As a graduate student studying games for learning, and a general geek extraordinaire, I’ve been given the unique opportunity this summer to teach a new online program for kids who want to learn how to design video games. E-Line Media, a Cooney Center partner in the National STEM Video Game Challenge, and the creator of the game-building platform Gamestar Mechanic, has designed an engaging curriculum that teaches kids not only how to make their own games, but also what it is that game designers actually do. And it’s a lot more than just sitting around playing video games all day!!

As a part of my experience teaching, I’ll be blogging in a series of posts informed by insights from parents and designers involved in this new program. The Gamestar Mechanic Online Learning Program was launched this summer as a special experience for kids to learn all about design from start to finish. With Florida Virtual School as a partner in the project, the program is full of instructional materials and learning resources in addition to existing quests and challenges within the Gamestar Mechanic website. The quests, available for free online, guide kids through the game building platform by having them create games to address specific design goals, within a larger narrative and kid friendly world.

Just like professional game designers, students in the Online Learning Program go through the process of brainstorming, creating paper and digital prototypes to plan their game designs, playtesting, and reiterating, reiterating, reiterating their games to make them the best they can be! And most importantly, students in the program have tons of opportunities to share their games with peers for review and feedback, and thoughtfully critique one another’s games with design suggestions. The culminating event of the summer for each student will be the opportunity to share one final showcase game to a professional game designer with years of experience in the field, and get personalized video feedback.

The current climate of digital media in schools and the home, including the increasing use of games for learning and the subject of game design as a learning activity in the classroom, makes this a very exciting time for aspiring young designers. It’s very exciting to see programs like this being created to provide support and encouragement that kids need to go into a variety of fields in their future careers. And I have to say, as a self-titled geek extraordinaire, I’m blown away by how cool these young people really are. One of my students has even been writing his own blog about his experience in the program, which readers can check out on the Science Buddies website.

Through some really enthusiastic introductory phone calls and Skype sessions with students and their parents over the past couple of weeks, I’ve learned that some of the kids drawn to the Online Learning Program this summer have some completely awesome goals. Many want to be game designers when they grow up. Some want to be computer programmers and eventually learn how to code their own games. One student is going into his junior year of high school, but wants to teach middle school students how to design their own games. Some even want to be in different fields of design like architecture, but feel that learning about game design will help them become better at other things. And then of course, there are the kids that love games so much that they just really want to look at them more closely and see how games work when they take them apart and put them back together again. A couple of my students are so excited about their personal goals with gaming and design that they actually saved up their own money from chores and allowance to pay for the course this summer.

All of my students for the summer have now started the program, and runs through the end of August. They range in age from 4th to 10th graders and live all over the country, but are connected to one another through the Gamestar Mechanic website. For some of them, this is the first time they’ve ever tried to make a game of their own. For others, they have been making games for a couple of years and can’t wait to make even more. Some have never taken a class over the Internet, or used chat features to communicate with a teacher, while others are already pros. Some have never had to manage their time before and engage in self-guided learning, while other students have an additional teacher to guide them through the course in person, as a part of a summer program. There are also a handful of extremely dedicated teachers who are going through the course on their own as a student to determine how to incorporate the curriculum into their own classrooms in the fall.

While student abilities and aspirations may vary, the outcomes should be incredibly exciting across the board. I’m very excited to share my perspective over the next couple of weeks, and even more excited that I get to spend a nice chunk of my summer helping the next generation of designers (teachers, architects, programmers, and so on) have a great time learning more about games, and reaching their goals. More to come soon!

When it comes to digital media for kids, there is no lack of options in terms of what kids are consuming. From television, to computer games, to e-books, apps, and so much more, children are consuming media in constantly expanding ways. In such an increasingly crowded digital landscape, it’s important to consider the skills that kids need to successfully navigate and inhabit this world.

Now what do I mean by skills? Some people refer to it as “digital literacy,” “21st century skills,” or “computational thinking,” and while each of these terms means something different, they all contain some central ideas that stress that kids today should know what it means to create, express, connect, and solve problems using technology. While the vast majority of the media that kids interact with doesn’t involve honing these skills, there are a select few that are very much focused on providing these types of learning opportunities, and the one I’d like to tell you about in this post is called Scratch.

