CMS Colloquium Podcast
CMS Colloquium Series Podcast
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Podcast: "Out of the Playpen into the Playground: The Design of Digital Experiences for Positive Youth Development
Marina Bers This talk focuses on digital spaces to support ...
Marina Bers This talk focuses on digital spaces to support positive youth development. Download, or listen below. As the design of our digital landscape is increasingly guided by commercial purposes and not by developmental concerns, there is a sense of urgency for developing strategies and educational programs that promote positive development by taking into consideration the children's social, emotional, cognitive, physical, civic and spiritual needs. But we should also consider the unique design features of each technology and the practices and policies that shape different interactions in the digital landscape. Although this talk will focus on new technologies, it is inspired by an old question: "How should we live?" This talk will present an approach to help children gain the technological literacies of the 21st century while developing a sense of identity, values and purpose. Too often youth's experiences with technology are framed in negative terms. This talk acknowledges problems and risks, and takes an interventionist perspective. Based on over a decade and a half of research, this talk provides a theoretical framework for guiding the implementation of experiences that take advantage of new technologies to support learning and personal development, as well as examples from concrete experiences. These engage children in playful learning by supporting digital content creation, creativity, choices of conduct, communication, collaboration and community building. These are the six C's proposed by the Positive Technological Development framework. They can guide the design and the evaluation of digital experiences from early childhood to adolescence, and offer a possible path to help children out of the playpens into the playgrounds of this technological era. Marina Umaschi Bers, Ph.D., is an associate professor at the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development and the Computer Science Department at Tufts University. She heads the interdisciplinary Developmental Technologies research group. Her research involves the design and study of innovative learning technologies to promote positive youth development. Dr. Bers received prestigious awards such as the 2005 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), a five year National Science Foundation Young Investigator's Career Award and the American Educational Research Association's Jan Hawkins Award. Over the past decade and a half, Dr. Bers has conceived, designed and evaluated diverse technological tools ranging from robotics to virtual worlds in after-school programs, museums, hospitals, and schools both in the U.S. and abroad. Dr. Bers has received several NSF grants and is active in publishing her research in academic journals. Her book Blocks to Robots: Learning with Technology in the Early Childhood Classroom was published in 2008 by Teacher's College Press. Most recently, Dr. Bers wrote The Design of Digital Experiences for Positive Youth Development: Out of the playpen into the playground, to be published by Oxford University in early 2012. Dr. Bers is from Argentina. In 1994 she came to the U.S. and received a Master's degree in Educational Media from Boston University and a Master of Science and Ph.D. from the MIT Media Laboratory.
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Podcast: "Communications Forum: Surveillance and Citizenship"
Digital technologies have exponentially expanded the power of government and ...
Digital technologies have exponentially expanded the power of government and corporations to keep tabs on citizens. But citizens in turn are exploiting new technologies to expose the activities of governments, companies and even each other. How does the persistence and ubiquity of surveillance in our digitizing world affect what it means to be a citizen? Does our emerging condition of constant surveillance encourage individuals to curtail how they speak and act -- or to offer more information? In what ways are new forms of citizen surveillance and public witness instruments of democracy and transparency? In what ways are they tools of distortion and propaganda for ideologues or special interests? Our panel of three distinguished scholars will engage these and related questions on evolving notions of citizenship in the digital age. Panelists include Sandra Braman, a professor of communication at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and author of Change of State: Information, Policy, and Power from The MIT Press; Susan Landau, a visiting professor at Harvard University and author of Surveillance or Security? The Risks Posed by New Wiretapping Technologies, also published by The MIT Press; and Marcos Novak, professor and artist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Download!
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Podcast: "Revision, Culture, and the Machine: How Digital Makes Us Human"
John Bryant In revising their own texts, or other people's ...
