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Making projects, making friends: online community as catalyst for interactive media creation.
Karen Brennan1, Andrés Monroy-Hernández, Mitchel Resnick
1Lifelong Kindergarten group, MIT Media Lab.
New Directions for Youth Development
|January 18, 2011
Summary
Young people need communities to learn interactive media creation. The Scratch online community shows that a balance between socializing and creating fosters valuable learning and media development.
Area of Science:
- Digital Media Studies
- Human-Computer Interaction
- Learning Sciences
Background:
- Modern society demands interactive media creation skills.
- Individual learning is insufficient; collaborative communities are essential for developing these skills.
- The Scratch online community serves as a platform for exploring youth participation in digital creation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how participation and collaboration in the Scratch online community shape young people's development as interactive media creators.
- To analyze different forms of participation and collaboration within the community.
- To identify optimal conditions for learning and creation in online communities.
Main Methods:
- Analysis of participation within the Scratch online community.
- Description of participation as a spectrum from socializing to creating.
- Identification and exemplification of three distinct forms of collaboration.
Main Results:
- Participation in online communities supports the development of interactive media creation abilities.
- A spectrum of participation, from socializing to creating, was observed.
- Three forms of collaboration were identified within the Scratch community.
Conclusions:
- The most impactful interactive media creation and learning occur in a "middle space" within online communities.
- This "middle space" effectively integrates both socializing and creating practices.
- Fostering environments that blend social interaction with creative endeavors is key for youth development in digital media.
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