Can you discover enough of what was actually done to give it a go?

their commitment show

wide array of designers and given them a

f practice. Each chapter represented work done at a grassroots level, not unified by a field, age level, job description, or methodological similarity.

MML Platforms - Projects showcasing software that enables regular people to act creatively in the name of MML

better equipped rebels

mplement curricula aware of them and the interne

ime. If it is important, take your time with it

how they convey what he sees as their promise for enacting self-directed learning

, it is software that is really capable of

anything interesting was worthwhil

School has an inherent tendency to infantilize children by placing them in a position of having to do as they are told, to occupy themselves with work dictated by someone else and that, moreover, has no intrinsic value—schoolwork is done only because the designer of a curriculum decided that doing the work would shape the doer into a desirable form

had a lot to say about why until I read some of his work on my own. He championed software like Logo not to improve student performance in existing math classes, but as a way for students and teachers together to begin to explore a new kind of mathematical thinking that went far beyond math class and made explicit connections to non-mathematical parts of life.

Papert is well-known for his role in the creation and promotion of many technologies to support learning, especially Logo and its later variants and derivatives1,

For Wright, the player’s hunger for challenge and complexity motivates them to pick up thegame in the first place

Most of children’searliest learning comes through playing with the materials at hand.

The new literacies almost allinvolve social skills developedthrough collaboration andnetworking.These skills buildon the foundation of tradi-tional literacy, research skills,technical skills, and criticalanalysis skills taught in theclassroom

Differentonline communities have their own norms about what information should remain within thegroup and what can be circulated more broadly, and many sites depend on self-disclosure topolice whether the participants are children or adults.Yet, many young people seem willing tolie to access those communities.

Their work was free of commercialconstraints and sheltered from outside exposure.The ethical norms and professional practicesthey were acquiring were well understood by the adults around them

rent terms. In both cases, students were learning how to read information from and throughgames, but they were not yet learning how to read games as texts, constructed with their ownaesthetic norms, genre conventions, ideological biases, and codes of representation

exploit the rules of the system in order to beat the gam

nvolved. On the one hand, those youth who are most advanced in media literacies are oftenstripped of their technologies and robbed of their best techniques for learning in an effort toensure a uniform experience for all in the classroom

Philadelphia will allow low-income families, families that are on the cusp of their financialcapacity, to be able to be fully and completely connected.We believe that our public schoolchildren should be—their families have to be connected or else they will fall behind, and,in many ca

.We suspect that youngpeople who spend more time playing within these new media environments will feel greatercomfort interacting with one another via electronic channels, will have greater fluidity in navi-gating information landscapes, will be better able to multitask and make rapid decisions aboutthe quality of information they are receiving, and will be able to collaborate better with peoplefrom diverse cultural backgrounds.These claims a

us tasks later.The challenge is how to connect decisions in the context of oureveryday lives with the decisions made at local, state, or national level

articipation is a property of culture. Participatory culture is emerging as the culture absorbsand responds to the explosion of new media technologies that make it possible for averageconsumers to archive, annotate, appropriate, and recirculate media content in powerful newways

Participatory culture shiftsthe focus of literacy from oneof individual expression tocommunity involvemen

According to a 2005 studyconducted by the PewInternet and American Lifeproject, more than one-half ofall American teens—and 57percent of teens who use theInternet—could be consideredmedia creators

ndeed, manyof these youth were frustrated with school; some dropped out and others chose to graduate

— the capacity to experiment with one’s surroundings as a form of problem-solving

youth for full participation in the world of tomorrow.

Circulations — Shaping the flow of media (such as podcasting, blogging)

Executive SummaryAccording to a recent 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.

Moreover, teachers and schools attempt to determine appropriate use of those resources.

As Christo Sims notes in one of his fi eld notes from “Rural and Urban Youth,” “When I was in rural California, I saw a few boys playing a console game, another carrying on an ongoing text-message conversation, and another one making food,” all in the same room together.

“It just started with that, the freedom of being a boy.” Through this particular role play, Clarissa grapples with intense issues of adolescent identity work and imagines her way out of some of the gendered expectations faced by teenage girls.

Looking Around,” we focus on the ways in which kids use search engines and other online information sources to fi nd information, a practice we call “fortuitous searching.

He explains to Christo Sims (Rural and Urban Youth) how he fi rst looked around online for this topic

In fact, much of contemporary gaming is built on the premise that players will engage in a great deal of experimentation on their own in a context of social support.

I go to the most-viewed page.

ose helps Michelle with reading and doing homework to the extent that she can, but she speaks limited English and studied up to only the eighth grade in her native El Salvador.

First, teens frequently displayed their musical tastes and preferences on MySpace profi les and in other online venues by posting information and images related to favorite artists, clips and links to songs and videos, and song lyrics. Second, sharing and listening to music continues to be an important practice and something that teens do together when they are hanging out.

In most of the cases we have seen, youth rely to some extent on networked communication to facilitate arranging offl ine meetings, these networked sites and communication devices becoming an alternative hanging out site in its own right

We continue by discussing the ways in which new media content, such as music and online video, becomes a part of young people’s social communication.

