Performing an Ignite Talk at DML 2013

Two weeks ago I did a presentation at the Digital Media and Learning Conference (DML 2013 : Democratic Futures) in the format of an Ignite Talk. This format is challenging. You have 5 minutes to tell your story, explain you idea, and ignite the audience. You have also 20 slides that change every 15 [...]

PLAY! at UT-Explore : Video Game Prototyping with Sketch Nation

Yesterday, as part of the UT-Explore open house, we run two 4o minute workshops for children and teens at the Belo Center for New Media. It was a very fast video game prototyping exercise that kids enjoyed a lot. This activity was a mini-version of some of the activities we designed and implemented last [...]

Visualizing Learning and Media Ecologies

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Austin Samba School or The Acadêmicos da Ópera

I am back to school. Since two weeks ago I have started to participate in the Austin Samba School weekly meetings at a gymnasium located in the campus of a former Texas Insane Asylum now transformed into a State Hospital. The school is also known as The Acadêmicos da Ópera. It is a vibrant [...]

Got Literacy?

“Literacy” is one of the English language words that has become more contested and opaque due to its spawning across diverse fields. Attached to different technologies and activities, the term indicates the existence of certain skills and competences. We heard about computer literacy, media literacy, information literacy, network literacy, digital literacy, critical literacy, design literacy, [...]

Neighborhood and City Learning : Spinning Catraca Livre

During the summer I lived in São Paulo, Brazil, in 2010, I became a regular visitor of the website CatracaLivre (Free Turnstile). The site helped me a lot to organize my cultural life and to experience the city in a diverse and rich way. In a South American megalopolis of the size of Sampa, [...]

Children and the Social Construction of the Personal Computer (Part 2)

Children-Computer Symbiosis and the Reinvention of Childhood

Since the 1950s, researchers in the fields of artificial intelligence, cybernetics, and computer science, were asking questions about how humans learn and think. At university laboratories they were designing theories of the mind and imagining machines that could think and augment human intelligence. One of the most influential [...]