MacArthur Foundation Awards $2-Million for ‘Digital Media’

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, in Chicago, has awarded $2-million in grants to 17 projects that explore new ways to use information technology — including mobile phones, video games, and social networks — in learning.

The projects were chosen from a pool of 1,010 applications to the foundation’s first Digital Media and Learning Competition. Winners will receive one-year grants, which range in size from $30,000 to $238,000, and will share the results of their work at a conference next year and on a Web site open to the public.

Greg Niemeyer, an associate professor for new-media art at the University of California at Berkeley, received $238,000 for Black Cloud Environmental Studies, a role-playing game in which high-school students select sites for conservation or further development based on air-quality data they receive from real-life sensors they place throughout the city they live in.

Students in Los Angeles will play the game in July and August, and students in Cairo, Egypt, will play it in November.

“The game will transform its participants from casual observers of their environment to people who are far more aware of their environment,” says Mr. Niemeyer. “They will also become aware of what they can do to improve the environment and air quality.”

Sharing Lessons

The Global Fund for Children, a charity in Washington that supports grass-roots groups that work with disadvantaged children in more than 60 countries, received $72,000 for a project to help the charities it supports use the Internet to share what they’ve learned with each other and with policy makers.

The groups that the Global Fund aids have a “gold mine of knowledge” on difficult issues such as child soldiers, street children, and child marriage, but without technology it’s very difficult for small groups in developing countries to share what they’ve learned, says Victoria Dunning, vice president for programs.

“When you are a grass-roots organization, the most you can do is scream it out from the rooftop,” she says. “But with digital media nowadays, these things can be captured and broadcast and shared across much wider platforms.”

For more information, go to http://www.dmlcompetition.net.