Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Media Education for the 21st Century

The title of this post is the subtitle of what promises to be a most interesting paper on digital media and learning, released by the MacArthur Foundation. Henry Jenkins, who is Director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is the primary author and the full title is "Confronting the Challenge of Particpatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century." Download it here.

The paper is part of a $50 million initiative by the MacArthur Foundation to "help determine how digital technologies are changing the way young people learn, play, socialize, and participate in civic life. Answers are critical to developing educational and other social insitutions that can meet the needs of this and future generations."

Well, that would include the library community, wouldn't it? Which makes this report and all the collateral of the initiative critically important for librarians. I'll just say that again a bit louder...CRITICALLY IMPORTANT FOR LIBRARIANS.

The initiative's blog, Spotlight, is here.
Henry Jenkins' blog is here.
Mimi Ito, Howard Rheingold, and danah boyd have all commented on this.

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