Book Announcement: The Digital Youth Network: Cultivating Digital Media Citizenship in Urban Communities

The Digital Youth Network: Cultivating Digital Media Citizenship in Urban Communities

Now Available from MIT Press.

Description

The popular image of the “digital native” — usually depicted as a technically savvy and digitally empowered teen—is based on the assumption that all young people are equally equipped to become innovators and entrepreneurs. Yet young people in low-income communities often lack access to the learning opportunities, tools, and collaborators (at school and elsewhere) that help digital natives develop the necessary expertise. This book describes one approach to address this disparity: the Digital Youth Network (DYN), an ambitious project to help economically disadvantaged middle-school students in Chicago develop technical, creative, and analytical skills across a learning ecology that spans school, community, home, and online.

The book reports findings from a pioneering mixed-method three-year study of DYN and how it nurtured imaginative production, expertise with digital media tools, and the propensity to share these creative capacities with others. Through DYN, students, despite differing interests and identities—the gamer, the poet, the activist—were able to find some aspect of DYN that engaged them individually and connected them to one another. Finally, the authors offer generative suggestions for designers of similar informal learning spaces.

Reviews

“If we are going to reach minority kids in our schools, we need to empower them to be creative and thoughtful, much as the Digital Youth Network is doing. Their research demonstrates how it is possible to measure student growth in creativity and engagement that standardized tests ignore. The book shows the way to transforming education in America.”
—Allan Collins, Professor Emeritus of Learning Sciences, Northwestern University, and co-author of Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology: The Digital Revolution and Schooling in America

“So rarely are we offered the opportunity to really learn from the development of innovative educational youth program. Through careful observation and thoughtful analysis, this book reports on an unprecedented collaboration between mixed method researchers, program designers, and educators, demonstrating research and practice brought together in service of improving the life opportunities of underserved youth. It is a must-read for learning scientists, educators, media artists, technology makers, and anyone who cares about making a difference in today’s pressing problems of educational inequity.”
—Mizuko Ito, Professor in Residence, University of California Humanities Research Institute, and author of Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media

“A rare book, informed by rigorous research, written with clarity and verve, and filled with concrete insights and tools that educators in a range of settings can use right away to put digital literacy to work for youth.”
—Elisabeth Soep, Youth Radio, co-author of Drop That Knowledge, co-editor of Youthscapes

Ryoo, J. J. Book Review: The Digital Youth Network: Cultivating Digital Citizenship in Urban Communities. In Urban Education, September 2013, 48: 759-764.