John Bryant In revising their own texts, or other people's texts, writers erase the past, remodel it, or reinvent it. They create versions of themselves, and those versions are recorded in the textual identities they create through revision. By studying revision, we are able to see not only how a single writer evolves but also how a culture insists upon certain evolutions, with or without the writer's consent. Therefore, the dynamics of revision can take us to the heart of identity formation both in its expressive and repressive strains. What compels a culture to rewrite its texts? How do we track revision in order to "see" or rather "give witness to" revisionary processes? In addressing these problems, digital scholarship can offer far more access to the fluid texts that expose the dynamics of revision and help us confront the necessity of revision in our culture. John Bryant draws upon examples from revision studies, adaptation, and translation in order to highlight the elements of creativity, appropriation, and cultural difference that are at stake in dealing with the ethics and editing of revision. Along the way, he demonstratse TextLab, the Melville Electronic Library's revision editing tool, and discusses the ethical as well as editorial dimensions of other imagined tools, such as Melville Remix and How Billy [Budd] Grew. Bryant is Professor of English at Hofstra University and received his BA. MA, and PhD from the University of Chicago. He has written on Melville, related writers of the nineteenth-century, and textual scholarship. He is also editor of Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies. His recent book, Melville Unfolding: Sexuality, Politics, and the Versions of Typee (Michigan 2008), is based on his online fluid-text edition Herman Melville's Typee. He is currently working on a critical biography, Herman Melville: A Half-Known Life (Wiley) and the NEH-funded Melville Electronic Library (MEL), an online critical archive and "We the People" project. Download!
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Podcast: "Designing Connections"
By providing a critical description of existing technologies and projects ...
By providing a critical description of existing technologies and projects related to the use of information and communication technologies to enhance social connectivity, this talk will illustrate innovative ways to design creative new media and digital interactions to foster connections between people, information, and places. Federico Casalegno, Ph.D., is the Director of the MIT Mobile Experience Lab and Associate Director of the MIT Design Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Since 2008, he is the director of the Green Home Alliance between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Fondazione Bruno Kessler in Italy. He is adjunct full professor at IMT Institute for Advanced Studies Lucca, Italy. A social scientist with an interest in the impact of networked digital technologies in human behavior and society, Casalegno both teaches and leads advanced research at MIT, and design interactive media to foster connections between people, information and physical places using cutting-edge information technology. Download!
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Video: "Communications Forum: Local News in the Digital Age"
Is local news a casualty of the digital age? A ...
Is local news a casualty of the digital age? A recent report from the Federal Communications Commission suggests that although the broad media landscape is more vibrant than ever, many state and local communities face a shortage of professional reporting, undermining journalism's watchdog role at the local level. This Forum assesses the state of local journalism, paying special attention to the changing environment for news in New England. Our speakers, drawn from traditional as well as online media, include Callie Crossley, host of her own talk show on WGBH; David Dahl, who oversees local news initiatives for the Boston Globe; and Adam Gaffin of the online news site Universal Hub. Dan Kennedy, a media analyst who teaches at Northeastern University, moderates the discussion. Download!
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Podcast: "Communications Forum: Local News in the Digital Age"
Is local news a casualty of the digital age? A ...
Is local news a casualty of the digital age? A recent report from the Federal Communications Commission suggests that although the broad media landscape is more vibrant than ever, many state and local communities face a shortage of professional reporting, undermining journalism's watchdog role at the local level. This Forum assesses the state of local journalism, paying special attention to the changing environment for news in New England. Our speakers, drawn from traditional as well as online media, include Callie Crossley, host of her own talk show on WGBH; David Dahl, who oversees local news initiatives for the Boston Globe; and Adam Gaffin of the online news site Universal Hub. Dan Kennedy, a media analyst who teaches at Northeastern University, moderates the discussion. Download!
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Podcast: Scott Nicholson, "From Settlers to Quarriors: Breaking up the Monopoly with Modern Board Game Design"
Over the last 15 years, there has been an explosion ...
Over the last 15 years, there has been an explosion of innovation in board game styles and mechanisms. The Settlers of Catan was the game that crossed the ocean from Germany to the U.S. in the late 1990's and kicked off this new era in board gaming. These modern board games, or Eurogames, are more engaging experiences and based less on luck than the typical roll-and-move board game design prevalent in the 20th century. Attendees will learn about a variety of game mechanisms through discussions of exemplar games and see how these games relate. Many of these mechanisms are appropriate for digital games as well as tabletop games, so attendees will improve their toolkit of mechanisms for their own design work. Dr. Scott Nicholson is a visiting scholar with MIT Comparative Media Studies for the 2011-2012 academic year, working with the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab and The Education Arcade. He is an associate professor at the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University, where he has focused on games in libraries and game design as a pedagogical tool. He was the host of Board Games with Scott from 2005-2010 and is the designer of Tulipmania 1637, a board game published in 2009. In addition, he is the author of Everyone Plays at the Library: Creating Great Gaming Experiences for All Ages, published in 2010 by Information Today. Download!
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Podcast: "Media in Transition 7: Summing Up, Looking Ahead"
The closing plenary from Media in Transition 7: Unstable Platforms: ...
The closing plenary from Media in Transition 7: Unstable Platforms: Goran Bolin, Sodderton University, Sweden Pat Brereton, Dublin City University Jennifer Holt, University of California, Santa Barbara Lana Swartz, USC Moderator: James Paradis, MIT Download!
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Podcast: "Media in Transition 7: Power and Empowerment"
New technologies and media systems have been deployed for new ...
New technologies and media systems have been deployed for new distributions of power, knowledge and social organization. What do you see as the most compelling shifts in these sectors? What are the greatest dangers and opportunities, and with what implications? Factors such as influence over regulatory process, ever-expanding proprietary claims to technology and code, and the control of information including personal data all constitute zones of contention in this time of transition. What techniques and strategies might we use to enhance public literacy and efficacy in these matters? What role might best be taken up by educators and media specialists when the old certainties slip away? Developing new tools and methodologies to make sense of emerging behaviors? Recuperating lost literacy and cognitive skills? Deconstructing legal and regulatory structures, and pressing for new safeguards? Encouraging the production of new forms of content? As new generations enter a digital culture that seems ever more taken for granted as a condition -- and ever more unfathomable as a technological practice -- how can we cultivate and empower a critical citizenry? Networked digital technologies have been used to construct new collectivities and social formations. What are the most promising of these from your perspective, and what lessons can we take from them as we seek to enable individuals to engage with one another to form active and effective publics? Transitional moments bring with them inadvertent opportunities, whether new forms of data (hyperlinks, tags, recommendation systems), new standardization paradigms, or new affordances for representation. Although these opportunities can be put to many ends, how might they serve the interests of illuminating shifts in power, improving social equity and enhancing civic engagement? Sandra Braman, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee Giuliana Cucinelli, Concordia University Richard Rogers, University of Amsterdam Moderator: William Uricchio, MIT Download!
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Podcast: "Media in Transition 7: Archives and Cultural Memory"
"Web 2.0" has been shaped by startup corporations and systems ...
"Web 2.0" has been shaped by startup corporations and systems (such as Wikipedia) that employ large-scale collaboration and crowdsourcing. How do these two forces relate to the project of preserving our cultural memory? A genuine anxiety of many computer users is that our collective memory will be too good: Old offhand blog comments, drunken photos on Facebook, and other communications may persist when we would rather they'd not. This concern does not contradict our need to preserve culturally important materials, but it suggests a related question: Do we need to consider how to be better as a culture at forgetting? In the digital realm, does it still make sense to distinguish the roles of museums, galleries, and spaces for exhibition from those of archives and repositories? Computers have proven to be a valuable tool for investigating our cultural heritage. From YouTube to the digital life of newspapers to video games, computers are also deeply connected to our culture and, in the past several decades, have been an important part of our culture heritage. Are there chances for a fruitful convergence between the project of computing on our past ("the digital humanities") and the project of understanding the culture relevance of computing ("digital media")? A tremendous amount of important information is now being generated in digital form -- but this is not all of the material we want to preserve. How will the abundance of important digital material affect the preservation of traditional archival materials? Frank Marchese, Pace Digital Gallery Julia Noordegraaf, University of Amsterdam Jason Rhody, Office of Digital Humanities, NEH Moderator: Nick Montfort, MIT Download!
