Friday, November 21, 2008

very interesting study

Congratulations to Mimi Ito, danah boyd, Michael Carter and the rest of their teams at USC and UC Berkeley, who spent over 3 years interviewing and studying 800 young people and their parents to better understand the impact of online activities and development. Thanks to Second Life, the MacArthur Foundation, and my time at Annenberg, I've known many of the people on this team for several years now and it's fantastic to see their work released. Amazing work and well worth digging through the results. A few high notes:

  • Youth are motivated to learn by friends online
  • Highly motivated to participate online
  • Most youth not taking advantage of all their opportunities online
MacArthur's Connie Yowell sums it up nicely:
“This study creates a baseline for our understanding of how young people are participating with digital media and what that means for their learning,” said Connie Yowell, Ph.D., Director of Education at the MacArthur Foundation. “It concludes that learning today is becoming increasingly peer-based and networked, and this is important to consider as we begin to re-imagine education in the 21st century.”

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