MACARTHUR FOUNDATION SERIES ON DIGITAL MEDIA AND LEARNING - CALL FOR
ABSTRACTS
The New Media Consortium and the Monterey Institute for Technology and
Education, working in collaboration with the John D. and Catherine T.
MacArthur Foundation, are soliciting abstracts for chapters to appear in
a series of volumes entitled The MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital
Media and Learning. The MacArthur Foundation Series will explore the
intersection of digital media and learning from the perspectives of
experts, visionaries, and thought leaders chosen from across the globe.
Authors whose chapters are selected for inclusion in these volumes will
receive an honorarium for their contribution.
The working hypothesis of the effort is that digital media tools have
advanced significantly in recent years, enabling new forms of knowledge
production, social networking, communication, and play. People who have
grown up with access to these new digital tools are engaged in an
unprecedented exploration of language, games, social interaction, and
self-directed education that can be used to support learning. They are
different as a result of this exposure to and use of digital media and
these differences are reflected in their sense of self, and how they
express their independence and creativity, and in their ability to
learn, exercise judgment, and think systemically.
Six volumes of such work will be published in the first year of the
MacArthur Foundation Series, each with a unifying theme that addresses a
critical aspect of this emerging field of study. The themes are Identity
and Digital Media, Credibility, Digital Media and Civic Engagement, the
Ecology of Games, Incidental Learning and Unexpected Outcomes, and Race
and Ethnicity. These volumes are intended for an informed but wide
audience. Each volume will include an introductory chapter by the
editor, and 7-10 additional chapters that will explore the topics from a
variety of perspectives. A summary of each topic is attached.
Authors for the volumes will be chosen in a competitive process, with
selections based on a peer review of an abstract of their proposed
chapter. Submissions of abstracts are due April 28, 2006. Abstracts will
be reviewed by a panel of scholars who will base their selections on the
relevance of the content to the planned volume on the topic, the
conceptual underpinnings and quality of the ideas represented in the
abstract, the publication record or relevant expertise of the author in
this area, and other related factors.
SUBMITTING AN ABSTRACT
Interested authors should prepare an abstract of their proposed chapter
for review by the selection committee. Successful chapter abstracts will
describe “thought pieces” that seek to illuminate a subset of issues
involved in the topic, and will provide the reader a clear sense of the
conceptual framework suggested for the chapter. Provocative, socially
relevant chapters with a broad appeal will be favored over more
traditional research-focused articles that present original data but do
not draw out the larger social implications of that data.
Abstracts should be prepared in an electronic format, preferably MS
Word, limited to 1500 words, written in English, and in a style
accessible to a broad but informed audience. A cover page should clearly
indicate which of the six topics the suggested chapter would be part of,
the proposed chapter title, a 50-word synopsis of the proposed chapter,
and complete contact information for all authors.
To receive full consideration from the selection committee, abstracts
should be submitted via email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> no later than April 28, 2006. All
submissions will be acknowledged upon receipt.
SELECTION AND AUTHORING TIMELINE
The selection of the authors who will be invited to submit chapters will
begin April 29, 2006 and continue until the process is complete, when
all those who have submitted abstracts will be notified of the results.
Authors will be expected to participate in online discussions based on
accepted abstracts. First drafts will be due August 15, 2006. Authors
will be encouraged to attend an expense-paid gathering of project
participants in September. Finished chapters of approximately 10,000
words will be due by December 1, 2006.
AUTHOR AGREEMENT AND HONORARIUM
Authors of abstracts selected as contributors to one of the MacArthur
Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning volumes will be asked to
sign an author’s agreement and will receive an honorarium upon
submission of the completed chapter as detailed in that agreement.
Contributing authors will retain ownership of intellectual property
related to and copyright of their works.
