The results of the MacArthur Foundation's 2010 Digital Media and Learning Competition are in, and the 10 winning projects can’t help but to inspire anyone even remotely interested in understanding the potential of the Internet and digital technology to transform learning and knowledge creation. Among the winners: a project to show youth-produced videos on 2,200 Los Angeles city buses and an initiative that will use webcasting, video blogging, and social networking to connect kids from Chicago's West Side with kids in Fiji to work together to protect Fiji's coral reefs.

Sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation and the Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory (HASTAC), this year's competition attracted more than 800 entries from 32 nations. Individual awards for the top 10 winners ranged from $100,000 to $200,000.

Other winning projects include: 

• Click! The Online Spy School: Designed to encourage girls engagement in the sciences - a Web-based, augmented reality game for teen girls to solve mysteries in biomedical science, environmental protection, and expressive technology.

• Ecobugs: A game aimed at learners aged 7 to 11 - players design their own virtual bugs to release into the wild, but must consider the environmental conditions of their particular surroundings to ensure survival after release.

• Hiwel (Hole-in-the-Wall Education Ltd): Activity based e-learning for improving elementary education in India.

• Mobile Action Lab: Programming Apps for Collaborative Community Change - Youth entrepreneurs and social change agents will partner with top technologists to develop online and mobile applications that tackle topics youth have identified as addressing pressing needs in their communities.

Take a few minutes to go here and watch some cool 3-minute videos that summarize the captivating work each of the 10 winners will be doing.

A brief description of each of this year's winners is here.

A comprehensive description of the winning projects from this year and previous years is available here.

The 2010 winners were announced yesterday in Washington, DC, in conjunction with the celebration of National Lab Day to promote math and science education across America. Here are two brief videos in which U.S. chief technology officer, Aneesh Chopra, makes a series of compelling remarks (in two parts) at the MacArthur gathering where the much-anticipated announcement was made.