Digital Youth Network - Cultivating Digital Media Citizenship in Urban Communities

The popular image of the "digital native" -- usually depicted as a technically savvy and digitally empowered teen -- is based on the assumption that all young people are equally equipped to become innovators and entrepreneurs. Yet young people in low-income communities often lack access to the learning opportunities, tools, and collaborators (at school and elsewhere) that help digital natives develop the necessary expertise. This book describes one approach to address this disparity: the Digital Youth Network (DYN), an ambitious project to help economically disadvantaged middle-school students in Chicago develop technical, creative, and analytical skills across a learning ecology that spans school, community, home, and online. The book reports findings from a pioneering mixed-method three-year study of DYN and how it nurtured imaginative production, expertise with digital media tools, and the propensity to share these creative capacities with others. Through DYN, students, despite differing interests and identities -- the gamer, the poet, the activist -- were able to find some aspect of DYN that engaged them individually and connected them to one another.
Finally, the authors offer generative suggestions for designers of similar informal learning spaces.

About the author

Brigid Barron is Associate Professor of the Learning Sciences in Stanford University's School of Education and directs the YouthLAB research group. Kimberley Gomez is Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA. Nichole Pinkard is Associate Professor of Interactive Media, Human Computer Interaction, and Education in the School of Cinema and Interactive Media at DePaul University and founder of the Digital Youth Network. Caitlin K. Martin is Project Manager and a senior researcher in the YouthLAB group at Stanford University.

Summary

An ambitious project to help economically disadvantaged students develop technical, creative, and analytical skills across a learning ecology that spans school, community, home, and online.

Product details

• Authors: Brigid Barron, Brigid (Associate Professor Barron, Brigid Gomez Barron, Kimberley Gomez, Kimberley (Associate Professor Gomez, Caitlin K. (Stanford University) Martin, Nichole Pinkard, Nichole (Associate Professor Pinkard, Nichole (Visiting Associate Professor Pinkard
• Publisher: The MIT Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 27.06.2014
• EAN: 9780262027038
• ISBN: 978-0-262-02703-8
• No. of pages: 344
• Series: The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning; The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning; John D. and Catherine T. MacAr
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Education > Education system; Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > IT, data processing > Data communication, networks