Media ... for the 21st Century

Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century.

The MacArthur Foundation has just launched its five-year, $50 million digital media and learning initiative. The focus is on understanding how digital media should/will inform the learning skills (and defining those skills) of the next generation. Here's what they list as the skills.

This could almost work as a checklist for what we, as communicators, should be doing in structuring our current media -

"Schools and afterschool programs must devote more attention to fostering what we call the new media literacies: a set of cultural competencies and social skills that young people need in the new media landscape.

Participatory culture shifts the focus of literacy from one of individual expression to community involvement.The new literacies almost all involve social skills developed through collaboration and networking.These skills build on the foundation of traditional literacy, research skills, technical skills, and critical analysis skills taught in the classroom.

The new skills include:

• Play — the capacity to experiment with one’s surroundings as a form of problem-solving

• Performance — the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery


• Simulation — the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-world processes


• Appropriation — the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content


• Multitasking — the ability to scan one’s environment and shift focus as needed to salient details.


• Distributed Cognition — the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities


• Collective Intelligence — the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal


• Judgment — the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources


• Transmedia Navigation — the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities


• Networking — the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information


• Negotiation — the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms."

Microsoft = High Design?

Judging from a review by New York Times' David Pogue, it would appear that Microsoft has realized that visual delight and design pleasure has a place in software design:

"Over all, Office 2007 is much more pleasant to use than previous versions. It seems to be the work of the New Microsoft, a company far more concerned with elegance, beauty and simplicity than the Old Microsoft. Little things like typography, choice of wording and on-screen feedback get more consideration in Office 2007 (and Windows Vista, which goes on sale to consumers the same day)."

Its about time! After years of being envious of Apple's design aesthetic, there might be hope for those of us who are shackled to the PC world.

Saul Bass: New Again

Saul Bass is considered one of the greats in mid-century graphic design. His work has stood the test of time and is coming back around, inspiring new digital designers. At Creative Pro, editor, Terri Stone has posted an animated gif that emulates the opening film titles for Anatomy of a Murder, a 1959 thriller.

She has also posted a link to an archive of Bass' film title sequences. Click through a few (literally, the images are not animated.) The images for Its a Mad Mad Mad World could be tee shirt designs at Threadless or housewares at Urban Outfitters!
image: Saul Bass; Its a Mad Mad Mad Mad World