The video of Henry Jenkins speaking about participatory culture and his white paper, Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century, are both engaging and challenging. His years of extensive research and work pertaining to Participatory Culture are evident in the flow of his presentation and the depth of history he reveals. I loved the segment on civic activism, and how it has been a constant but the media by which mobilization occurred/occurs has changed, from the printing press community of the 1850s with world circulation (parallel to today's zines) to the 1990s with hand-held video recorders to today's social media sites. Fabulous. Also, that the idea of a social network is not new (e.g., bowling leagues of the 1950s), but the media by which the (online) community forms is (e.g., Facebook, Wikipedia, gaming sites).
Jenkins discusses new media literacies and the new media landscape. He notes, "Participatory culture shifts the focus of literacy from one of individual expression to community involvement. The new literacies almost all involve social skills developed through collaboration and networking. These skills build on the foundation of traditional literacy, research skills, technical skills, and critical analysis skills taught in the classroom." (2006, p. 4). This connection is a very important one; traditional literacy and new media literacy need to connect and intersect. It brought to mind Motoko Rich's The New York Times piece, Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading? (2008) in which Carol Jago of the National Council of Teachers of English is quoted as saying, "schools don't have to get involved" (p. 5) on the topic of teaching and/or testing Internet reading.
Jenkins outlines the new skills needed for the new media culture: Play, Performance, Simulation, Appropriation, Multitasking, Distributed Cognition, Collective Intelligence, Judgement, Transmedia Navigation, Networking, and Negotiation (2006, p. 4) and throughout the paper discusses each in depth. He also discusses why we should teach media literacy. Briefly, it is to mitigate the inequalities in access to new media technologies and opportunities to develop skills, the challenges youth face in evaluating how media shape perception, and to help youth develop ethical norms (i.e., The Participation Gap, The Transparency Problem, and The Ethics Challenge, respectively).
Jenkins' lecture and paper are encompassed by the graphical representation of Green's approach to literacy requiring Operational, Cultural and Critical literacy practices (DECS, 1996). In his paper, Jenkins also notes that "the new media literacies should be seen as social skills" (2006, p. 20). However, "[b]efore students can engage with the new participatory culture, they must be able to read and write" (Jenkins, 2006, p. 19).
Julie DeBold
Basics (fundamental comprehension and decoding) are always the basics; you can't break the rules until you've mastered the rules. I think that when this is explained to students they understand what is being told, but in my experience they feel that at their age they've already mastered the rules of reading and writing. To battle this students, at younger grades and ages, should be exposed to a wider range of genres and texts to showcase the variety of rules and how rules fall in and out of vogue, which can help date the text, and put it into cultural/historical context. When students are able to put ideas into cultural/historical context they are able to view problems from various perspectives creating unique solutions.
ReplyDeleteWell said Carl. Just to add to that along with what Julie stated, "[b]efore students can engage with the new participatory culture, they must be able to read and write" (Jenkins, 2006, p. 19); it’s important to remember that new media literacies are not trying to get rid of traditional literacies. "New media literacies INCLUDE the traditional literacy that evolved with print culture as well as newer forms of literacy within mass and digital media” (Jenkins, 2006, p. 19). Teaching new media literacies focuses expanding the knowledge and basic that students already have. In response to what Carl said, as far as students feeling like they are already experts, I always say I’m always learning. You can never stop learning. That’s what igniting the passion for learning is all about. It’s definitely exposure and variety but it also includes effective and engaging methods that make it meaningful and exciting. We have to give them a reason to be passionate and motivated about the material.
ReplyDeleteCarl and Alexis,
DeleteThank you for your comments. I, too, think it is important to keep teaching/learning within the context of the real timeline, especially in the light of quickly changing technology. Without the timeline knowledge, how will students gain an appreciation for today's technology? Show a 7th grade student a manual typewriter from the 1940s and it might as well be from the Stone Age. Lift it, touch it, press the keys. Now one has an appreciation for today's keyboarding. As it holds true for literacy skills: one needs to know how to read and write in order to expand upon those skills through learning new media literacy skills. Technology will continue to advance, so we need to learn the skills to make it produce to its optimum capabilities for our purposes.
Julie DeBold