MIT’s conference last week on Scratch (an innovative programming tool for kids developed at MIT’s Lifelong Kindergarten Project) seemed a whirlwind kind of event. Educators and technologists sprinted around the Media Lab, academics and school teachers discussed such juicy topics as digital literacy and copyright, and attractive swag (blue messenger bags with the friendly [...]

We’re taking a break from “The Ballad of Zack McCune” this week to give you a glimpse into the world of print media — specifically, Harvard Magazine and the ways in which it is handling society’s shift towards the digital. As a small but growing pool of alumni trades reading class notes for skimming [...]

According to the web-comic he posted online , Sean Travis Tevis was fed up with his anti-abortion, censorship promoting, anti-gay marriage, pro-intelligent design state representative, Arlen Siegfreid. Sean decided to run against him. He only needed 151 signatures to get on the ballot, but needed to raise $26,000 to run a decent campaign. So, like [...]

I had the good fortune to be able to spend half a day last week with the participants and staff of Sub/Urban Justice, a group of individuals and organizations “committed to transforming suburban and urban communities by supporting youth to develop a social justice perspective”, thus endowing them with leadership skills that will allow them [...]

Alice Marwick directed me to an interesting analysis on Facebook’s redesign, which posits that,
Facebook’s new design, as many of us have been noting since the company began testing it months ago, seems to emphasis features also seen in trendy new web services favored by us self-styled “early adopter” types.
Mark Slee of Facebook, in talking about [...]

Here’s the second installment of our three-part video “The Ballad of Zack McCune.” You can view part 1 here.
What do you do when you’re sued by the recording industry? And how do kids and teens reconcile the law (and corporate interests) with a culture of illegal downloading? Last year, Brown University student [...]

This video – “The Ballad of Zack McCune, Part I” – is the first of a three-part piece created by Nikki Leon and John Randall of the Digital Natives summer team. It marks another installment in our weekly “Digital Natives: Reporters in the Field” series, in which we delve into [...]

February 2nd 10:00 AM: In my hotel room in Amsterdam – I’m here with a school trip to an MUN (Model United Nations) Conference – and packing my bags for our return flight to Cairo in the evening.
10:15 AM: Suddenly, my room mate bursts in:
- You are not going to believe this!
- What?
-There’s no [...]

This first video, “How I Learned to Type,” was created by Diana Kimball and Sarah Zhang of the Digital Natives team. It takes a glance into how people of different ages learned one of the first skills every digital inhabitant needs – typing. Do you “peck” with two fingers, type in multiple languages [...]

As more and more of our lives become enmeshed in the digital world, more and more of our lives are detected, stored, and compiled by the digital systems that serve us. As we call friends on cell phones, navigate streets with GPS systems, login to Facebook from our notebooks, and swipe our [...]