For additional information, please contact:
Dr. Larry Johnson, CEO
The New Media Consortium (NMC)
512.445.4200
[EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Or,
Dr. Gary Lopez, Executive Director
Monterey Institute for Technology and Education (MITE)
831.642.9459
[EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
TOPICS
CREDIBILITY
Editors: Andrew Flanagin & Miriam Metzger, University of California,
Santa Barbara
The impetus for this volume is the observation that digital technologies
such as the internet and the web have
provided people easy access to a greater diversity of information
resources than at any time in human history. Indeed,
in spite of the nearly inconceivable amount of information now available
through digital media, search engines and
other tools have made information easy to access, with results available
virtually instantaneously. In this environment,
how do individuals, particularly young people, identify “experts” and
come to trust the veracity of what they read, see,
or hear via the internet? In some cases, individuals are honing new
skills, and invoking novel tools, for assessing
information credibility. In other instances, the voice of the community
is emerging as the coin of credibility, and self-
regulating sites such as Wikipedia are evidence that the locus of
knowledge ownership is moving to communities of
users. In still other cases, institutional or corporate entities are
emerging as arbiters of credibility. This volume will
explore these and related issues in order to understand how people
assess the quality of information to which they
have access via digital media.
Topics may include, but are by no means limited to:
• credibility concerns and information assessment strategies across
communication channels and information
venues, such as email, wikis, search engines, virtual worlds,
recommender/reputation systems, social
networking sites, and blogs
• how individuals, particularly young people who have matured in the
contemporary media environment, learn
to assess the credibility of the information and individuals they
encounter online
• credibility concerns as implicated by different types of information
(e.g., medical, news, consumer, or political
information), perhaps across different user groups
• the various skills, tools, or institutions invoked to aid users in
credibility assessment
• digital/media literacy, including formal or informal mechanisms for
training and learning
• how youth come to understand credibility and the ways in which it is
consequential for them, now and in the
future
• cognitive mechanisms for information processing, evaluation, and
assessment
• new or emerging issues in digital media credibility
Authors will be encouraged to consider the implications of their topic
for young people where appropriate.
DIGITAL MEDIA AND CIVIC ENGAGEMENT
Editor: Lance Bennett, University of Washington
This volume explores the idea that digital media enable new forms of
participation, collaboration, distribution and
social relationships. This volume explores applications and effects of
information technologies in the following areas of
civic engagement as they apply to contemporary youth.
• Citizenship, identity and civic education: How are digital media
applications addressing shifts in citizen identity,
attitudes toward government and authority, and participation that is
less driven by sense of obligation? How
are young people redefining politics and participation, both online and
off, and what are the implications for
democratic life? What approaches to civic education incorporating ICTs
can supplement textbook instruction
to instill more lasting effects on future participation?
• Relationships between online and offline experiences: What kinds of
online participation count as political, and
who says they do? How do various forms of online engagement affect
offline participation – is there evidence
that they encourage, replace or merely serve as pale substitutes for
more conventional forms of participation?
• Elections and campaigns: Many believe that websites such as Moveon.org
significantly influenced involvement
in the last presidential election and continue to influence youth
involvement in political activities. These claims
need to be assessed. Other applications in electoral politics also need
to be examined, from interactive
campaign sites, and youth engagement networks, to targeted e-mail appeals.
• Political activism and organization: It has been theorized that
digital media may serve to “level” hierarchical or
authoritarian relations within or across economic, social, or political
institutions and organizations. To what
extent is such a “leveling” phenomenon experienced and understood by
young people and how might it
shape their understanding of civic, national, or global engagement,
values and goals? Have new network and
affiliation models changed conventional interest organizations that have
experienced graying and declining
memberships? Is there a loss of goal setting capacity compared to
hierarchical organizations?
• Information and participation: What is the future of news, given its
growing abandonment by younger
audiences? Is there evidence that digital media can inform and engage
new generations?
ECOLOGY OF GAMES
Editor: Katie Salen, Parsons School of Design
Although there has been a considerable amount written on games and young
people’s use of them, there has been
little work done to establish an overall "ecology" of gaming, game
design, and play – in the sense of how all of the
various elements, from code to social practices to aesthetics, cohabit
and populate the game world. In this volume, we
seek to explore the design and behavior of games as systems in which
young people participate, as gamers, producers,
and learners. Games and game modification are currently key entry points
for many young people into digital literacies
and tech-savvy identities. How do such practices relate to social and
educational domains? What needs to be known,
for example, to develop games that enable learning? What modes of agency
do games produce and what grammars of
interaction (social, physical, cultural) are forged through their play?
While many credit game play with fostering new
forms of social organization and new ways of thinking and interacting
(e.g., systems-based thinking; iterative critical
problem solving), more work needs to be done to situate these forms of
learning within a dynamic media ecology that
has the participatory nature of gaming at its core. It is expected that
this volume will begin to build an ecological
understanding of games, identify its boundaries and relevance to a
generation of youth seeking alternative modes of
engagement, as well as make connections between domains affecting its
impact and practice.
