A lot of education folks have focused on using the mobile phone as the primary device to usher in the age of mlearning (mobile learning).
But perhaps we should be paying more attention to e-book devices like the Kindle, Sony Reader, Nook or the (rumoured) Apple tablet as the more viable mlearning option to delivering media rich and digital content to kids at school.
A lot the currentresearchshows that when kids go to school they are disconnected from how they live outside the classroom. Either way, what's important is that we take a look at and try using any resource or tool--including e-books--that gets kids' more engaged and invested in their education.
Coca-Cola Targeting Teens with Mobile Marketing Strategy: Millennial's are using their handsets to communicate, consume
media and befriend brands more than at any point in the past and as a result Coca-Cola is increasingly turning towards mobile
marketing to reach the teenage and young-adult generations. [mViews]
At-Risk Students Make Multimedia: A team of college professors and K-12 teachers discovers how building video games can elevate student performance. [Edutopia]
Games lessons: Since the beginning of mass education, schools have relied on what is known in educational circles as “chalk and talk”. Abandoning it, though, is what Katie Salen hopes to do. It sounds like a cop-out, but the future of schooling may lie with video games. [Economist]
Blog, poke, twitter and be damned: We need a 'statute of limitations on stupidity' for our youthful online indiscretions – otherwise only the drones will thrive. (AMEN!) [Guardian]
(List) What the Internet is Killing: The article is hardly surprising given the massive shifts the Internet
brings to society, but it does raise a debate about what will be missed
from a bygone era and what will be rightly forgotten. [PSFK]
U.S. Universities Plan Course to Navigate the Mobile Learning Curve: It is imperative that colleges and universities around the country
include mobile as part of their marketing communications strategy if
they want to continue to attract, retain and satisfy students and
school supporters.
Tweet O' the Week: "I really have become
addicted to Klondike bars for breakfast... they're like square frozen
bowls of cereal --- they're practically vitamins." (via @DougCoupland)
Youth in Revolt: The plot of this teen film feels episodic, but not in a bad way,
with Arteta squeezing an impressive number of set pieces into 90
minutes. Well-placed animated sequences -- a mix of stop-motion and CGI
-- keep things moving along at a perky clip. [Variety]
10 Tips to Safeguard Your Privacy on Facebook: Facebook statistics show
that it has 250 million active users each with an average 120 friends.
More than 1 billion photos are uploaded every month by its users, over
70% of whom use applications like games and quizzes in Facebook. This guide will show what you can (and cannot) do to safeguard your Facebook privacy. [MakeUseOf.com]
A Revolution in TV as Content Moves Online: There's a revolution going on in television but you may not necessarily be watching it on the set in your living room. Online
viewing of programmes in the UK will more than triple in the next few
years, according to the latest forecasts, boosted by new video on
demand websites offering the best British and US shows to users for free. [The Guardian UK]
A Textbook Discount: The Bigwords free iPhone App works to take some of the sting out of the experience through a complex calculation to find the best textbook deals, whether than means buying new, used or digital, or just renting. [NYT]
Fox's 'Twitter on TV' Experiment Irks Fans: Fox’s idea of “tweet-peats” would combine reruns of popular new shows
Fringe and Glee, with producers and members of the cast tweeting their
show commentary as the episodes rolled. [Mashable]
Ad Literacy 101: Ads are often enjoyable for kids. They're also pretty ubiquitous. So it
might be counterproductive to act as though all advertising is dumb or
boring or evil, or to make your kid feel guilty for partaking of it.
