[iDC] Learning Ecologies

[Trebor Scholz]

Dear all,

After The Internet as Playground and Factory, we are now moving the 
discussion to the next event in the conference series The Politics of 
Digital Culture.
Our exchanges over the coming months will focus on digital media and 
learning from a global perspective, a set of topics that we discussed on 
this list before.
While research about learning with digital media in the United States 
has received significant attention, a critical international angle is 
still largely missing.
Concerns for the upcoming iDC conversations will include:

- The International Political Economy of Learning
- Dispelling the Myths of the Digital Native
- Global Perspectives on Learning with Mobile Media
- Informal Learning and the Pedagogical Turn in Art (Institutions)
- Learning to Learn with Open Educational Resources
- New Media Literacies
- Educating Journalists
- Histories of Learning, Writing, and the Book
- Policy Making for Education in a Digital Age
- The Future of Learning

Let's start by welcoming our first guests who will kick off this forum 
with a few questions about the export of American education. I'm glad to 
welcome Elana Langer, Julian Daily, and Michael F C Moreland. Today, 
technologies and bodies are often out of sync with educational 
institutions and the growing number of learning and anxiety disorders in 
young learners appears to be a result of the clash between brick and 
mortar education and the "real life world." Our guests argue that 
schools struggle to become relevant to learners who would be more 
comfortable clicking through pages than physically turning them. Health 
care providers try not to buckle under the weight we have gained because 
of our fast food diets and our financial structures have collapsed under 
the pressure of bottomless consumerism. How are these tensions reflected 
in the ways in which the US is exporting its learning opportunities? 
Consequently, Langer, Moreland, and Daily ask if a change of American 
educational institutions can really be brought about from within and to 
what extent informal learning can be the answer.

About the iDC Guests for April 2010:
Elana Langer, Julian Daily, and Michael F C Moreland

Elana Langer
As a learning development consultant for, and part of One Laptop per
Child's (OLPC) Learning Team, Elana has worked to incorporate computer
technologies into existing educational systems in Asian and African
countries. She has worked both at the grassroots and policy levels to
ensure that Ministry officials find pragmatic solutions that will
improve education nationally. Most recently Langer has returned from Nigeria
where she conducted an assessment of the polio eradication
communication strategy for the Center for Disease Control and is in
the process of implementing innovative socially media based interventions.
Prior to working at OLPC and CDC, Elana worked with the Future of 
Learning Group
at the MIT Media Lab to design a system for reorganizing, enhancing and
distributing the Telesecondaria archives in Mexico, as well as
designing a multimedia learning environment that leveraged the city's
shoe industry. Elana was a Media Arts professor at Nassau College
(SUNY), and taught in the faculty of education at Acadia University.
Elana has developed and implemented media-based educational projects in 
various countries
including 'A Living Archive' funded through the University of Prince
Edward Island. Elana is an accomplished writer/producer for
educational television shows and documentary film. She has developed
television series for networks including Spike TV, Oxygen and BBC, and
has served as writer and producer on several internationally based
documentaries. She currently teaches at The New School University.

Julian Daily
Julian Daily is an impassioned leader, entrepreneur, and community
servant. He provides leadership and direction for g8four including the
management of internal operations, marketing, business development,
and strategic partnerships. In the nonprofit sector, he has worked
with recruiting and retention programs for the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, as a Big Brother, and as part of One Laptop per Child's
(OLPC) "Learning Team." Within the academic community, Julian
supported and encouraged students' personal growth, provided outlets
for managing stress, and facilitated positive interpersonal
relationships while living in their undergraduate dormitory.

Michael F C Moreland
Michael Moreland is strategy director of SEEDR L3C and SEEC INC, a
technology commercialization incubator. With SEEC, Michael has designed
strategy for domestic and international technology transfer, start-up and
expansion business and capital-structure planning, and new product 
development.
His research on "Social Enterprise & Internal Revenue Service Reform,
A Comparative Cross-System Analysis of Alternative Hybrid Organizational 
Models,"
and "Hybridism as a Tool for Local Economic Development" explored the
strategy and policy landscape at the intersection social 
entrepreneurship and technology.
Michael has also consulted with several local and international 
nonprofits such as Habitat
for Humanity and the US Fund for UNICEF on matters of capital campaign 
and grant
writing strategies, and program development.