Scratch is a software program created by the Lifelong Kindergartengroup at the MIT Media Lab that gives kids the opportunity to build their own interactive media by utilizing a graphical programming language that involves the snapping together of digital blocks to create games, animations, stories, simulations or pretty much anything else that a kid can think up. In addition to creating projects, Scratch also provides kids with an online community where they can share their work, and connect with others.

For the past year I’ve worked as an intern on the Scratch project, learning from teachers and students who are using Scratch both formally and informally to hone those aforementioned skills. With a background in theatre and no real knowledge of computer science or programming, what initially drew me to Scratch was the creative component. As an arts educator I have always valued the importance of giving kids the opportunity to create and express themselves. But what does that look like in the digital world? With tens of thousands of users (mostly aged 7-17) having contributed over 2.6 million projects to date, Scratch provides an incredible example of what that can look like. The range of projects on the site is mind boggling. Seriously, go to the homepage and click on a few of the projects to see what kids are making and sharing.

In terms of connectivity, the site does way more than just providing a home for all of that creative expression. Scratchers can love, favorite, and comment upon each others work. They can visit and contribute to forums where they can share resources, knowledge, and ideas. And probably coolest of all, Scratchers can download and remix each others work. If Sally thinks that Timmy’s project is awesome and she wants to know how he made it, or she wants to expand it in some way, she can download the whole thing to see inside the project and then add to it in whatever way she’d like. She can then share her version of the project on the site, and Scratch will give Timmy credit for the original, and Sally credit for the new version. In a world where social networking and content sharing sites like Facebook and YouTube have become a huge part of our collective culture, a site like Scratch provides a great playground for kids to begin experiencing how their ideas and interests can connect them to others, and how a community of creators can build upon and impact each other in exciting ways.

Another integral part of Scratch is the fact that it’s a graphical programming language. When kids snap the digital blocks together they are essentially creating code, and are therefore building computer science and programming skills. I’ve met some people this year who think of Scratch as only being a tool for getting kids interested in and introducing them to computer science and programming, but I think that it’s way more than that. While there’s no denying that computer programming is a major part of Scratch, what’s even more exciting is the way the Scratch interface scaffolds that process. The building space makes it easy to bring together different blocks, test out what they do, and make adjustments. This freedom to build, test, tinker, remix, and revise leads to the development of problem solving and design practices that honor multiple iterations, frequent testing and debugging, modular thinking, systematic reasoning, as well as the opportunity to throw that reasoning out the door and to just explore and play. Not only have I seen kids developing and engaging in these practices as they build and create with Scratch, but I’ve seen this transfer to their interactions with other media and technology as they begin to question and explore how and why things other work the way they do.

In terms of wanting to give kids the opportunity to develop their ability to create, express, connect, and solve problems using technology, Scratch is an amazing tool, and in the words of one of my educational media heroes, “you don’t have to take my word for it.” Scratch is free to download at http://www.scratch.mit.edu. Download it. Check it out for yourself. And if you’re interested in tapping into a community of educators that work with Scratch, you can also check out ScratchEd. The annual Scratch conference took place last week at MIT, and I’ll be back over the next few weeks with thoughts from the conference and other Scratch related thoughts. If you have questions, or thoughts, please contribute to the comments section below or you can email me aaronleemorris[at]gmail.com.

Intro to Scratch from ScratchEd on Vimeo.

Aaron is a recent graduate of the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Technology, Innovation, and Education. While there he spent his time focusing on how media and technology can be used to foster creativity and connectivity among children. As part of that focus, he had wonderful opportunities to work as an intern for the Joan Ganz Cooney Center and Scratch at the MIT Media Lab. He is also just embarking on a new position as the Assistant Director of Content for PBSKids Interactive.

