PROJECT: Digital Sustain

Digital Sustain is a project by three Central School of Speech and Drama students.  CSSD is the Univeristy of London’s Drama Conservatoire.  The three students, Julia Beck, Rosie Storr, and Anna Bosworth, are researching and documenting a question: “Do Digital Arts help make a case for sustainability in Applied Theatre?” (In case you don’t know, Applied Theatre is the use of theatre and theatrical techniques for non-theatrical objectives, usually social in nature.  Using theatre as therapy might be applied theatre, or using theatre as a way of teaching non-theatrical subjects is also “Applied Theatre”)

Marc Prensky's latest book, available via Amazon

They are taking as their starting point the work of Marc Prensky, an author, digital game inventor, and entrepreneur.  Marc is the founder and Creative Director of Spree Games (a K-12 curricular games company), the founder and CEO of Games2train (a business games company whose clients include IBM, Nokia, Pfizer, the US Department of Defense and the L.A. and Florida Virtual Schools) and creator of the sites DoD Game Community and Social Impact Games.  Marc has written four books, including From Digital Natives to Digital Wisdom: Hopeful Essays for 21st Century Learning, and Teaching Digital Natives—Partnering for Real Learning .

You can find out more about the Digital Sustain project on their blog http://digitalsustain.blogspot.com/

Here’s a presentation by the Digital Sustain folks about some research they did using 15 teens in Essex.  While by no means a “valid scientific study” it presents some interesting and telling facts.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 Adam Gertsacov is the co-founder and co-organizer of Digital Family Summit.  He wears many hats, including those of a professional clown, an author and publisher, an artist/educator, a non-profit administrator, a P.T. Barnum impersonator, a flea circus impresario, and the esteemed hat of the Clown Laureate of Greenbelt, Maryland.