Confronting the Challenges
of Participatory Culture:
Media Education for the
21st Century
Henry Jenkins, Director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Katie Clinton, Ravi Purushotma, Alice J. Robison, Margaret Weigel
Henry Jenkins, Director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Katie Clinton, Ravi Purushotma, Alice J. Robison, Margaret Weigel
“The same task can be
performed with a range of different technologies, and the same technology can
be deployed toward a variety of different ends. Some tasks may be easier with
some technologies than with others, and thus the introduction of a new
technology may inspire certain uses…It matters what tools are available to a culture,
but it matters more what that culture chooses to do with those tools.
Participatory culture
is emerging as the culture absorbs and responds to the explosion of new media
technologies that make it possible for average consumers to archive, annotate,
appropriate, and recirculate media content in powerful new ways” (8).
I've worked in three schools, none of which has been particularly focused on technology or been decked out with the latest and greatest. I've never had a real white board (this year I bought my room some shower tile boards, and my dear colleague sneaked in with a drill, avoiding the custodial crew and admin) much less a Smartboard or its equivalents. I've never had any student computer stations in my room, and count myself lucky that, most of the time, my ancient desktops would generally work; I've always used my personal laptop for most of my school work and about dropped over when our tech guy dropped off a school MacBook for me this spring.
As I was reading the Jenkins article, I was thinking about the idea that "[t]he same task can be performed with a range of different technologies" and my classroom. This year is supposed to be different in the St Paul schools because we are getting 1:1 iPads. Like most teachers, I require that my students have a notebook for class for notes and journal responses and am wondering if, instead of that notebook, I can have my students establish blogs like we are for this course where they will write reader responses and put class notes. I think this would be great in terms of encouraging responding to others' writing, hearing from those students who are reticent to participate, and making it possible for average consumers to archive, annotate, appropriate, and recirculate media content in powerful new ways."In addition, I love that I could spare my back the burden of 150+ notebooks being lugged from school to home (and back and back again because I didn't do them the first night)!
This is about as far as I've moved in my thinking in the last couple of hours between a visit from my sister, harvesting some veggies, cooking dinner, calling about getting my bike to the shop, etc. I'm hoping that some of you who have more blog experience than I do (um - this is pretty much my blog experience other than reading them) can give me some ideas. I'm wondering if there can be some posts that they make public to the class and if there are some entries that they could keep private or only share with me. Other tips or possible pitfalls welcome!
I know that we are supposed to include a resource that we have used successfully with students. This one was a big hit during the media literacy unit I did with my English 10 kids: Uncle Drew Part 1
We laughed together really hard, which always feels like a success, and then we had a lot of discussions about whether or not this was a successful ad campaign. It was a big debate with my students and a lot of fun.
I haven't done more than glance through this website, but it has a lot of links and is appropriate to this blog possibility. If I don't put it here I'll probably lose it forever:
Thanks for your post, Erin! I think you made good points about what we stand to gain from integrating blogging into the classroom. Rather than having students read each other's writing the more traditional way (I'm thinking of peer reviewing), it might feel more new to students to comment on each other's blogs. I also think that blogs would be a good opportunity for students to express their personalities--there are so many options for the way blogs could be laid out or what students could include. Another option, outside of relating blogs directly to class material (like literature we study), we could also give students the power to create a blog surrounding one of their personal interests. Perhaps, as a project, students could seek out more information about a topic that interests them and present it on their blog. Their classmates could then go to different blogs, commenting on different topics. This could be a fun way to teach research practices, online etiquette, and a host of other skills--what do you think?
ReplyDeleteThanks, Carly! I like the idea of a sort of research portfolio meets blog! It would be fun to watch the process and have the students include pics, videos, etc. The generally casual nature of a blog reminds me of an I-Search paper... (do they still teach teachers about those?)
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