[Wikiversity-l] $2 Million Digital Media and Learning Competition

[Erik Moeller]

FYI -  maybe someone in the Wikiversity communiy is interested in
developing something?

MACARTHUR ANNOUNCES $2 MILLION NEW DIGITAL MEDIA AND LEARNING COMPETITION

CHICAGO, IL, August, 14, 2007 – The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur
Foundation announced today a public competition that will award $2
million in funding to emerging leaders, communicators, and innovators
shaping the field of digital media and learning.  The competition is
part of MacArthur's $50 million Digital Media and Learning initiative
that aims to help determine how digital technologies are changing the
way young people learn, play, socialize, and participate in civic
life.

"An open competition is an excellent way to identify and hopefully
inspire new ideas about learning in an increasingly digital world,"
MacArthur Foundation President Jonathan Fanton said.  "We do not yet
know how much people are changing because of digital media, but we
hope that this competition will help support the most innovative
thinking about learning, the formation of ethical judgments, peer
mentoring, creativity, and civic participation, all of which are
increasingly conducted online."

Awards will be given in two categories:

    * Innovation Awards will support learning pioneers, entrepreneurs,
and builders of new digital learning environments for formal and
informal learning.  These innovations might range from a teacher
add-on for MySpace that allows for safe assigning of a class group
discussion, to a platform co-developed by teachers and students to
facilitate digital literacy and peer-mentoring between college
students and high-school drop-outs earning their GED degrees, to a
digital learning festival for the leaders of a worldwide youth
environmental campaign.

    * Knowledge Networking Awards will support communicators in
connecting, mobilizing, circulating or translating new ideas around
digital media and learning.  For example, a team of teacher bloggers
who already reach hundreds of thousands of readers may now seek to
provide multimedia coverage and translation of MIT Professor Henry
Jenkins' recent white paper on media literacy.

The open competition will be administered by a network of educators
and digital innovators called "HASTAC" (the Humanities, Arts, Science
and Technology Advanced Collaboratory).  HASTAC was founded and is
primarily operated at two university centers, the University of
California Humanities Research Institute and the John Hope Franklin
Center at Duke University.  HASTAC has a network reaching more than 80
institutions globally.  The choice of HASTAC, one of a new breed of
"virtual institutions," reflects MacArthur's goals in promoting
next-generation learning.

"We are already teaching a generation of students who do not remember
a time before they were online," said Cathy N. Davidson, John Hope
Franklin Humanities Institute Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies
at Duke University and co-founder of HASTAC.  "Their social life and
informal learning are interconnected.  They don't just consume media,
they customize it.  These students bring fascinating new skills to our
classrooms, but they also bring an urgent need for critical thinking
about the digital world they have inherited and are shaping."

As part of their prize, awardees will receive special consultation
support on everything from technology development to management
training.  Winners will be invited to showcase their work at a
conference that will include venture capitalists, entrepreneurs,
educators and policy makers seeking the best ideas about digital
learning.  Applications are due Oct. 15, 2007, and prizewinners will
be announced in January.  Detailed information on the competition is
available online at www.dmlcompetition.net.

"With the digital media and learning initiative, the MacArthur
Foundation is playing a leading role in reshaping both institutional
and informal learning practices," said David Theo Goldberg, HASTAC
co-founder and director of the University of California's Humanities
Research Institute. "Traditional learning practices are being
supplemented and supplanted by new digital media, which both enable
and extend their reach through virtual institutions like HASTAC. This
is a natural partnership."

This HASTAC competition is supported by a grant from the John D. and
Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to the University of California, in
collaboration with Duke University. The University of California
Humanities Research Institute and Duke University's John Hope Franklin
Center are the principle administering bodies for this grant on behalf
of HASTAC.

###

About the MacArthur Foundation

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is a private,
independent grant making institution dedicated to helping groups and
individuals foster lasting improvement in the human condition. More
information is available at www.macfound.org or
www.digitallearning.macfound.org.

About HASTAC

A consortium of humanists, artists, scientists, social scientists and
engineers from universities and other civic institutions across the
U.S. and internationally, HASTAC is committed to new forms of
collaboration for thinking, teaching, and research across communities
and disciplines fostered by creative uses of technology.  More
information is available at www.hastac.org.

Press contacts:

MacArthur Foundation: Jen Humke, (312) 726-8000
University of California and HASTAC: Christine Byrd, (949) 824-9055
Duke University and HASTAC: Sally Hicks, (919) 681-8055



-- 
Toward Peace, Love & Progress:
Erik

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