We at the Youth and Media team believe that games are fun tools for inspiring questions and discussions. As a result, one way in which we disseminate our research is through co-designing educational games that teach digital literacies in fun, interactive ways. Past games have addressed digital issues such as privacy, information quality, and safety.
Working alongside high school and college students to co-design games, we are able to create games in a participatory manner that we believe maximizes their impact on the young people who play them. By involving young people in the creative process, we seek to increase the likelihood that our games will teach the lessons that they intend to teach.
The games listed below are the most recent versions developed through our co-creation process. After playing these games, we encourage you to remix them in accordance with your interests and experiences, as well as in response to recent technological developments.. All games are posted here under a Creative Commons licenses for easy sharing, remixing, and repurposing . If you decide to remix the content, then feel free to share these new versions with us at youthandmedia[at]cyber.law.harvard.edu. Regardless of whether or not your decide to remix the content, feel free to contact us at the same email address with any comments or suggestions that you may have.
* Search Yourself
This game is useful for introducing concepts of privacy, safety, and security to middle and high school students. It can be played in groups of 3-5 in 15-30 minutes. By playing the game, participants encounter opportunities to think about online privacy and talk about the idea that once they post something online it’s there forever.
This game familiarizes participants with the different factors which are important for consideration when searching for and evaluating information. From there, participants can create promotional campaigns for their projects in order to engage in the creation process and put into action those elements which they identified as compelling during search and evaluation.
Based on previous research efforts and Lab activities, the Youth and Media team has made great strides building a curriculum focusing on information quality, particularly in the context of online news and journalism.
So far, the young members of the lab, together with the core Youth and Media team, have developed six modules about Information Quality & News Literacy:
1. Information Quality: Research Methods
Because the internet is a vast and ever-expanding place, it can be difficult to know where to search for information, particularly for academic research purposes. And once the information is found, how can we discern how high-quality the information is? This module, which incorporates the Information Quality Game, asks participants to consider the variety of factors which make up information quality, while also engaging participants in an exploration of different potential sources for research, from the familiar (such as Google Scholar) to the new (such as Twitter).
This module familiarizes participants with the different factors which are important for consideration when searching for and evaluating information. From there, participants can create promotional campaigns for their projects in order to engage in the creation process and put into action those elements which they identified as compelling during search and evaluation.
3. News Stories (Evaluating Source and Search Online)
News media is frequently filled with reports whose details are later disputed, dismissed, or proven false. Such cases are typical with stories that receive ongoing investigation or that are contingent on previously withheld information being released. On the other hand, news stories premised on entirely false information make headlines less frequently (though at the same time, perhaps more than we realize). In this workshop students stand to gain an appreciation of what is at stake when evaluating online content and they gain greater awareness of their own evaluation practices.
News stories can be told from different points of view highlighting or omitting certain characters and facts. This activity familiarizes students with the numerous perspectives from which any given narrative could be understood. Focusing on the specific phenomenon of a couple caught kissing on camera during the Vancouver riots of 2011, students look at different videos, pictures and news articles to explore the importance of evaluating different sources and points of view.
5. Thinking Caps (Perspectives on Personal Information)
Online personal information, especially in social networking sites (SNS), is open to interpretation. Various stories about us can emerge when personal information is evaluated from different perspectives. This activity is meant to demonstrate the role of perspective in shaping the evaluation process and to emphasize reflection on the positive and negative implications of such evaluation.
In this activity students engage with news stories from an ongoing event and have the opportunity to discuss how stories develop over time and to recognize differences between multiple sources of information. Students discuss the importance of headlines in describing news stories and identifying key words. Furthermore, students are introduced to the concept of chronology and create a timeline in groups.
If you would like to know more about our modules, please feel free to send us (youthandmedia@cyber.law.harvard.edu) an email anytime. We are happy to provide you with additional information and/or share the actual modules with you.
Over the last few years, the YaM team has produced an evolving collection of tools that enable people (e.g., youth, educators, parents) to learn more about topics such as digital privacy, digital citizenship, and STEM interest and career exploration through digital spaces. These tools aim to equip people with knowledge about connected learning environments, empower youth to make better choices, and support adults in teaching, parenting, and giving valuable guidance.
Across these efforts, we aim to:
1) Co-design with youth
In the educational space, youth are often viewed as the consumers, versus active users and co-creators, of learning and educational materials. We attempt to overcome this dichotomy by involving young people in the co-design process of learning experiences.
2) Design for different audiences
We currently design educational resources for both educators and youth. We aim to expand our reach by also creating educational materials for parents and caregivers.
3) Leverage the BKC network
In collaboration with interns, staff, and fellows we have create learning resources on a wide array of thematic areas, from freedom of expression to cybersecurity to the intersection between law and virtual reality. We have also collaborated with the Cyberlaw Clinic in the creation of learning and educational materials about copyright, fair use, and privacy.
