Digital Media and Learning Conference 2017

Have you ever wanted to share materials from your classes with other faculty, but found that your courseware made that nearly impossible? Or wanted a way to easily share your updates and modifications to someone else’s materials? Do you struggle to get students to respond to email? Do you wish you had better options for engaging with students working in groups without being overbearing? 

In this session, I'll show you how you can use GitHub to make your course materials easily accessible, updatable, and shareable—even if they have nothing to do with programming! You’ll learn the basics of how GitHub works, and how to take advantage of their free classroom and student accounts to create private as well as public repositories of content. I’ll also show you how you can use the free version of Slack to create classroom conversation spaces that support class-wide announcements, group conversations for project work, private messaging with students, and easy file sharing. 

While you’ll learn a lot about using these tools just by attending, listening, and later referring to the materials I’ll post online (using GitHub, of course!), you’ll get the most out of the session if you bring your own laptop. No need to install any software in advance—we’ll be working only with the web-based interface to both tools.

Effective learning games don’t “trick” students into engaging with content, they provide students with meaningful experiences that empower them to expand and develop their mindsets, relationships, and skills. Digital gameplay has the potential to empower teens to cultivate not just knowledge, but also social and emotional skills that are critical for positive development. Practicing positive habits like cooperation, empathy, gratitude, and curiosity can cultivate those skills, and embedding these positive practices into gameplay offers a tremendous opportunity to meet teens where they are and where they want to be. In this panel, award-winning designers of learning games present their unique approaches to creating meaningful in-game experiences that empower teens to not only learn subject matter but also develop strengths that can be transferred to their daily lives. Doris Rusch of DePaul University discusses how she leverages the power of embodied learning in games to boost empathy for the lived experience of conditions like depression (“Elude”), addiction (“Akrasia”), and anxiety (“Soteria: Dreams As Currency”). John Krajewski, founder and CEO of Strange Loop Games, discusses, among other titles, his ambitious social sim, “Eco,” a game that invites students to draw on and refine their ability to cooperate, lead, negotiate, and solve conflicts as a classroom community with the goal of saving their shared game world. Barbara Chamberlin from the Learning Games Lab at New Mexico State University discusses her approach to user-centered design and iterative testing to create engaging STEM and life-skills digital learning experiences (like “Night of the Living Debt,” a zombie-themed game on credit score). Panelists will share their experiences, strategies, and design tips to address critical questions like: How do games serve as a meaningful anchor for deep learning in classroom settings? What supports need to surround gameplay to ensure that skill development is taking place? How do game developers collaborate with educators to use digital games to their fullest capacity in sometimes technophobic educational settings? Susan Rivers from iThrive Games will moderate. iThrive Games collaborates with game developers to design evidence-based, engaging games that provide opportunities for teens to adopt positive psychology habits that help them thrive.

The BBC's School Report project gives 11-16 year olds the chance to share their views and make their own stories about subjects that matter to them – their lives and their communities. 

We want to see more young people’s voices on the BBC's output. To inspire more contributions to this project we are building a digital product that will help students to create broadcast quality journalism.

I propose a session where we talk through the life-cycle of this product from its inception through to discovery and launch. The talk will focus on how we identify the needs of our participants and work with schools, teachers and pupils to ensure we build a product that delivers learning outcomes for the users and increases the quality of the content they produce.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schoolreport

I would be more than happy to share this talk with someone doing something similar for schools in the US. It would be interesting to compare digital learning projects that focus on journalism outreach programs for schools. 

Media literacy and our understanding of news (fake or otherwise) has never been more talked about. It's an important time for media organisations to work with educators and help the next generation of content creators hone their skills.