Events

New Summit to Explore Connected Learning

• By Rhea Kelly
• 07/02/18

A new Connected Learning Summit, taking place Aug. 1-3 at the MIT Media Lab, is focused on "harnessing emerging technology to expand access to participatory, playful, and creative learning." The event will bring together researchers, educators, developers and others interested in digital citizenship, equity and access, virtual reality, digital media and more.
 
On the event agenda: more than 200 talks, workshops and tech demos, as well as a keynote address from writer, comedian and commentator Baratunde Thurston. Other highlights include:

• A plenary session with middle school teacher Michelle King, speaking about "how to create empathetic institutions that remind us of our humanity, how to redesign for equity and social justice in and out of school learning and how to design learning institutions to build connections";
• A session on SciGirls CODE, a pilot program that "uses the principles of connected learning to provide 160 girls and their 32 leaders with computational thinking and coding skills";
• A workshop on STEAM projects from the Expressive & Creative Interactive Technologies Center at Drexel University;
• An e-sports symposium on "how competitive video games can enrich the academic curriculum";
• A community showcase event for "working papers, tech demos and ideas"; and
• A "hall of failure" featuring "honest post mortems on projects, programs and products."

"Digital, networked, interactive technologies offer tremendous promise to expand access to engaged and meaningful learning experiences," said Mimi Ito, director of the Connected Learning Lab at the University of California, Irvine. "But, this will only happen through alliances between educators, designers, researchers, and change-makers with shared values and vision. The goal of the summit is to support this alliance and community building."

The new summit comes from the organizers of the Digital Media and Learning Conference, the Games+Learning+Society Conference and Sandbox Summit, and is hosted by UCI's Connected Learning Lab, the University of California Humanities Research Institute, MIT Media Lab and MIT Scheller Teacher Education Program. For more information, visit the Connected Learning Summit website.