Hello again! When I wrote my blog post on my experiences as one of the Educator Winners from the 2012 STEM Video Game Challenge, I didn’t have a chance to discuss my method for designing games for students. I’ve thought about this quite a bit, and wanted to share some of my tips with other aspiring game designers here.

First, there are two good articles on video games and learning at the STEM Challenge website at the bottom of their Resources page. These two documents provided great insight for me while I was writing the research document for the STEM Challenge. I believe these documents are a good place to start if you are interested in making a game or already have an idea.

Thinking about the types of games you like to play is another starting point. I’ve been playing card, board, and computer games, plus math and number puzzles ever since I was in elementary school. Many of my ideas for making a new game are inspired by games that I have seen or played before. Researching (and playing) many types of board games, puzzles, and strategy computer games provide ideas on gameplay and mechanics.

I also think a lot about the purpose of the game; is the game to teach, practice, or apply a specific concept? I think that a “teaching” game is the hardest—simply because the “game” is focused on teaching, and not game play; so I would consider that to be online or computer-based learning, not necessarily a game.

Practice games focus on a concept to build fluency—speed and accuracy in the content, usually implying repetition and a time element, much of which drove the design of AdditionBlocks. Even in very simple addition or subtraction game, or even to more complicated, higher-level concepts, I believe students would much rather play a game than do a work sheet! However, keep in mind that players will be at all different stages of ability, understanding and knowledge…so adding speed or difficulty levels will keep the game playable for everyone. Students also need the freedom to fail (get a wrong answer) and to continue playing without being penalized too much (or even at all!). Instead, I focus on the reward (i.e., points gained) for getting correct answers.

I think, however, that an application game is the most interesting. An application-type game would be a strategy game, puzzle-solving (think “Lure of the Labyrinth”) or a simulation. Although these types of games are definitely the most time-consuming and complicated to create, application games allow for more open-ended answers, building critical-thinking and problem-solving skills, strategic planning, and higher-level thinking.

Lastly, Keep it simple! Do not put too many concepts into the game. AdditionBlocks focuses on one concept: addition. This will make the development much easier.  Even in simulation/application type games, once the creation process begins, I find it easy to get carried away by adding different features and game play. Get a game out there and have your students play it! Get feedback from them and then put in new features in version 2.0.

The AdditionBlocks game came to being in a burst of creative inspiration, and the rest was time, effort, and energy into brainstorming, developing, and debugging the game. It takes perseverance, revising, overcoming setbacks, and plenty of play-testing. To paraphrase Thomas Edison, AdditionBlocks was “1% inspiration and 99% perspiration”.

Martin Esterman teaches seven grade math for the STEM Magnet program at Marietta Middle School in Marietta, Georgia. He has been with MMS for 10 years and has taught all levels of math learners-from advanced students two grades ahead to students below grade level. He has designed, implemented, and used all types math games and number puzzles in his classes at every level. Before teaching, he was a software engineer for seven years. Martin was awarded the Outstanding New Employee at Marietta Middle School in 2002, and recognized as one of the initial Georgia Master Teachers by the Georgia Department of Education in 2005. He is the winner of the PBS Kids Ready to Learn Prize in the Educator Category of the National STEM Video Game Challenge.

In March, Michael Levine presented “Gaming Education Reform: Starting Points for a Digital Revolution” at the 2012 Early Education and Technology for Childrenconference in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Mark Rabo recently led a Creative Jam as part of the TIFF Nexus New Media Literacies Conferences that took place in Toronto this spring. We asked him to share some tips for producers interested in collaborating with others in this innovative format that inspires creativity while harnessing the talents of its participants.

“Good artists steal”
“Everything is a remix”
“There is nothing new under the sun”

It’s both terrifying and liberating that the raw material of every idea has always existed. Terrifying because it leaves us no excuses, and liberating because it means we already have everything we need.

Philosophical ideas like this are often not practical in the real world but the embedded concepts of randomness, remixing, and unexpected outcomes are quite useful because they mean it’s only a matter of combining what exists—they remove the adult pressure to perform and replace it with a child’s lightness of play.

