UC Irvine researcher Crystle Martin studies what pro wrestling fans can teach us about storytelling, education, and community. What she found is like “fantasy football meets Dungeons and Dragons.” Lissa Soep interviews Martin about the interactive theater of professional wrestling fandom.

Tracking how young people are expressing voice and exerting agency in public spheres through participatory politics.

Fourteen-year-old Luna Ito-Fisher started making her own clothes and accessories when she was nine, after attending a friend’s birthday party at a sewing studio in LA. “I remember at the… Read the rest of the article: The cool new thing with tweens? Sewing.

It's one thing for massively popular TV shows like Heroes and Lost to use social media to build characters and infill back-stories. But can a young playwright turn those same… Read the rest of the article: Social Media Theater

You might expect this drawing to win a children's art contest. It's lovely, technically sophisticated, and positive. So it's no surprise Mirna's picture won first place, elementary school category, in… Read the rest of the article: Contesting Childhood: On child art competitions

Inspired by Boing Boing's strategy of "disemvoweling" hateful comments, we at Youth Radio (where I work) once considered a tactic called "in-consonance." The idea was to remove every consonant from… Read the rest of the article: Digital Literacy's New Moves: The View from a Youth Newsroom

CARNEGIE MUSEUM OF ART/HEINZ FAMILY FUND Charles 'Teenie' Harris (1908-1998) sitting in chair with his son, Charles Harris Jr., c. 1930-1950. Black and white, Agfa Safety Film. According to those… Read the rest of the article: Community Curation: The Everlasting Archive of Charles "Teenie" Harris

Just to be clear, the creators of Pop-Up Magazine aren't trying to outdo print mags. The San Francisco event they've invented–the third issue happened this weekend to a sold-out Herbst… Read the rest of the article: Performance Journalism

After spending his youth happily playing computer and table-top role-playing games as pale-grey-skinned elves with long, straight, silver hair (usually over one eye), or "forcing African-coifed robot pilots into the… Read the rest of the article: Chimerical Avatars and Other Identity Experiments from Prof. Fox Harrell

Photo: Deney Terrio USC Professor Henry Jenkins is a hard-core fan with hard-core fans. I should know. I'm one of the audience members who stalked him at a conference a… Read the rest of the article: Reducing the World's Suck with Henry Jenkins