Project Literacy Among Youth
(PLAY) is a not-for-profit project that began in 1999 by
Vanessa Domine during her dual stint as a media and technology consultant
for the
Media Workshop New York by day and an NYU doctoral student in Media
Ecology by night. She named her work PLAY
to encapsulate the creative yet critical ways in which young people
can and do use a variety of media technologies. More than a decade
later, our research, teaching and public service can be traced back
to Dr. Domine's experiences in the daily lives of students, teachers
and principals in the New York City Schools.
Our PLAY-ful approach
to media, technology and education is firmly anchored in the theories
of social
constructivism and symbolic
interactionism. Social constructivism essentially rejects the
traditional assumption that the student mind is a blank slate. It
instead offers a perspective that the mind constantly adapts
to new information. We reject the popular “media
effects” movement and instead ascribe young people as active
meaning makers and media producers: Meaning does not reside in the
text itself, rather students overlay the media text with their own
experiences. The classroom is therefore “knowledge-in-action,” where
the individual student experience is inextricably connected to the
meaning making of others.
As teacher educators, the PLAYers
strive to prepare professionals who know how to use media technologies
to make good judgments within a social and political democracy.
We acknowledge that teachers
are confronted on a daily basis with social, political, economic
and technological realities that are inherently bureaucratic in
nature. Thus, a major question that guides our teacher education
research is: How can educators reconcile the tensions and contradictions
between the democratizing potential of new media technologies and
the bureaucratic realities of public education?
Media Workshop New York by day and an NYU doctoral student in 
teachers
are confronted on a daily basis with social, political, economic
and technological realities that are inherently bureaucratic in
nature. Thus, a major question that guides our teacher education
research is: How can educators reconcile the tensions and contradictions
between the democratizing potential of new media technologies and
the bureaucratic realities of public education? 