Creativity becomes about the existing, not the new; mixing not divining; mindfulness not inspiration; and randomness not perfection.

One great way to incorporate these concepts into our work is with the creative jam. I just finished leading one as part of the TIFF Nexus initiative and wanted to share some thoughts, experiences, and things I learned along the way.

If you’re not familiar with creative jams, they’re part networking, part prototyping, and very DIY.

A group of individuals or teams get together and in addition to generating ideas, they also generate prototypes. Another way to think of jams is “rapid prototyping for ideas” or “super brainstorming” where the goal is to go beyond the idea and make something in order to gain further insight and build momentum. Jams can take place over the course of an afternoon, a weekend or, as was the case with Nexus, several months.

Our was called the Youth New Media Literacy Jam (YNMLJ) and it brought together 20+ people from different industries to create projects around new media literacies for youth (ages 10-13).

Here are some things I learned over this three month long creative adventure.

Choosing Participants
In the spirit of unexpected outcomes, mix as many types of people as possible: different industries, temperaments, experiences, hobbies, etc. Bring together people who’d normally never cross paths — it’ll either be amazing or a disaster but always interesting. Also mix up ages; youths bring boundless energy and bravado and adults bring wisdom and experience.

Invite each person individually. Everyone can tell a mass email and no one feels important getting one. Instead, write a personal message and tell folks why you want them to participate. Tell them why you love their work or what they can contribute and how they’ll benefit. It takes a long time but people will appreciate the thoughtfulness.

Setting Expectations
Before choosing the final participants hold an info session. It’s a chance to meet everyone and tell them about the whys, hows, whens, and wheres of the jam in a no-commitment setting.

Never bait and switch. Be upfront with the commitment: “It’ll be three months and approx. 60hrs of your time to be part of this jam.” Make it sound painful. Marathons are tough but nobody whines that they’re too long. Be upfront and clear and you’ll get the most dedicated people.

Don’t pressure anyone to participate. Present your reasons for holding the jam and let people flow into it if they choose. Most people have busy lives and giving their time for free is a big ask—don’t force them. If anyone isn’t sure they can commit the time, tell them “No problem, I’ll count you out for the moment but if you change your mind let me know.” It removes any guilt and, more importantly, if they return you’ll know they’re fully committed.

Choosing Teams
We decided to choose teams rather than letting them self-organize. Some people knew each other and we wanted to encourage unexpected outcomes. Choosing teams is like choosing a puppy, you’re mostly going by gut. But I did have some rough guidelines in my head as I put them together

I tried to keep the overall energy in the team balanced: excitable people with stable, calm with explosive, makers with thinkers, etc. This yin-yang made teams more stable but also forced individuals to work with people very different from them. Again, hoping for unexpected outcomes.

I also tried to create interesting occupation/hobby pairings. What would happen if you mixed a musician with a sculptor? A tech-head with naturalist? A mathematician with a breakdancer? It could be a disaster but it could be amazing too!

Think Motivations

“Why should I give you 60 hours of my time for free?” This is what busy people are asking themselves. The answer depends on your project but you need to anticipate and address it. Here are some reasons for our jam:

You will:

• Meet good people — new friendships and collaborations are very important to motivated people.
•  Grow your network — it can be hard to meet (let alone collaborate) with people from different industries.
• Explore new ideas — creative folks have stacks of ideas they want to explore, this could be a platform for that.
• Learn outside your field — curious people want to learn. We took teams on “Field Trips” where they learned about things helpful to their projects from experts (ie. a child psychologist explaining how the 10-13 year old brain works).
• Have fun — guys and girls just wanna…
• Eat lots — we had some great spreads of snacks at every meeting. I’m convinced this was directly tied to the successful end results.

To Prototype or Not To Prototype
This depends on the goals of your jam and how/where/to whom you’ll be presenting but I recommend at least entertaining the thought of NOT prototyping.

