Henry Jenkins (MIT) and Howard Gardner (Harvard) are each leading projects investigating how to teach information literacy skills to the current generation of university students.
The New Media Literacies project at MIT takes what we might call an ‘embedded’ approach to teaching information literacy:
“How does digital copying relate to legacy notions of property? What do I need to know in order to collaborate with my online peers? How do I present myself online? What do I do when I encounter new communities with unfamiliar norms or ideas? In many cases, there are helpful analogies in “age old” practices. Nevertheless, the conventional wisdom of the analog world can seem like an ill fit. A more appropriate approach might frame the core skills and ethical issues within already established structures, but recognize the complications and opportunities of the contemporary media environment.”
At Harvard, the Good Play project:
“…seeks to understand the ethical issues that youth face in the virtual frontier of new digital media. How models of ethics transfer from the offline to the online world–especially in the five areas of identity, privacy, authorship and ownership, credibility and participation–and how young people understand their roles and responsibilities in digital contexts are key concerns.”
The two project teams met recently to share their experiences, and a summary was published on Henry Jenkins’ blog. Their blog post includes three examples of group exercises that help students work through concepts of responsibility, copyright and privacy.
The report also points to Spotlight, a group blog that publishes weekly articles about “what’s important” in the emerging field of digital media and learning.
The New Media Literacies project is building a ‘learning library’ and looking for partners, collaborators and contributors — see the NML web site for details.
Related posts on this Information Futures blog: