An open-call competition that will provide $2 million to innovators of digital media and learning is nearing its January 15, 2010 deadline to apply.
The competition seeks designers, inventors, entrepreneurs, researchers, and others to build digital experiences (“learning labs of the 21st century”) that will help young people interact, share, build, tinker, and explore in new and innovative ways.
All the details to apply can be found at www.dmlcompetition.net
Two types of awards are available: Learning Lab Designer awards and Game Changer awards. Learning Lab Designer awards, which will range from $30,000 to $200,000, are for learning environments and digital media-based experiences that allow young people to grapple with social challenges through activities based on the social nature, contexts, and ideas of science, technology, engineering.
Game Changers awards, which range from $5,000 to $50,000, are for creative levels designed with either LittleBigPlanet or Spore Galactic Adventures that offer young people engaging game play experiences and that incorporate and leverage principles of science, technology, engineering and math for learning.
Each category will include several Best in Class awards selected by expert judges, as well as a People’s Choice Award selected by the general public. The online application system will open on January 7 and will include three rounds of submissions, with public comment at each stage. In February 2010, a special competition will be opened up to youth from ages 12-17.
The competition is supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, in collaboration with the University of California-Irvine, Duke University and the virtual network HASTAC.
The 2010 Competition winners will join an existing community of 36 awardees from 2007 and 2008, including a video blogging project for young women in Mumbai, India; a cutting-edge mobile phone application that lets children conduct digital wildlife spotting and share that information with friends; a project that leverages low-cost laptops to help indigenous children in Chiapas, Mexico learn by producing and sharing their own media creations; and an online platform for 200 classrooms around the world that allows young people to monitor, analyze, and share information about the declining global fish population.