The MAGIC Lab is a new digital media and learning research lab at Miami University, in Oxford, Ohio, directed by Dr. Sean C. Duncan. We're dedicated to investigating, understanding, and fostering the productive disruptions of educational systems that good digital media and games can provide. Sean is an Armstrong Professor of Interactive Media, a joint position with Miami's School of Education, Health, and Society and Armstrong Institute for Interactive Media Studies. Our projects are beginning to take shape, following several themes: Understanding Design: How can we both foster design skills in learners, but also make sense of the forms of computational literacies, collaboration, and informal math and science that are part and parcel of engaged media and games cultures? Understanding design means both understanding how to best use design-based research toward digital media and learning aims, but also how to understand collaborative, iterative design as a "21st century skill," perhaps key for future civic engagement and workplaces. Upcoming studies will look at computational literacies in gaming, as well as fostering game design skills in particular. New Literacies: How have "reading" and "writing" changed with the advent of social media and games? Can interaction with participatory media and games foster new forms of "literacy"? What does it mean to "know" in a world in which many now carry the internet around in their pockets? Beginning to understand the literacy implications of mobile media in particular -- iPhones, Blackberries, Androids, mobile gaming systems such as the Nintendo DS and PSP -- is a critical task, and will provide the basis for several new studies. Participatory Cultures: How can we better understand media as media, and not simply as tools? That is, most agree that media can provide motivating, engaging, and often quite critical contexts for learning... and yet we still know so very little about how these contexts "work." How is does affiliation with often geographically distant others "happen" with online media? How can online fan spaces around media and games both support and limit learning? How do we form bridges between these informal participatory spaces and formal educational environments? Upcoming studies will investigate further several online gaming and non-gaming related "affinity spaces" (Gee, 2004). New: Find our more about our new program, "Gamers As Designers," an afterschool experience designed to use game modding and game design to develop STEAM learning. EDL662: New Literacies and Social Media, a doctoral-level course on digital media dn learning, with an emphasis on digital games and education. Stay tuned for future updates and feel free to contact Sean with any questions you might have.