Prototyping is extremely time consuming and by definition unpolished. It’s difficult to provide the proper context for a prototype and they often come across unimpressive. We decided to encourage groups to focus on their idea rather building it. This sounds like I’m going against what I said earlier about jams being more than just ideas, but you don’t need to physically prototype to thoroughly explore an idea. Groups still dove deep but instead made videos, sketches, animations, diagrams, and websites – they still demonstrated their idea, just not in a hands-on way.

Not prototyping also allows participants to explore outside the confines of current technology which gets them really excited.

Avoid the Storage Room
So many great projects end up in dusty storage rooms the day after the presentation. To avoid this, we required (one of the few things we required) each team to create a website with a custom domain, a video, and business cards with the website address (we were presenting at a mixer where people were drinking and socializing so we wanted something they could put in their pocket and follow-up in soberer times.)

Not only did this allow the projects to live on, but also gave teams ownership and, as a result, some have continued working on them and even collaborating with people they met at the showcase.

Cost & Scalability
At its heart, a jam is people gathering and making so it’s scalable to any size. Despite being supported by large cultural institutions, our budget for the jam was extremely low (food was the biggest expense.) With free online tools; meeting spaces in schools, libraries, coffee shops, and peoples’ homes; and not prototyping, cost becomes a non-issue. The people and brains are most important and any budget can be creatively accommodated.

Time
The Youth New Media Literacy Jam took place over 3 months but a jam can be as long as you like. In the indie video game community (where I was introduced to the jamming format) they go anywhere from a few hours, to a weekend, to a week. Choose a time-frame that makes sense for your goals and go for it. If you’re not sure, err on the side of short.

No matter what your creative goals, a creative jam is great way to explore, experiment, and move forward without having all the information. Less talk More rock. I’ve never seen a jam that didn’t result in some new insight, idea, or path to follow. Jams also expose us to the randomness and serendipity of the world and can show us creative roads we didn’t know existed.

Mark Rabo is co-founder of the largest indie games festival in Canada, Gamercamp, and its spin-off for kids Gamercamp Jr. He’s on the board of The Hand Eye Society and is advisor to several game-related initiatives including GameChangersTO. He is currently collaborating with Mozilla and others on the Toronto version of The Hive Learning Network. His personal site is markrabo.com and personal Twitter is @markrabo.

See Mark’s post about the TIFF Nexus New Media Literacies Conference.

Photo from TIFF Nexus Creative Jam courtesy of Endless Films.

Hello everyone! My name is Marty Esterman and I am the Educator Grand Prize winner for the PBS Kids stream in this year’s STEM Video Game Challenge event for my entry, AdditionBlocks. I have been quite humbled by this whole experience-and I want to thank The Joan Ganz Cooney Center, PBS Kids, E-Line Media, and the AMD Foundation for all their support. I have met some really great people! I also want to thank my wife, Stacy, who has also been a great support and encouragement.

I have actually been writing computer games—well, since I was about 12 or 13 when my family got our first computer—16 K (yes, 16 kilobytes) of RAM and 80 K on a 5 ¼” floppy disc! That led me to my first career as a software engineer, and I wrote software for seven years. Since I “retired” from the computer world, I still like to write games as a hobby, and have written several other games for my students. One is a game to reinforce the multiplication rules for integers, and “Cross-Sums” which is the computer version of the Cross Sums (now known as Kakuro) math puzzles.

I had actually started working on AdditionBlocks almost a year before I  entering the STEM Challenge. I believe my idea was originally “IntegerBlocks,” for students to practice their integer addition, but the negative numbers never ended up in the game! (However, hopefully coming soon, now that AdditionBlocks is at a completed stage). After I discovered the STEM Challenge on the web, I thought that my game would fit best with the PBS Kids Stream (1st/2nd grade). After completing the research document for the contest, I learned the importance of addition fluency (speed and recall) in early childhood education. I am interested in doing a research project with the upcoming school year on using AdditionBlocks for improving student fluency.

The greatest personal reward from winning the Challenge has been the satisfaction and validation that someone other than my students actually “liked” the game. As I have been writing games for my own enjoyment for many years, I’ve never had a game “out there” for others to play. The result of that has given me inspiration and confidence to continue developing educational games and offer them to others.
Being chosen as the winner has also opened doors, and it is very exciting to see where all this leads. E-Line Media and AMD invited me to to speak at a teacher reception during this year’s ISTE Conference in San Diego, where I was also able to showcase the game. I met an executive from GameDesk (who uses GameMaker software to teach Common Core content) and the president of FableVision, who produced the online game “Lure of the Labyrinth.” The most touching conversation I had, however, was with a gentleman from Mexico who started his own school. He mentioned one of his teachers had an idea for a game to teach his students about the importance of handling money. He was very encouraged and inspired that teachers writing games for students is possible and does help!

Of course, the cash winnings have also been a blessing. My vision for AdditionBlocks is that the game is playable on all platforms—computers, tablets, and phones. Building the game for tablets and smartphones required about $400 in additional software expenses and purchasing a Mac for building on the iPad. I have already built the Mac and iPad versions, and I am currently making some minor gameplay fixes and updating some graphics to put the game in the app stores-hopefully by the time school starts in August.

This has truly been a remarkable experience!

Martin Esterman teaches seven grade math for the STEM Magnet program at Marietta Middle School in Marietta, Georgia. He has been with MMS for 10 years and has taught all levels of math learners-from advanced students two grades ahead to students below grade level. He has designed, implemented, and used all types math games and number puzzles in his classes at every level. Before teaching, he was a software engineer for seven years. Martin was awarded the Outstanding New Employee at Marietta Middle School in 2002, and recognized as one of the initial Georgia Master Teachers by the Georgia Department of Education in 2005. He is the winner of the PBS Kids Ready to Learn Prize in the Educator Category of the National STEM Video Game Challenge.

As I have described in my previous two posts, the Hispanic-Latino Families and Digital Technologies Forum, held June 8th in Washington DC, yielded rich discussion among the researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and media producers convened by the National Center for Family Literacy (NCFL), Joan Ganz Cooney Center (JGCC), and National Council of La Raza (NCLR). One recurring call from forum participants was for more, and more appropriately designed research to surface greater understanding of the role of digital technologies in the lives of Hispanic-Latino families. Researchers called for more savvy, original, and speedy ways to conduct studies on new media use among Hispanic families and the educational potential of their media engagement in light of the speed at which new digital technologies hit the scene, their varied affordances, and diverse participation styles among the families with access to them.

Disrupting Research in New Media

Panelists throughout the day addressed the rich potential of rapidly evolving digital technologies for the future agenda of practitioners, policymakers, and researchers alike. They addressed not only how technology has transformed and will continue to transform family and cultural learning and access to information, but also how it changes the way we have to study family and cultural learning and access – at a rapid and ever-increasing pace. Many nodded to methods of user-centered, design research and the robustness of big data inherent in technology use as appropriate launch points. Design-thinking is a method and process of problem investigation that posits design-driven solutions, especially known for situating the user within his or her unique circumstance of needs, abilities, and socio-cultural context.

Having studied multiple theories of innovation and creative-driven idea-generation processes this year in graduate school, I was particularly fascinated by this undercurrent of commentary at the forum. This line of discussion heightened my awareness and knowledge of disruptive innovation, defined classically by Clay Christensen at Harvard Business School as “an innovation that transforms an existing market or creates a new market, typically by trading off raw performance in the name of simplicity, convenience, accessibility, or affordability.” Simply put, user experience research and the use of design-thinking as an inquiry-based model of student learning could slowly but surely outpace the use of academic research in the field of new media and learning.

With the surge in design-thinking firms, disruptive innovation methodologies, and constantly iterating technological solutions, the academic research world—known for intricately calculated studies and years of careful investigation—will never keep up with the curve. Although academic research remains the “gold standard” for rigorous and thorough methods of investigation, finished studies often do not reach the journals, the public, and those who can make use of the information before the next hot technology hits the market. In short, the speedy changes in technology and learning call for equally speedy modes of investigation. Essentially, the research process itself could be disrupted by user-centered research and the access to larger data sets that new technologies make readily available. What remains to be seen is what will happen to the refined process of academic research especially in fields of communication, psychology, and education if these new research processes take hold.