IDENTITY AND DIGITAL MEDIA
Editor: David Buckingham, London University
What does it mean to grow up as a young person in a world saturated with
digital media? How are youth identities
currently being defined, and redefined, through young people’s
engagements with technology? What are the
implications of these media for their experiences as learners, citizens
and consumers, and as members of broader social
groupings and communities? This volume will address the consequences of
digital media for young people’s sense of
self and others, and for their involvement in familial, educational,
recreational and civic activities. It will explore how
young people use these media to interact with each other and with
unknown (and potentially global) audiences; and
the implications of these interactions for the development of
individual, social and national identities. It will consider
how young people are using digital media to share their ideas and
creative productions, and to participate in networks
that are small and large, local and global, intimate and anonymous. It
will look at the emergence of new genres and
forms of communication and self-expression, from SMS and instant
messaging to blogs and home-pages. To what
extent do these media offer genuinely new forms of engagement,
interaction and communication for young people?
What are the obstacles to full participation, and how might they be
overcome?
INCIDENTAL LEARNING AND UNEXPECTED OUTCOMES
Editor: Tara McPherson, University of Southern California
This series of papers will identify core issues for further study
concerning how young people’s use of digital media may
lead to various unexpected outcomes, including a range of unintended
learning experiences and unanticipated social
encounters. While such outcomes might typically be seen as ‘positive’ or
‘negative,’ this volume aims to push beyond
simple accounts of digital media and learning as either utopian or
dystopian in order to explore the complex variety of
emergent practices and developments of digital users. A broad range of
topics might be taken up, including but not
limited to social consequences such as (un)equal access across economic,
racial and ethnic categories; generational
conflicts and connections; issues of policy and IP; convergence media;
citizenship vs. consumption; creativity and
collaboration; digital media and gender equity; and shifting notions of
temporality or of the public/private divide, as
well as perceptual ones such as how different forms of digital media
reward different modalities of intelligence
(including synchronicity of mental and motor abilities which may or may
not align with social factors including gender,
class, or race), how collaborative digital interactions do or do not
support individual achievement as measured by
conventional educational testing, or other unintended learning styles
that are not yet appreciated or accepted as
"learning." The purpose of this collection is to invite individuals to
identify and examine possible consequences of
digital media use that might be unanticipated or unexpected and that are
worthy of in-depth investigation.
RACE AND ETHNICITY
Editor: Anna Everett, University of California at Santa Barbara
In the early years of the internet, a cartoon depicting a dog typing on
a personal computer with a caption reading
“Nobody knows you’re a dog on the Internet” became extremely popular.
Around this same time, in the early to mid
1990s, the telecom giant MCI produced a compelling TV commercial
claiming there is no race, no genders, and no
infirmities in the new world of the internet because here “people can
communicate mind to mind.” These popular
examples are symptomatic of the nation’s desire to imagine and construct
colorblind or hyper-tolerant virtual
communities and digital public spheres through the internet’s
text-driven digital environments during the late1980s
and early 1990s. By the 1994 arrival of the graphical user interface
(GUI) and the web-cam technologies to the internet
and especially to the World Wide Web, this utopic future vision came to
a near standstill. This volume asks questions
about race and racism, whether racialized forms (of one type or another)
have been present from the beginning
(despite the utopic cartoon and ad rhetoric) and whether there racial
consciousness has increased as a result of the
movement, in recent years, from text-dominant communications structures
and protocols to more image-based media
content. This volume also is concerned with how race and ethnicity have
factored in the movement, in recent years, to
reinstate the human body at the center of academic and popular debates
about posthumanism, cyberculture,
technoculture, and gaming culture? How does gender map onto race and
ethnicity in digital media? How are race and
ethnicity experienced and represented on the internet and in other
digital media, including in social interactions such
as in game play, friendship networks or blogs? Similarly, issues such as
how race or ethnicity may influence online
interpersonal relations, social networks and identity have been rarely
considered. How does race and ethnicity play
into the politics high-tech surveillance, post 9-ll, and online
hate-speech? What is the significance of race and ethnicity
in digital youth and music cultures? Where do we stand on matters of
universal access and the racial and ethnic digital
divide in the 21st century, especially in terms of digital media and
learning?
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