ABOUT THE COMPETITION

HASTAC and the MacArthur Foundation held the first Digital Media and Learning Competition in 2008. A total of two million dollars was awarded to 17 projects representing compelling work in the field of Digital Media and Learning.

The Competition, now in its second year, is an annual effort designed to find--and to inspire--the most novel uses of new media in support of learning. The Competition awarded $2 million to individuals, for-profit companies, universities, and community organizations for projects that employ games, mobile phone applications, virtual worlds, social networks, wikis, and video blogs to explore how digital technologies are changing the way that people learn and participate in daily life.

To broaden the search for innovative ideas, this year's Competition was expanded to include international submissions and proposals from young people aged 18-25. The 19 winning projects are those that best engaged the theme of "participatory learning." Winners of the Competition were drawn from two categories: Innovation in Participatory Learning and Young Innovators.

 

The MacArthur Foundation

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation launched its five-year, $50 million Digital Media and Learning initiative in 2006 to help determine how digital technologies are changing the way people, especially young people, learn, play, socialize, and participate in civic life. Answers are critical to developing educational and other social institutions that can meet the needs of this and future generations.

The Digital Media and Learning initiative is marshaling what is already known about the field and seeding innovation for continued growth. Initial grants have supported research projects, design studies, pilot programs, and responses to policy implications.

The MacArthur Foundation is supporting the Digital Media and Learning Competition as part of its Digital Media and Learning initiative.

 

HASTAC

HASTAC (pronounced "haystack"; the Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory) is an international network of educators and digital visionaries committed to the creative development and critical understanding of new technologies in life, learning, and society. HASTAC's dual dedication is to ensure that humanistic and humane considerations are never far from technological innovation, and that education and learning are at the forefront of new digital innovation. HASTAC is committed to the idea that this complex and world-changing digital environment requires the lessons of history, reflection, introspection, theory, equity, and access that the modern humanities (broadly defined) have to offer.

The infrastructure for HASTAC has been provided largely by the John Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary and International Studies at Duke University and the University of California Humanities Research Institute, under the leadership of Cathy N. Davidson and David Theo Goldberg who co-founded HASTAC in 2003. HASTAC has taken an early leadership role in next-generation "net sciences": the computational, social, and humanistic understanding of the role of networked, distributed, digitally-supported relationships that extend throughout education, community-based learning organizations, business, and global partnerships.

Contributing to and supported by the MacArthur Foundation's monograph series on Digital Media and Learning, HASTAC has produced forums on "The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age" as well as a monograph co-written, with many collaborators, by Davidson and Goldberg. HASTAC has also been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and the Digital Promise Initiative as well as by the generosity of its member institutions.

The Digital Media and Learning Competition is administered by HASTAC.