Incorporating (Many) Authentic Voices

Conversation at the forum also focused on the need to incorporate diverse perspectives—particularly from youth themselves—into our research, using varying techniques. Craig Watkins of the University of Texas at Austin, representing MacArthur’s Connected Learning Network, suggested we teach kids to be both designers and design-thinkers at an early age so they can conduct their own media investigation. If kids can simultaneously wear both a problem-solving and a design cap, then they can contribute to the research that professionals are conducting by their innovative use of new media. Watkins brought our attention to the capacity and desire of youth to create content and direct their own learning and discovery. Our research should incorporate their authentic voices and practices because youth tell vibrant and compelling stories through media. For example, “Quest to Learn,” a public school in New York City, teaches their students to be systems designers and investigators, utilizing game-based learning.

Dr. S. Craig Watkins (University of Texas at Austin) discusses his research regarding the media practices of youth on the “digital edge.”

Similarly, Guadalupe Valdes (Stanford University) and Jeanette Betancourt (Sesame Workshop) urged fellow forum participants to conduct more in-depth qualitative studies, in addition to the large-scale survey research which can obscure diverse contexts and viewpoints in pursuit of the “normative” response. Others called for more survey research, but with greater representation. For example, Lisa Tripp (Florida State University) and others emphasized the need to include children, parents, and other family members in survey research to understand perceptions and media use among the whole family unit. Lisa Guernsey (New America Foundation) and Vikki Katz (Rutgers University) voiced the need for sufficient sampling of diverse Hispanic-Latino cultural groups in survey research (despite the higher costs), in order to boost our understanding of the media use, perceptions, and general life contexts of families from diverse cultural backgrounds (Mexican, Dominican, Salvadoran, Puerto Rican origins, etc.) and circumstances (such as documentation status; generational status in the US; dominant language). Appreciating their varied socio-cultural contexts and perspectives should in-turn help researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and producers to understand families on their own terms and design appropriate media and outreach programs.

These and other points of discussion were invigorating and provided much food for thought for me and other forum participants regarding appropriate next steps for progress in our research, media and outreach design and implementation, and policy mandates pertaining to our nation’s Hispanic-Latino families. With many a call to action from myriad forum members, we are ready to dive into the next phases of investigation and implementation in the world of new media and cultural understanding. Additionally, the convening partners will be releasing a more in-depth, multi-media synthesis of the Hispanic-Latino Families and Digital Technologies Forum this Fall – so stay tuned for more news from this fantastic event!

This past spring, TIFF Nexus hosted a series of conferences and creative jams to explore new ways of creating media in Toronto, in which our own Carly Shuler participated. We invited Jam Leader Mark Rabo to tell us more about what sets TIFF Nexus apart from other conferences about youth and media.

TIFF is known primarily by its unabbreviated namesake, the Toronto International Film Festival, which attracts a worldwide audience and fills the city with stars and star-gazers for two weeks each September. But what many don’t know is that TIFF has been undergoing a transformation over the last several years to become an upstanding citizen of all mediums, not just film. Since opening up the state-of-the-art TIFF Bell Lightbox building in Toronto, TIFF has been involved with organizations from across all mediums to collaborate on new initiatives that push outside its traditionally film-centric vision. One such initiative that did some interesting things was TIFF Nexus. (more…)

Earlier this spring, Carly Shuler presented the findings of the iLearn II report at a lightning talk at the TIFF Nexus Conference in Toronto, Ontario.

In my first post from the Hispanic-Latino Families and Digital Technologies Forum, I described participants’ commentary regarding the importance of digital literacy for advancing equity and the need to ensure high quality content and engagement in order to optimize the enormous educational potential of digital media. Numerous participants in the forum also stressed the constant need for respect, understanding, and learning from the intricacies of a culture as rich and as the growing US Hispanic-Latino population. In this post I provide a snapshot of participants’ efforts to understand the incredible demographic shift in the United States generated by rapid growth of the Hispanic-Latino population, and given this expansion, to grapple with best practices for communicating with and teaching learners of all cultures in a digital age.

