Youth Digital Cultural Consumption and Education

Media and technological devices function as socializing agents during children’s leisure and entertainment time. Drawing from the theory of cultural consumption, a socio educational approach to students’ digital practices, and media literacy, this qualitative study seeks to explore and describe students’ cultural consumption profile. The authors explore the representations and meanings of digital practices of public school students of a predominately working class neighborhood situated in the periphery of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Findings highlight different aspects of youth cultural consumption profile. Two themes were identified: a) children use computers for a multiplicity of different activities enacting multitasking practices; and b) children develop new forms of digital practices for social digital interaction that are expressed in the “need” to be connected, the production and use of shared codes and the establishment of ambivalent relations with social media platforms. Implications for education are explored

Communication Strategy Use and Negotiation of Meaning in Text Chat and Videoconferencing

This study aims at investigating meaning negotiation and communication strategy use among nonnative speakers of English in text chat and videoconferencing. Learners in a Chinese and a Japanese university participated in text chats and videoconferences to discuss culture-related topics using English as the common language. Text chat scripts and videoconferencing transcripts were analyzed using a simplified version of the meaning negotiation model developed by Smith (2003a). A survey was conducted on communication strategy use. Results of the discourse analysis and the survey indicate that both text chat and videoconferencing are valuable tools to assist meaning negotiation and facilitate second language acquisition. Compared to videoconferencing, text chat has the potential of promoting lexical acquisitio

Communication Strategy Use and Negotiation of Meaning in Text Chat and Videoconferencing

This study aims at investigating meaning negotiation and communication strategy use among nonnative speakers of English in text chat and videoconferencing. Learners in a Chinese and a Japanese university participated in text chats and videoconferences to discuss culture-related topics using English as the common language. Text chat scripts and videoconferencing transcripts were analyzed using a simplified version of the meaning negotiation model developed by Smith (2003a). A survey was conducted on communication strategy use. Results of the discourse analysis and the survey indicate that both text chat and videoconferencing are valuable tools to assist meaning negotiation and facilitate second language acquisition. Compared to videoconferencing, text chat has the potential of promoting lexical acquisitio

Tap the Screen: Technology Integration in Our Students’ Lives

The focus of this study is to document and describe the integration of technology in the everyday lives of students in Grades 3–8 attending a high-performing public school district in an affluent Chicago suburb. The following research questions guide this study: How do students in Grades 3–8 integrate technology into their lives? What are the implications of students’ technology integration for teaching and learning? How can teachers capitalize upon students’ technology integration in ways that inform instructional practice? A review of the literature presents related information in areas that explore the increasingly digital world of our students; curriculum, instruction, and research; innovation, creativity, and learning environments; student social and cognitive development; and student technology use. In this ethnographic study, qualitative research methods are used to interview 55 students in 17 focus groups. An analysis of focus group data is presented in the following categories: technology device access and use; gaming; electronic book readers; television and online video; imposed limits on technology; communicating using technology; and technology in the school environment. Student technology use information is presented in the student voice and is then discussed in the context of improving teaching and learning. This study recommends that both parents and teachers should intentionally seek to understand the technology-enabled pursuits of children to better understand the “whole child.” Further, teachers and other school leaders are encouraged to welcome student-owned technology in school and encourage project-based learning opportunities

Mobile Data Services Usage: An In Depth Investigation Of The Influence Of The “Personal Layer” Of Place

The new mobile networked environments ask for more investigation in order to explain users’ behaviour and users’ low demand for mobile data services. A field study, conducted in the territory of Greece, researched the use of a specific mobile data services platform, called here as Service A trying to identify how users experience place before deciding to use mobile data services. The findings of the research tend to suggest that participants did experience the different places in a similar way before deciding to use mobile data services. The study adopted the humanistic geographical perspective as represented by the four “layers of place” introduced by Yi-Fu Tuan’s theory. The findings presented in this specific paper highlight the strongest patterns coming from the analysis of the “Personal layer” of place as represented by Tuan that are important influential elements in the decision of the users to start using mobile data services . The contribution of this paper is that it argues that the users’ decision to start using mobile data services is influenced and triggered by their interaction with their surrounding environment and thus there is need to consider the role of this environment in the study of adoption and use of mobile data services

Live Coding as a Model for Cultural Practice & Cultural-Epistemological Aspects of Live Coding

This report documents the program and the outcomes of Dagstuhl Seminar 13382 “Collaboration and learning through live coding”. Live coding is improvised interactive programming, typically to create electronic music and other digital media, done live with an audience. Our seminar was motivated by the phenomenon and experience of live coding. Our conviction was that those represent an important and broad, but seldom articulated, set of opportunities for computer science and the arts and humanities. The seminar participants included a broad range of scholars, researchers, and practitioners spanning fields from music theory to software engineering. We held live coding performances, and facilitated discussions on three main perspectives, the humanities, computing education, and software engineering. The main outcome of our seminar was better understanding of the potential of live coding for informing cross-disciplinary scholarship and practice, connecting the arts, cultural studies, and computing. The report is edited by Alan Blackwell and Alex McLean and James Noble and Julian Rohrhuber

Playing Out: A Movement for Movement?

In 2009, the “Playing Out” project was set up in Bristol in the United Kingdom by a parent-led community group who were seeking to address concerns about the lack of freedom for young people to play outside. Playing Out has, as its primary purpose, supporting children to “play out” where they live through providing the space within which children might engage in informal play and physical activity, while also improving relations between neighbors and developing a sense of community. This paper examines the potential of Playing Out for fostering community cohesion by undertaking interviews with participants, officials and policy-makers, alongside some observation of Playing Out events, between 2013 and 2016. In particular, we evaluate the significance of social capital for the development, and success, of a community-led initiative to influence policy outcomes and increase physical activity levels in the local population, giving consideration to the ways in which social movement concepts build on, and strengthen, social capital. In many societies, such activities take place within a context of neoliberalism, where social order is viewed as being dependent on individual responsibility: governments are deregulated, social programs are cut and/or privatized, and social problems have to be solved by individual, private solutions. Our findings draw on the work of Putnam (1993, 1996, 2000) to demonstrate that social capital is both cause and effect in the success of initiatives such as Playing Out, and that when social capital is combined with elements of a social movement, there can be more fundamental and sustained outcomes.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio