Edutopia

Edutopia is a good resource for teachers and media specialists interested in "What Works in Education," as their description says. It is the Web site of the George Lucas Educational Foundation. It has articles, multiple blogs, and much other information. Definitely worth adding to Delicious.

You can subscribe to its free online newsletter or join for a nominal fee and receive access to free webinars and a print magazine. I just joined; I will let you know what I think. In the meantime, here is a blog post that supports several of the MILI concepts on teaching and learning together--Five Ways to Enrich Your Teaching Life by Heather Wolpert-Gowan.

Language Learning

Here is a recent site for learning languages. busuu.com lets learners:

• Connect with native speakers and learn directly from other members of the busuu.com community
• Be completely flexible and learn only what you really need
• Have fun by experiencing a new way of learning languages and forget those boring grammar books

You can add it to this list from ReadWriteWeb of 20+ Ways to Learn a Language.

Update: But wait, there's more--Jane's E-learning Pick of the Day just published this list of 100+ language learning sites.

Digital Media and Learning Research

Wondering if social network sites, online games, video-sharing sites, and gadgets such as iPods and mobile phones are having an impact on students and learning?

“It might surprise parents to learn that it is not a waste of time for their teens to hang out online,” says Mizuko Ito, University of California, Irvine researcher and the lead author of the most extensive U.S. study to date on teens and their use of digital media. The study showed that America’s youth are developing important social and technical skills online often in ways adults do not understand or value."

"Kids' Informal Learning with Digital Media: An Ethnographic Investigation of Innovative Knowledge Cultures" report is the result of three-year collaborative project funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Carried out by researchers at the University of Southern California and University of California, Berkeley, the digital youth project explores how kids use digital media in their everyday lives.

Read more here:
Two page summary (PDF)
White Paper (58 pages-PDF)

The Digital Youth Research Web site has a lot of interesting information on this project, including some field stories/case studies presented by project researchers. Definitely worth spending some time exploring.

The Networked Student

A video to use with administrators, parents, and others to explain how new tools and new connections are important to create 21st century learners. It does miss the collaboration with your media specialist, but it does mention the media center. Found via Tame the Web,

The Networked Student was inspired by CCK08, a Connectivism course offered by George Siemens and Stephen Downes during fall 2008. It depicts an actual project completed by Wendy Drexler’s high school students. The Networked Student concept map was inspired by Alec Couros’ Networked Teacher. I hope that teachers will use it to help their colleagues, parents, and students understand networked learning in the 21st century.Anyone is free to use this video for educational purposes. You may download, translate, or use as part of another presentation. Please share.

Digital Youth

Just wanted to point you toward this post on Stephen's Lighthouse blog (he is a big thinker in the library world) that is a good summary of Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project funded by The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Take a look at Stephen's summary and delve deeper in the entire executive summary (58 page PDF) for more insights and answers. The two questions the study asked are of great interest to all educators.

The study was motivated by two primary research questions: How are new media being integrated into youth practices and agendas? How do these practices change the dynamics of youth-adult negotiations over literacy, learning, and authoritative knowledge?

The answers to these questions are critical to developing educational and other social institutions--including libraries--that can meet the needs of this and future generations.