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Saturday
Morning, February 3:
Emerging Models
of Learning
New media resources
are profoundly affecting teaching and learning. In this session,
we will consider some examples that model how innovative schools
can exploit new technologies. In addition, we will explore
the assumptions about the learning process that underlie these
uses of new media. Panelists should be prepared to explain
what new media offers that would be harder to achieve in traditional
classroom practice; speakers should also be ready to discuss
the limitations of new media and the particular challenges
teachers face in trying to mobilize new technologies in the
classroom. We recognize throughout this conference that new
technology is no substitute for good teaching. But good teachers
are among the first to recognize and take advantage of new
technologies.
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Saturday
Afternoon, February 3:
Media Literacy
Media literacy has
often been seen as a way of reshaping students' tastes and
promoting so-called quality culture. In the digital age,
however, media literacy needs to be understood as a set
of skills enabling students not simply to consume or critically
evaluate media content, but to actively participate in the
media environment. We would like to use this session to
identify some of the basic skills we think students need;
to examine how those skills might best be integrated into
the curriculum; and to highlight the success stories of
programs that encourage an active or participatory conception
of media literacy. A key assumption here is that if we are
going to use new media in the classroom, we have an obligation
to make sure that students know how to use that media critically,
creatively, ethically, and productively.
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Sunday
Morning, February 4:
Student-Produced
Media
Building on our
previous discussion of media literacy, we want to look at
programs both within and beyond the school setting that
encourage students to become media makers rather than media
consumers. Media-production classes have existed in at least
some high schools since the 1920s, but the advent of new
media has generated many new questions. How are new-media
technologies creating opportunities for production-based
learning? What are the advantages of combining making and
thinking? What strategies have schools and teachers adopted
to integrate production into existing academic subjects?
What work has been done beyond the schools to empower teens
to make better use of these emerging technologies as a means
of expressing their unique perspectives on the world? What
resources are needed to support these production activities?
If many teens are learning how to make media on their own
outside of school, what can or should schools contribute
to this process?
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Sunday
Afternoon, February 4:
Technology Coordination
and Resource Management
At the last MIT
Wiring the Classroom event, discussion kept returning to
certain crucial matters: how teachers from different schools
could share digital resources; how schools could help train
teachers to use new media technologies; what classroom resources
should schools provide; and how can teachers help students
with limited exposure to computers in their homes catch
up with their more technologically advanced classmates.
We would like this last panel to address some of these nuts-and-bolts
questions with accounts of how your schools or school systems
have helped provide the infrastructure for technologically
enhanced learning. We would like the presentations here
to combine war stories about what has and hasn't worked
in your schools with some blue-sky speculation about what
resources and practices might better meet your needs.
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