4) Develop content in much needed areas
Over the last several years, the YaM+ team has produced over 100 educational resources. Initially, we focussed on information quality, privacy, safety (e.g., cyberbullying), and creative expression but more recently we are exploring additional areas of youth life based on the Digital Citizenship+ mapping.
The Youth and Media team has focused on prototyping and field-testing curricular modules (through workshops and in-person engagement) to support youth in activities of peer learning1 (encouraging youth to be co-teachers/learners) and to assist educators in practice. The primary goal of our curricular development has been to build modules with the following characteristics:
Modularity: modules are learning activities that form the basis of Youth and Media workshops. They can be deployed individually or strung together in a series.
Scalability: most modules are designed to last one hour, though they can be adapted to both longer and shorter periods. Moreover, while most modules are designed with a specific age range and skill level in mind, one of our key objectives is to draw from our initial testing and deployment experiences and tailor different versions of each module to specific audiences. For instance, the module “News Stories” may focus more on functional navigation skills with a younger audience and higher-level discussion about the media ecosystem with an older one.
Adaptability: modules should be adaptable to formal and informal learning environments. We aim to create fun, engaging learning experiences for informal contexts such as summer camps and afterschool or not-for-credit academic programs (all of which are especially appropriate for peer learning). However, given our concern for classroom instruction and initial feedback from teachers, we are striving to design modules for formal curricular purposes as well.
Optimization: people using the modules are encouraged to tailor language and/or specific topics to the particular interests of the learner.
1 Some of the workshops, led by Youth and Media youth ambassadors, and the underlying curricular modules serve as “proof of concept” demonstrations for how youth can successfully engage with important issues identified in youth-related research by fostering greater awareness and reflection. They also demonstrate how youth can engage their peers in the exploration of such issues. Unlike conventional learning models, which are typically premised on a one-to-many transfer of knowledge from the teacher to learners, peer teaching/learning focuses on ways that youth can engage one another in a many-to-many process as both teachers and learners. Previous research has shown, for instance, that pairs of skilled peers teaching less skilled learners out-performed pairs of adults teaching children, and that peer teaching is especially successful in tasks that require discussion of issues.
All our modules are available on the DLRP: dlrp.berkman.harvard.edu
Workshop with LAMPcamp, July, 2011, New York City, NY:
The Youth and Media team spent July 25 and 26 2011 in New York, visiting the LAMPcamp. The LAMP – the Learning About Multimedia Project – is a non-profit organization that works to reform and improve media and media literacy. The Lamp periodically holds free workshops for youth, parents, and educators, each focusing on issues intimately related to this goal. To this end, the LAMP partners with the YMCA for several weeks during the summer, working with a select group of students on advertising, documentary production, and news issues. We spent the first day in Park Slope and the second in Flatbush – both in Brooklyn – teaching a group of students – diverse in both age and background – about information quality and related concepts.
Day 1
Workshop at LAMPcamp – Same image, different story
The Youth and Media team spent July 25 and 26 2011 in New York, visiting the LAMPcamp. The LAMP – the Learning About Multimedia Project – is a non-profit organization that works to reform and improve media and media literacy. The Lamp periodically holds free workshops for youth, parents, and educators, each focusing on issues intimately related to this goal. To this end, the LAMP partners with the YMCA for several weeks during the summer, working with a select group of students on advertising, documentary production, and news issues. We spent the first day in Park Slope and the second in Flatbush – both in Brooklyn – teaching a group of students – diverse in both age and background – about information quality and related concepts.
On our first day at LAMPcamp, we met with a group of students (between 12 and 14 years old) in their second week of camp. They had spent the first week learning about advertisement and were beginning their journey into the realm of news and news reporting.
Our workshop, therefore, focused on news stories and different points of view. We aimed to familiarize the students with the numerous perspectives from where any given situation could be understood. To do this, we focused on a particular story – the Vancouver Riot Kiss – and explored its’ presentation through various forms of media. We began by splitting the students into small groups, and gave each a cut-up of the Vancouver Riot Kissing Couple photograph (Photograph by Rich Lam/Getty Images). One group, for example, had a cut-up of the policeman at the foreground of the photograph; another group had a cut-up of the background riots; another one a cut-up of the couple in the middle-ground. We gave the students several minutes to come up with the story behind the image – to figure out who the protagonist is and where and what he was doing. After developing these stories, students presented them to the entire class.
The breadth of the stories was immediately evident; each group told a story entirely different from the others. For example, one group told a story about “James” and “Samantha,” a couple spending the afternoon at the beach. Another group focused on the FBI and a robbery, telling a story replete with drama and crime. After sharing all their stories, we showed the students the original image, revealing to them that they had each only a piece of the original photograph.
