Digital Learning

Hacking Traditional Schooling: The Dialogic Classroom and the Notion of Play

Author: Steve Fulton and Cynthia D. Urbanski Summary: In this excerpt from Making Middle School: Cultivating Critical Literacy and Interdisciplinary Learning in Maker Spaces, Steve Fulton and Cynthia D. Urbanski draw a connection between Freire’s understanding of emancipatory education and Vygotsky’s idea of learning through play, arguing that maker education...

Teaching Teens—and Ourselves—to Be Mindful, Connected Readers

Author: Lorna Collier Summary: This short article outlines the findings of Troy Hicks and Kristen Hawley Turner’s Connected Reading: Teaching Adolescent Readers in a Digital World. The book uses survey data and in-depth interviews to explore the reading lives of middle- and high-school students, and the ways teachers are using...

A “Connected-Learning” Style and Fashion Program for Adolescents Leads to Career Opportunity

Author: Kiley Larson, Erin Bradley, Tonya Leslie, Bryan Rosenberg, and Nathan Reimer Summary: This case study features two Hive Fashion hubs, in Chicago and New York, in a youth program for adolescents interested in fashion as a career field. The program design is built on the recognition that young people...