Digital technology—cell phones, digital video, iPods, Facebook, MySpace, Second Life and more—is reshaping the way that young people live and the way they learn, and UNCF (the United Negro College Fund), the nation’s largest and most effective minority education organization, is hosting a conference at UNCF member school Johnson C. Smith University (JCSU) in Charlotte, North Carolina, to look into what these new technologies mean for young people of color and the colleges they attend. The conference, entitled “Opportunities and Issues for Engagement in Digital Culture,” is part of the UNCF Digital Media and Learning Public Forum series and will take place 10:00 a.m. – 12 noon, Thursday, April 8, 2010 in the Mary Joyce Taylor Crisp Student Union of Grimes Hall on the JCSU campus.
The UNCF Digital Media and Learning Public Forum series is sponsored by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to provide opportunities for students, educators, and experts in digital technology to discuss how youth, especially youth of color, use new digital media and social networking tools, and to spark interest among faculty and students at HBCUs and other minority-serving institutions in conducting digital media research. The forum at Johnson C. Smith, the third forum of the series at UNCF member-HBCUs, will focus on the opportunities and challenges faced by young people and educators living in increasingly free-flowing digital cultures. The presenters will share their research and applications of digital media in higher education, public school and community settings. Their discussion will focus on issues such as media literacy, identity, privacy and appropriate online behavior as well as the barriers to learning sometimes created by institutional policies meant to circumscribe the use of digital media by youth.
The featured speaker for the UNCF forum will be Dr. Jabari Mahiri of the University of California Berkeley's Graduate School of Education and Chair of its Language and Literacy, Society and Culture area. Mahiri is also a MacArthur Foundation grantee, Senior Scholar for the National Urban Alliance for Effective Education and the Principal Investigator of TEACH (Technology Equity And Culture in High Schools), a research initiative that collaborates with urban school and community partners on educational equity and academic achievement as well as digitally-mediated literacy and learning in and beyond schools. He is author ofseveral books,including Shooting for Excellence: African American and Youth Culture in New Century Schools (1998), and Digital Tools in Urban Schools: Mediating a Remix of Learning (2010).
Forum panelists will include Rik Panganiban, Assistant Director of the Online Leadership Program at Global Kids, Inc., and Dr. Hang Chen, Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Johnson C. Smith. Global Kids, Inc. is a MacArthur Foundation-supported non-profit organization that educates and inspires urban youth to become successful students, global citizens and community leaders by engaging them in academically rigorous, socially dynamic, content-rich learning experiences. Dr. Chen’s current work centers on encouraging innovation in gaming and animation. Alafia Clyburn, a Johnson C. Smith senior majoring in Computer Science & Information Systems, will also be a panelist.
After the forum, from noon until 12:30 p.m., the Johnson C. Smith University Digital Orchestra will perform during lunch in the JCSU Student Union under the direction of Dr. Christopher Weise, Assistant Professor of Music and Director of the Music Business Program at Johnson C. Smith. Dr. Weise also will present a summary of his research on digital media and music during this time.
After lunch, from 12:30 – 2:00 p.m., Johnson C. Smith University and the Women’s Inter-Cultural Exchange will host “Careers in Technology.” Presenters from IBM, Microsoft and Cisco Systems will be featured.
The forum at Johnson C. Smith is expected to attract an audience of nearly 200 people, including college and university students and faculty, public school teachers and administrators, afterschool program directors, and other community stakeholders—including individuals affiliated with technology organizations. To watch a live stream of the forum at Johnson C. Smith on April 8th,go to
www.uncf.org. The UNCF Digital Media and Learning in Multicultural Contexts Public Forum Series marks the beginning of the organization’s participation in the Digital Media and Learning Research Hub, an international center to nurture exploration of and build evidence around the impact of digital media on young people’s learning. The Research Hub, created with support from the MacArthur Foundation, is headquartered at the University of California Irvine and provides an infrastructure for research, communication and collaborative work around core research themes emerging from the MacArthur digital media and learning initiative.
Posted By: Reginald Culpepper
Monday, March 22nd 2010 at 5:13PM
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