Join Renee Hobbs and members of the Media Education Lab at the DML Conference in LaJolla, California on February 18 - 20 for this exciting conference on digital media and learning. They are offering a session on Friday, February 18th at 11 am, entitled, "In and Out of the Box: Elementary, Rural, Urban and Minority Children's Engagement with Digital Media for Learning about the World."

Participants:
Lori Takeuchi, Sesame Workshop
Joy Pierce, University of Utah
John Landis and Henry Cohn-Geltner, Temple University
Renee Hobbs, Temple University

Children, Family and Context Issues

• Considering the developmental issues in children’s use of digital media and the role of family and teachers in patterns of access and use
• The role of geography, social class, family structure, and community as it affects differential access and use
• Addressing (and challenging) assumptions about what’s developmentally appropriate for young children
• Responding to children’s pre-existing attitudes about news, current events and celebrity culture

Instruction and Learning Issues

• Dealing with the basics: how the need to master essential skills may shape/compromise curricular choices
• How children’s skill mastery and perceived competence contributes to self-esteem, motivation and social power
• Unpacking the pleasure of emotional engagement with the “other” through digital media
• The protectionism-empowerment spectrum as experienced by children, parents and teachers in the elementary grades
• Exploring the relationship between media literacy and technology integration
• The challenge of integrating access, analysis and composition/production into instructional practice
• Negotiating teacher anxiety about bringing news and current events into the classroom