The goal here is rigorous critical thinking, and good/bad dichotomies
generally fall into the "simplistic thinking" category. Life is much
more complex. [Brett Berk in Babble]
Web-monitoring software gathers data on kid chats: Parents who install a leading brand of software to monitor their kids'
online activities may be unwittingly allowing the company to read their
children's chat messages — and sell the marketing data gathered. [San Francisco Chronicle]
Is A College Education Worth The Debt?: A college degree has long been considered a golden ticket to success in
this country. But with the current economic recession, some question
whether obtaining a college degree is worth going into debt. [NPR]
New College Majors for Changing Times: The Chronicle of Higher Education says colleges are now offering new
disciplines for students, including a major in the science behind
customer service. [American Public Media]
Speed Round: UK considering 'No Fee' degrees, teachers are using Twitter to connect with students, teachers discover how building video games can help at risk students do better in school, an Ofcom study finds young people want advice about online privacy (thanks Tania!), according to HitWise MySpace is Dead..long Live Twitter, Zune doesn't pass Microsoft's 'death panel' and finally....new data from comScore shows that teens now LOVE the Twitter! (At least until next week when another study will show that they don't love the Twitter!) [BBC] [SA Blog] [Edutopia] [eGov] [Josh Dhaliwal] [GadgetLab] [Mashable]
Return to Toyland: Sears, famous for its Christmas Wish Book, has announced that it's returning to the toy business in time for the holiday season. Also, Costco has pulled a controversial doll from its shelves after customers complained it was racist. [LA Times] [KTLA]
The Riley Project: After learning that 5,000 kids die a day because they do not have clean water, 7-yr-old Riley Goodfellow wanted to see what 5000 kids dying a day looked like. She drew 5,000
lines to help people understand how many kids die a day. It took her about
4 days to make the lines. Riley is now collecting donations to fund new wells in Africa through one of my favorite organizations--Charity Water. [Riley Project] [Charity:Water]
NAEP on Technical Literacy: The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has released a draft framework for the national assessment of technological literacy, the
first to gauge students’ understanding of and skill in using a range of
tools, has been presented to the board that oversees the testing
program. [Education Week]
Virtual Goods, Real Money: Virtual
goods represent one of the strongest ways that marketers and retailers
can get involved with virtual worlds, and their popularity in social
networks has increased with the opening up of the Facebook platform. This potential gold mine has inspired Britney Spears to launch her own line of virtual gifts on Facebook. [eMarketer] [Britney Spears.com]
Miley's Choice: Over on Ypulse, Anastasia Goodstein has an excellent essay about Miley Cyrus' and her risque "pole dance" performance on the 2009 Teen Choice Awards. [Ypulse.com]
Tweet O' the Week: "One of the few holy traditions that Christians, Jews, and Muslims all hold sacred in common? S'mores." (via @sacca)
Cheskin on Chinese Youth Culture: China’s New Culture of Cool provides answers to these
questions and more. LiAnne Yu, Cynthia Chan and Christopher Ireland
take a fresh, easy-to-read look at the emerging, affluent and
influential middle class of China. [Cheskin]
The Real Life of Teens: The media portrays teens as being 'sexting', binge-drinking louts - but
it's just a variation on a centuries-old stereotype. Why are we so
afraid of young people? (This is such a great column, well worth reading and a refreshing portrayal of Gen Y.) [Irish Times]
Gen Y Still Love Mum & Dad: They might be young adults making their own way in life, but a new research published by the Australian Institute of Family Studies shows that the wired wonders of Gen Y still value the advice of their parents. [Courier News]
Google Generation is a Myth: Research conducted University College London claims that, although young
people demonstrate an ease and familiarity with computers, they rely on
the most basic search tools and do not possess the critical and
analytical skills to asses the information that they find on the web. [JISC]
Tweet of the Week: "For the record, I
keep my billions of virtual dollars tucked safely under my virtual
mattress with a virtual rottweiler protecting (via @elusivefish)." Speaking of virtual currency... [Twitter][Virtual World News]
Hot for Teacher?: A teacher accidentally put pornography into a DVD that was meant
to be filled with school memories from the past year, and nobody caught
the error until after it was sent home, shocking parents and students
alike. Hey DJ--cue the music!. [CBS News][MTV]
Calling Bullshit on Social Media: "For starters: social media is a stupid term. Is there any anti-social media out there? Of course not." I love this blog post. So. Spot. On. And long overdue [scottberkun.com]
Storytelling 2.0: Penguin Books have launched a great new site that allows kids to play
in an unlimited online space where they can create their own virtual
stories, books and games for just $10. Once created they can send them
to friends to watch, read or play and save them to their own virtual
bookshelf. [Digital Buzz via @liamom]
Best Buy® Mobile Survey: Of all Americans with mobile phones, 62% say they use text messaging,
mostly because it's a convenient and quick way to communicate. More than
one-third (37%) say they use texting to avoid long or tough
conversations, and over one-quarter (27%) say they use it because they
dislike talking on the phone. One-quarter feel it's a great way to
flirt, particularly among the 18-24-year-old set (39%).
[Business Wire]
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