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What would our research, technology design, and thinking look like if we took seriously the momentous opportunities and challenges for learning posed by our digital era? What happens when we stop privileging traditional ways of organizing knowledge (by fields, disciplines, and majors or minors) and turn attention instead to alternative modes of creating, innovating, and critiquing that better address the interconnected, interactive global nature of knowledge today, both in the classroom and beyond?
HASTAC (“haystack”) is a network of individuals and institutions inspired by the possibilities that new technologies offer us for shaping how we learn, teach, communicate, create, and organize our local and global communities. We are motivated by the conviction that the digital era provides rich opportunities for informal and formal learning and for collaborative, networked research that extends across traditional disciplines, across the boundaries of academe and community, across the “two cultures” of humanism and technology, across the divide of thinking versus making, and across social strata and national borders.
HASTAC is open to anyone. One joins simply by registering on the HASTAC website. Once registered, you can contribute to the community by sharing your work and ideas with others in the HASTAC community, by hosting HASTAC events online or in your region, by initiating conversations, or by working collaboratively with others in the HASTAC network. HASTAC is, in effect, what you make us and change is our byword. HASTAC’s scope and mission are fluid, constantly changing to meet the opportunities and challenges presented by the ever-shifting terrain of today’s digital world and morphing with the needs and goals of our network members.
>HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Advanced Collaboratory, pronounced "haystack") is a virtual organization of over 5600 individuals and institutions inspired by the possibilities that new technologies offer for shaping how society learns, teaches, communicates, creates, and organizes at the local and global levels. HASTAC members are motivated by the conviction that the digital era provides rich opportunities for informal and formal learning and for collaborative, networked research that extends across traditional disciplines, across the boundaries of the academy and the community, across the "two cultures" of humanism and technology, across the divide of thinking versus making, and across social strata and national borders.
A network of networks, HASTAC members are dedicated to transforming and reforming traditional education with peer-to-peer collaborative techniques inspired by the open web. HASTAC administers the annual $2 million MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Competition. In its third year, the 2010 Competition, “Reimagining Learning,” was a collaboration with the White House "Educate to Innovate" Initiative as well as with Sony, EA, and ESA.
HASTAC is open to anyone. One joins simply by registering on the HASTAC website (hastac.org). Once registered, one can contribute to the community by sharing his/her work and ideas with others in the HASTAC community, by hosting HASTAC events online or in his/her region, by initiating conversations, or by working collaboratively with others in the HASTAC network. HASTAC is, in effect, what people make it and change is their byword. HASTAC's scope and mission are fluid, constantly changing to meet the opportunities and challenges presented by the ever-shifting terrain of today's digital world and morphing with the needs and goals of its network members.
Many of HASTAC's members are academics or others affiliated with universities at any stage of their careers, from students to senior professors. Other HASTAC community members are public intellectuals, artists, citizen journalists and scholars, educators, software or hardware designers, scientists specializing in human-computer interfaces, gamers, programmers, librarians, museum curators, IT specialists, publishers, social and political organizers and interested others who use the potential of the Internet and mobile technologies for new forms of communication and social action.
Specializations include the full range of the humanities and social sciences, the arts, music, new media arts, journalism, communications, digital humanities, cultural studies, race, gender, and sexuality studies, and global studies, as well as all computational fields, visualization and auditory sciences, information science, and engineering, plus those interested in intellectual property issues, and those concerned with social entrepreneurship, philanthropy, and public policy on a local or global scale.