dmlcentral.net
Getting into College? There's a Game for That.
While One Laptop per Child and other programs to address the digital divide are important, I have come to believe it is counterproductive to couple discussions of the transformative potential of digital media in learning too closely with discussions about institutional and cultural problems plaguing public education (failing schools, illiterate graduates, students who start school with inadequate vocabularies and little home support for studying, for example).… more
Empowering Youth-directed Learning in a Digital Age
Tashawna is a high school senior in Brooklyn, NY. In the morning she leaves home for school listening to MP3s, texting her friends about meeting up after school at Global Kids, where she participates in a theater program, or FIERCE, the community center for LGBT youth. On the weekend she'll go to church and, on any given day, visit MySpace and Facebook as often as she can. While she misses television and movies, she says… more
Social Media in South America: Orkut & Brazil
To start my participation here in DMLcentral, I want to write about social media outside the U.S., specifically in South America. Let's take the case of Orkut in Brazil, an interesting and relatively-unknown subject that I've researched and followed closely for years. Orkut is very much a cultural phenomenon in Brazil.… more