Edutopia is the George Lucas Educational Foundation’s main front. Primarily concerned with learning theory and technologies, Edutopia’s vision is thus:
Kids today — no previous generation has experienced anything like the current pace of transformational societal change. Yet, in light of extraordinary advancements in how we interact with each other and the world, our system of education has been frustratingly slow to adapt.
The George Lucas Educational Foundation was created to address this issue. Our vision is of a new world of learning. A place where kids and parents, teachers and administrators, policy makers and the people they serve, all are empowered to change education for the better. A place where schools have access to the same invaluable technology as businesses and universities — where innovation is the rule, not the exception. A place where children become lifelong learners and develop the technical, cultural, and interpersonal skills to succeed in the twenty-first century. A place of inspiration, aspiration, and an urgent belief that improving education improves the world we live in.
We call this place Edutopia. And we provide not just the vision for this new world of learning but also the leading-edge interactive tools and resources to help make it a reality.
You can look at the various “core concepts” the organization employs and how they interact on the topic overview page. Core concepts include integrated studies, comprehensive assessment, project learning, and others. The group seems to really embrace notions of edutainment both generally and specifically. This website is worth a visit over a cup of coffee.
The site: http://www.edutopia.org/
Gordon Carlson is a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is pursuing a PhD in New Media Communication. His work focuses on the role of technology in communication. Gordon's dissertation work looks at improving edutainment across various media. 