Furthermore, we contextualized the story of the Vancouver Riot Kiss to the students telling them that it happened after the final game of the Hockey Stanley Cup in Vancouver between the Canucks and the Bruins. They were intrigued by the story and described the image as romantic and weird; they didn’t understand why a couple would be kissing in such a public space. Then, we introduced the second part of the learning activity by drawing on the student’s comments, mentioning that different media covered the story, intrigued by this kissing couple.
First, we showed them a video from the Young Turks Network. The reporters in this video spent little time discussing the riot itself, instead focusing primarily on the romance of the kiss. This narrative was much in line with the narrative the kids came up with after seeing the entire photograph and many students were interested in knowing what had happened. Some were even wondering if this “kissing couple” were rioters as well. We then showed them an amateur video taken by a Canadian bystander, a man who stood on the roof of a building overlooking the riot. This video focused almost exclusively on the violence of the riot, showing fans running through the streets much to the chagrin of the tear-gassing police. In a small part of the video “the kissing couple” can be seen pushed to the ground by the police, noticeably upset by this violence. The story told in this video – though based on the same event and same characters as the previous one – is far from romantic, reflecting the point of view of the witnessing bystander. The kids realized that the story they had been told earlier had not been complete, and they came to the conclusion that there was no romance to be found after all. A debate started on whether or not “the kissing couple” were rioters or innocent bystanders.
Then we gave each group two printed articles that told the story of the kissing couple (“Vancouver kiss couple ‘were knocked down by riot police.’” from the Guardian; and “Overlooked Vancouver Video Shows ‘Kissing Couple’Was Knocked Down by Riot Police” from the New York Times). We asked the students to describe the differences between the two, and to consider what additional stories might not have been told. In this latter discussion, a student mentioned that the point of view of the kissing couple was missing; they were intrigued by this story and wanted to know what had “really” happened according to them.
We then showed them a portion of an interview given by the kissing couple several days after the event. The kids talked with us about the importance of perspective, reinforcing the argument that different stories can be told about the same event, each story a reflection of the teller’s point of view. They were interested to hear the police officers account of the story and disappointed that, besides a few sentences in the newspaper article, there was no additional material to tell that story. All in all, it was a very engaging and inspiring day!
Day 2
LAMPcamp – Perspectives on Information: Digital Breadcrumbs
On our second day in New York, we visited the LAMPcamp at the Flatbush YMCA. The group of students we met had spent the first week of the camp learning about news and were beginning to do projects on advertisement. We spent the first hour discussing with the students a wide array of topics such as their Facebook use, their search techniques, and their engagement in content creation, among others.
After that, we run a workshop about how people interpret the same information differently. Our warm-up activity centered on defining perspective. We first showed them an optical illusion and asked them what they saw. We emphasized that their differing interpretations depended on perspective. We gave another example of Billy, a student who makes the baseball team; different people in Billy’s life react to the same event differently depending on their relationship to him. The students then gave their definitions of perspective.
Our second activity centered around Facebook. After splitting the students into small groups, we asked each to put on a “thinking cap” and play different roles as they evaluated a Facebook profile of one of the YaM team members. One group was asked to be a mother, one a teacher, one a friend, one a girl at school, and one a potential future boss. We told the groups to analyze the profile from the perspective of their given character, providing a list of assumptions, “likes,” “dislikes,” and comments. We also asked students to consider how their findings might affect their future relationship with the person whose page they had viewed. To facilitate the role playing we handed out props for each team to wear and embody the different personas.
After considering this question in their groups, the students presented their analyses, mentioning to the class what they had “liked” and “disliked,” and why. We also discussed implications for future relationships. The groups responded differently to the profile, “liking” and “disliking” entirely different aspects. They immersed themselves in the roles taking on various tones and mannerisms. The message was clear: perspective matters greatly in determining interpretation of the same information.
The third activity focused on how different perspectives can arise from different sets of information. We split the students up into two groups and gave them each a set of clippings from social network websites that reflected a fictional character, Sarah Donnum. Two-thirds of the information was the same, but one-third differed to paint Sarah in either a positive or negative light. We asked each group to figure out who this character was and what she had done.
Each group then presented their analyses. One group spun a story about how Sarah strives to get good grades so she can get into a good college. Another group told an entirely different tale about how she turns to a life of crime after her father dies.
Finally, we led a closing discussion to tie the activity into the central theme of perspective. We emphasized how one piece of information can skew perspective on another piece. We also introduced the concept of digital breadcrumbs: the idea that you leave behind information through a online presence that others can then use to judge you. This idea resonated with students, all of whom cared about what information was linked to their names online. The class concluded that people can judge information differently based on different perspectives and access.
The Youth and Media Team has conducted workshops with organizations in Chicago, Boston, New York City, and Washington DC. We hope to conduct more workshops in the future and further our collaborations with other organizations.
