Global Kids' Online Leadership Program

Project NML and the DMYA

This past meeting the Digital Media Youth Advisory got to meet with our friends and co-grantees under MacArthur's Digital Media and Learning Initiative, Project New Media Literacy. Project NML is part of MIT's Comparative Media Studies program, which put out an incredible white paper (pdf) about participatory culture and media education.

We spent about two hours with them talking specifically about the skill of networking, which is defined as "the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information". As Project NML puts together its new website and works to integrate online activities that could be done to build specific skills, a lot of what they're considering is not only how to teach those skills, but also how to do so in a way that's accessible and interesting to teens.

Devante evaluates different data visualization sites

We looked at websites that related to the skill, specifically ones that dealt with data visualization. First we checked out Many Eyes, a website that allows user to upload data sets and have them visualized in different types of graphs, and then we visited a site that was really well received by the teens called We Feel Fine, which aggregated instances of statements about how people are feeling from throughout the blogosphere, and then visualizes them in a variety of engaging ways.

The meeting was apparently quite useful for Project NML, and they even sent over this nice note:

I just wanted to formally thank you for giving us the opportunity to work with the Digital Media Youth Advisory a few weeks back. Working with that impressive crew was just another reminder of what a wealth of knowledge, expertise, and insight resides in the minds and words of our young people.

Though we only had a few hours to work with this group, it only took a few minutes to see what a truly impressive crew it was. What I think was most remarkable was the respect they brought to the room, not only in how they treated each other but in how they approached the task we put to them—their responses to the material we showed them were both considered and considerate, and they expressed a clear and deep understanding of their role within a larger community. The specific suggestions they provided, and the confidence and poise with which they provided those suggestions, will help us immensely as we move forward with our project.

Again, thank you so much for giving us the chance to work with this terrific group of teens. The experience was unforgettable.

Go DMYA!