Project New Media Literacies (NML), based within USC's Annenberg School for Communication, explores how we might best equip young people with the social skills and cultural competencies  needed for full participation in an emergent media landscape and raise public understanding about what it means to be literate in a globally interconnected world.

The white paper Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century (Jenkins et al., 2006) identifies the three core challenges: the participation gap, the transparency problem and the ethics challenge, and shares a provisionary list of skills needed for full engagement in today's participatory culture.

Following Horst and colleagues (Horst, Herr-Stephenson, & Robinson, in press), we are focused on the learning ecology which links informal learning through engagement in participatory culture to what takes place within the classroom.  We see school, after-school, home and online sites of learning as organic parts of the ecosystem and develop strategies through which educators may tap aspects of participatory culture to enhance student learning.

According to Jenkins and his colleagues (2006), the focus of literacy is changing from individual expression to community involvement where creative manifestation and active participation are the hallmark.

The media-literacy movement has long advocated teaching students to become critical consumers and producers of media. However, this learning often is relegated to electives or after-school programs rather than being integrated across curricula. The new media literacies allow us to rethink the processes of learning, because they acknowledge a shift from a top-down model to a more inclusive and participatory approach.

The goal of NML’s research is to spark discussions about the implications of participatory culture in design and use of new technologies for learning. We focus on design principles, learning environments, new media practices, and classroom implementation issues in order to explore and develop a model for integrating participatory practices into learning.

With support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, NML has developed resources for both in and out of the classroom and created a community at http://projectnml.ning.com/ to share resources, give feedback, and have discussions with educators and learners who are interested in further understanding the new media literacies and integrating them into their learning environment.

Current Research (2009)

Partnering with The Alchemists, NML recently was awarded a 2-year grant from Rio de Janiero’s Department of Education to establish new modes of professional development; provide methods and tools to increase collaboration within the Brazilian education sector; offer exciting, creative educational content (including the Learning Library and Teachers’ Strategy Guides that NML has developed); and frame, conduct and publish research that responds to the country’s needs.

See images from Project New Media Literacies on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/newmedialiteracies/

Project New Media Literacies Video Collection: http://techtv.mit.edu/collections/newmedialiteracies