How can we shift children's use of technology from consumers to creators?

"Computers may have become extensions of ourselves, but to what extent are we teaching children how to design and manage these extensions?, How do we help children become producers and not just consumers of digital media?" (Kafai & Burke, 2014, pg. 5). Despite the large amounts of time that tweens spend using digital devices, only a small portion of time is devoted to content creation. Specifically, they are spending on content creation an average of just 3 percent or 5 minutes of a total of 2:33 hours that they daily devote to digital devices (Common Sense Education, 2015). 

WeKnow is a peer-learning online environment for tweens to share videos about their interests, passions, knowledge, and skills. The main purpose of the platform is to engage learners as content creators shifting the identity of tweens from consumers to producers of media. We aim to position children as knowledge experts within their frameworks of knowledge and skills.

MA project developed in collaboration with Dadriaunna Williams and Rocio Conde. 

- Kafai, Y. B., & Burke, Q. (2014). Connected Code: Why Children Need to Learn Programming. MIT Press. Chapter 1.
- Common Sense Census. (2015). Media use by Tweens and Teens.