[DDN] MacArthur & HASTAC Announces $2 Million New Digital Media and Learning Competition - Applications due Oct. 15, 2007

[Alice Furumoto-Dawson]

FYI - 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 <http://www.dmlcompetition.net/>,
incluidng an FAQ about the competition 
<http://www.dmlcompetition.net/faq.php>.    -- Alice Furumoto-Dawson

Press release from HASTAC's website below -
http://www.hastac.org/node/875

and related MacArthur Foundation website links: 
http://www.macfound.org/site/c.lkLXJ8MQKrH/b.1053853/apps/nl/content2.asp?content_id={CB00292A-1602-403E-9FE9-5F392B5274F4}&notoc=1
<http://www.macfound.org/site/c.lkLXJ8MQKrH/b.1053853/apps/nl/content2.asp?content_id=%7BCB00292A-1602-403E-9FE9-5F392B5274F4%7D&notoc=1>http://www.macfound.org/site/c.lkLXJ8MQKrH/b.946881/k.380D/Domestic_Grantmaking__Education.htm


  MacArthur Announces $2 Million New Digital Media and Learning Competition

Submitted by molson <http://www.hastac.org/user/3> on August 14, 2007 - 
4:29pm.

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 
<http://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 <http://>.

-- 
Alice Furumoto-Dawson, Ph.D.
Sr. Research Associate
Center for Interdisciplinary Health Disparities Research
Institute for Mind & Biology
University of Chicago
Chicago, IL - USA

Email:  furumoto at uchicago.edu
http://cihdr.uchicago.edu/