Can computer games be adapted to the classroom to improve learning? This project adapts six commercial and noncommercial games to the classroom and tests whether they are effective teaching tools while also advancing digital media literacy. One game, for example, allows students to be environmental detectives and solve public health and environmental problems in their neighborhood. In another, students collaborate with journalists to investigate, write, and produce stories for an online science news magazine.
This project enabled new approaches to research in digital media and learning through the design, development, and operation of a controlled study within a synthetic world.
The Civic Learning Online Project began as an exploration of how civic engagement and learning may be changing for teens who have grown up in more fragmented societies that are knit together with social networking technologies. The initial result was a volume in the DMAL series called Civic Life Online, which explored controversies and directions in thinking about civic learning online.
As the Woodrow Wilson Foundation works to strengthen current practices in education, it also looks ahead to tomorrow’s schools and learning environments. Increasingly, young people's reliance on digital media is breaking down traditional boundaries between classrooms, social interactions, and the larger world. These shifts have far-reaching implications for teaching and learning implications still too little understood.
Digital Innovations Group (DIG) has been a leader in the use of new media tools for pro-social aims. In this project DIG will create an online resource directory and community forum to create a knowledge network. DIG will also conduct a series of three in-person briefings and forums to connect policymakers, practitioners, and the public. The knowledge network and forums will build the field through networking and resource sharing.
