What does it mean to be truly literate with new media? Certainly, it means more than the ability to send email and browse websites. Recent commentaries on new media literacy have emphasized the importance of the ability to analyze media critically and the ability to participate actively in online communities. Those abilities are clearly important. But I feel these commentaries haven't paid enough attention to another important aspect of new media literacy: the ability to express oneself with new media. This aspect of literacy is sorely lacking in today's society: very few people are able to express themselves fluently with...
more »Mitchel Resnick
Idea Lab is a group blog by innovators who are reinventing community news for the Digital Age.
Each Idea Lab blogger is a winner of the Knight News Challenge grant to reshape community news.
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From "Informing" to "Empowering"
For me, our new Center for Future Civic Media at MIT provides an opportunity to weave together several strands of my career. I started my career as a journalist, writing about science and technology for Business Week magazine. Then I decided to make a career shift. I went to graduate school in computer science, and I began developing educational technologies -- in particular, technologies to engage children in creative learning experiences. How do I make sense of these two seemingly-disconnected careers? I have often explained that both careers grew out of the same underlying motivation: to help people understand the...
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In the end, there's no real trick or black magic to making news valuable: it's about providing readers with what they want to read, as opposed to what publishers think they should be reading.
— Joe Franscella
Non-Profit News Becomes the Flavor of the Month
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