45 percent in 2004 to 71 percent in 2007

2005).

While participation in online communities is on the rise, a majority of adults with children reported being uncomfortable having their children participate in online communities—65 percent reported feeling uncomfortable whereas only 15 percent felt comfortable. This last indicator suggests that spreading youth participation in online venues for interest-driven participation will likely require a change of attitude among adult populations

Melea circumvented economic costs associated with buying ringtones, costs that could have prohibited her from possessing her ringtone of choice. Despite the diffi culty of getting a high-quality recording in a noisy computer lab, by recording it from the playback of a MySpace page Melea creatively acquired the media she wanted in her desired format

In addition, it illustrates the value of informal learning, unscheduled time, and student-driven inquiry, even in a formal educational environment

That is to say, one can geek out on topics that are not culturally marked as “geeky.”

Building a reputation as one of the most knowledgeable voices in the online anime fandom requires this kind of commitment as well as an advanced media ecology that is fi nely tailored to his interests.

he notes that fans in specialized creative communities often avoid offi cial discussion forums

hat is interesting about the conversation between Christo and Derrick is Derrick’s friend’s comment. His act of calling Derrick “a computer freak” (even if meant as a joke between friends) indicates that he associates a particular and deviant identity with video fi le sharing,

Carolina notes that different interests motivated each family member’s fi le-sharing practices

Hanging out tends to correspond with more friendship-driven practices and geeking out to the more interest-driven ones, although we have seen cases of kids geeking out on more friendship-driven practices, such as in the case of kids who are intensely into Facebook or MySpace, or when kids engage in video or photo production as part of their hanging out with friends.

lthough our discus-sion does not focus on issues of the digital divide or the participation gap, we have worked to illustrate the kinds of resources that need to be present in youth’s environments for them to participate in certain genres of practice.

Rather, those who engaged in high amounts of media reported spending more time on average with family, hobbies, and physical activity (Rideout, Roberts, and Foehr 2005)

he everyday practices of youth, existing structural conditions, infrastructures of place, and tech-nologies are all dynamically interrelated; the meanings, uses, functions, fl ows, and interconnections in young people’s daily lives located in par-ticular settings are also situated within young people’s wider media ecolo-gies.

Even youth who do not possess computers and Internet access in the home are participants in a shared culture where new social media, digital media distribution, and digital media production are com-monplace among their peers and in their everyday school contexts.

Although it is unlikely that Geo Gem would describe her after-school activities with media as “learning” in the same way that she might describe school-work or piano lessons (see Seiter 2007), Geo Gem’s home environment, the institution of the family, rules, and a variety of other factors constitute her everyday media ecology and her social and cultural context for learning.

Although Geo Gem’s family lives in a wealthy area of the San Francisco Bay Area, the media and technology she uses every day do not necessarily refl ect the family’s economic status.

Had the boundaries between the school and the clubhouse been more permeable, mentor–teacher collaborations may have been possible that could have further ampli fi ed the pos-sibilities for learning.

. This pattern of a practice-linked identity, leading to a persistent pursuit of learning opportunities, is consistent with what we have observed in case studies from more af fl uent communities and speaks to its generality, at least when a minimum of resources are available (Barron, 2006

as the narrative reveals

he said he planned

“kind of like proud of himself,”

: Well, his grades kept coming down and we had a conference and the teacher was concerned because Luis is like a super smart boy and that he was wasting his time on not doing what he’s supposed to do.

. His mother and older brother were central fi gures in the development of his projects.

workspace at the clubhouse was frequently crowded with boys who were very much a part of the scene

Luis began to make his own backgrounds for different shots.

He also talked about watching and enjoying other stop-mo-tion fi lms including claymation.

Luis describes his process in a nutshell as, “think about it, get some supplies to make it, and then do it.”

“I just asked [the clubhouse coordinators] what it was and they old me and it was for taping and stuff, so I just started running around taping my friends, trying to do scenes and stuff....”

. O u r m e t h o d s i n v o l v e o b s e r v ation, interviews, analysis of the artifacts learners create, and data collection through an occasional questionnaire.

Observations of the creative work emerging from environ-ments like the clubhouse raise a host of questions about the learning activities that take place there, how they evolve over time and place, and who is involved.

long gender, SES, or cultural dimensions.

While these skills are certainly important, there are still stark differences among children and adolescents in access to learning opportunities that will help position them to use computers in ways that can promote their own development (Goode, 2007; Warschauer & Matuchniak, 2010

Those that can use technology in more advanced ways have typically been deeply supported by parents, peers, or teachers that have expertise.

Design activities, including information gathering, creative thinking, prototyping, improvisation, and tinkering, are thought to provide potential pathways to these crucial twenty- fi rst-century capacities (Balsamo, 2010 )

Online communities that re fl ect “cultures of participa-tion”

young people work with adult mentors to “explore their own ideas, develop skills, and build con fi dence in themselves through the use of technology.”

A teenage girl sits at a large green table with her head bent over a Venn diagram. A younger boy sits at a nearby computer searching for images on the Internet using Google.