Funding Competition for Participatory Learning in the innovative use of digital media
From HASTAC Initiative web site
DIGITAL MEDIA AND LEARNING COMPETITION
Drawing upon the innovative winning projects from the first Digital Media and Learning Competition, the theme for this year’s Competition is Participatory Learning. There are two award categories: Innovation in Participatory Learning and Young Innovators. All proposals submitted to the Digital Media and Learning Competition, in either category, should be for support of digital projects that engage participatory learning in an integral way.
Participatory Learning includes the ways in which new technologies enable learners (of any age) to contribute in diverse ways to individual and shared learning goals. Through games, wikis, blogs, virtual environments, social network sites, cell phones, mobile devices, and other digital platforms, learners can participate in virtual communities where they share ideas, comment upon one another's projects, and plan, design, advance, implement, or simply discuss their goals and ideas together. Participatory learners come together to aggregate their ideas and experiences in a way that makes the whole ultimately greater than the sum of the parts.
For example, participatory learners might create a viral system for educating one another about environmental issues in their own neighborhoods and sharing and comparing their findings with others halfway across the globe. Or they might develop inventive extra-curricular science projects together online. Participatory learners are pioneering new ways of combining learning and social life, whether "social life" denotes peer group popular culture, informal learning, or some innovative combination.
The Digital Media and Learning Competition seeks to identify and promote individuals and institutions taking advantage of digital or new media and using these technologies as platforms for new kinds of participatory learning. Participatory learning should be the primary goal in all proposals; the technological approach should advance the learning objective. The most competitive proposals will enable participatory learning by promoting the possibility of scalable, many-to-many interactive learning activities. Awarded projects will be deeply collaborative in their structure, design, and motivation.
A total of $2 million will be awarded for the Digital Media and Learning Competition.
Innovation and Participatory Learning awards will range from $30,000 to $250,000, with up to $1.8 million awarded in total. Young Innovator awards will range from $5,000 to $30,000, with up to $240,000 awarded in total.
This HASTAC competition is supported by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to the University of California, in collaboration with Duke University. The University of California Humanities Research Institute and Duke University's John Hope Franklin Center are the principal administering bodies for this grant on behalf of HASTAC.
Check it out at http://www.dmlcompetition.net/theme.php