Abandoning the Deficit Model in Favor Greater Understanding of Hispanic-Latino Families

Mark Lopez from the Pew Hispanic Center presented findings regarding demographic shifts in the US and Hispanic-Latinos’ ownership and usage rates of cell phones, smart phones, and tablets. These stats reinforced the critical nature of research, practice, and policy work in this area; the US Hispanic-Latino population is growing, is younger as a whole than other populations, and is closing technology access gaps at remarkable rates. Several participants at the forum stressed the need now for more in-depth information about the nature of their participation with those technologies.  For example, we need to know what purposes Hispanic-Latinos perceive for various technologies, what fears they might have regarding those technologies, and when and how they prefer information to be delivered. Jeanette Betancourt of Sesame Workshop acknowledged the positive role parents have to play and the need to better understand how and why they view and use certain technologies. Not everyone who owns the same device, she reasoned, perceives or uses it in the same way.  Jeanette discussed a cornerstone of the “Sesame Model” – talking to families themselves (the true experts!) to find out what a population thinks and needs from media and outreach before content creation and distribution.

Emily Kirkpatrick of the National Center for Family Literacy called us to empower families by making sure they “know they are being heard.” One seemingly minute but important consideration, she said, is the fact that often Hispanic-Latino parents are worried about breaking these new digital technologies. In turn, we are best to not assume what Hispanic-Latino families’ relationships with new media are; rather, our job is to empower families to know their own needs and concerns and articulate them in ways that will have impact.

Vikki Katz (Rutgers University) reminded us that we should not view the Hispanic-Latino families that we study in terms of how they differ from White, non-minority families.  This type of “haves and have-nots” framework is particularly problematic as we know very little about non-white, non-majority families, their media use, and the underlying reasons for those media use patterns. She stressed that Hispanic-Latino families are diverse, even when considering just the cultural, linguistic, and generational differences between them. We must abandon our tendency to over-generalize when researching or working with Hispanic-Latino families because within each family exists a particular context of living and operating that drives their media use and other practices. Further, in non-English-dominant families, kids are often the face of their families as they “broker” across languages, communities, and institutions for greater understanding of America. Katz urged us all to consider the context of family responsibility, trust in the inherent Hispanic-Latino capacity and desire to raise a strong family, and build off of their socio-cultural assets. Overlooking these often complex family and Hispanic-Latino subgroup structures and practices will undermine our understanding of these families and could lead to inappropriately designed educational and outreach programs.

 Dr. Vikki Katz (Rutgers University) discusses important factors to consider when studying Hispanic-Latino families.

Guadalupe Valdes of Stanford University and Patti Constantakis of Great Schools continued the conversation on the benefits of abandoning the all-too-common deficit model of thinking. They noted that Spanish-dominant Hispanic-Latinos respond more often to information presented to them in their own dialect. Valdes raised concerns that many people seem to want to change the behavior of Hispanic-Latino parents such that they are merely imitation White/non-Hispanic parents, disregarding deep-rooted differences in cultural and parenting norms between the groups.  Valdes pointed out a cultural parenting difference whereby White, non-minority parents often view themselves as responsible for teaching their children academic knowledge, while Hispanic-Latino parents view themselves primarily as “good people makers,”  and focus more on children’s behavior.  What is consistent is that both communities of parents care very deeply about their children. She argued that tinkering with the strong and culturally informed Hispanic-Latino family ecosystem by forcing parents into roles as “adjunct teachers” could have unfavorable repercussions.  Therefore, we must learn to communicate with Hispanic-Latino parents in a way that respects their great knowledge and capacity as parents and family members, and also helps them to harness the learning potential of digital technologies.

In the next and final post, I will call for increased acute attention directed to research process design. We must keep in mind first and foremost that a primary goal in transforming and growing research around this area of study is to paint a more accurate and detailed picture of the lives, family structures, and needs of Hispanic-Latinos and their interactions with new media.