YALSA advances to next phase in HASTAC/MacArthur Foundation Badges for Lifelong Learning Competition

CHICAGO — The Young Adult Library Services Association, a division of the American Library Association, has advanced to Stage 2 of the HASTAC/MacArthur Foundation Badges for Lifelong Learning Competition. YALSA is an official collaborator in the 4^th Digital Media and Learning Competition, held in collaboration with the Mozilla Foundation. A full list of Stage 1 winners and collaborators can be found at www.dmlcompetition.net.

The Badges for Lifelong Learning Competition is designed to encourage the creation of digital badges and badge systems that support, identify, recognize, measure and account for new skills, competencies, knowledge and achievements for 21st-century learners wherever and whenever learning takes place.

Stage 1 applicants were asked to submit ideas for compelling learning content, activities or programs for which a badge or set of badges would be useful for recognizing learning that takes place in a particular area or topic. Winning applications represent a wide array of public and private institutions and organizations from around the world, including museums, non-profits, after-school programs, research institutions and for-profit companies. Proposed content for badge systems address a breadth of topics—from the promotion of civic engagement and community volunteerism, to STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics) learning in and out of the classroom, to digital literacy, to workforce preparedness and beyond.

Winning applications are available for public perusal and commenting at www.dmlcompetition.net.

Based on response in Stage 2, winners of Stage 1 may be paired with winning badge design/technology teams for the opportunity to work collaboratively on developing a badge system to be judged in Stage 3.

Stage 2, which seeks badge system design and tech proposals that respond to Stage 1 winning content or content from one of the competition’s official Collaborators—including the Department of Education, the Department of Veteran Affairs, Microsoft, Intel, NASA, the American Library Association and more– is open now through Jan. 17, 2012.

Full information can be found at www.dmlcompetition.net.

This HASTAC competition is supported by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to the University of California, in collaboration with Duke University. The University of California Humanities Research Institute and Duke University's John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute are the principal administering bodies for this grant on behalf of HASTAC.

YALSA

For more than 50 years, YALSA has been the world leader in selecting books, videos and audiobooks for teens. For more information about YALSA or for lists of recommended reading, viewing and listening, go to www.ala.org/yalsa/booklists, or contact the YALSA office by phone, (800) 545-2433, ext. 4390; or email: yalsa@ala.org.