Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century (original) (raw)

Extending media literacy: How young people re-mix and transform media to serve their own interests.

A teen listens to her music on her iPod when her friend sends her an instant message with a link to a recently uploaded dance video on YouTube. She stops working on her Yankee/Red Sox rivalry mash-up video for history class to check it out. Her friend knows how much she loves to dance and how she's always looking for the next new moves to try. The next day, the teen and her friends watch the downloaded video on her iPod and try to copy the routine. She quickly masters it and adds a few steps to make it her own. Her friends contribute more steps until together they have created a new dance routine. Between classes, they videotape each other doing the new dance and load it back on YouTube. When the teen gets home from school, she logs online and tags her YouTube video. She comments on the video that influenced her new moves and links her video to her MySpace page to share with her friends. By the end of the evening, over 10,000 people have viewed her video, including the guy with the original moves. Lucky for her, he thinks they're awesome and can't wait to spin her moves into something new.

Critical media education: youth media production as a space of creativity for lifelong learning

2008

In presenting this thesis in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of Saskatchewan, I agree that the Libraries of University of Saskatchewan may make it freely available for inspection. I further agree that permission for copying of this thesis in any manner, in whole or in part, for scholarly purposes may be granted by the professor or professors who supervised my thesis work or, in their absence, by the Head of the Department or the Dean of the College in which my thesis work was done. It is understood that any copying or publication or use of this thesis or parts thereof for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. It is also understood that due recognition shall be given to me and to the University of Saskatchewan in any scholarly use which may be made of any material in my thesis.

Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media

According to a recent study from the Pew Internet & American Life project (Lenhardt & Madden, 2005), more than one-half of all teens have created media content, and roughly onethird of teens who use the Internet have shared content they produced. In many cases, these teens are actively involved in what we are calling participatory cultures. A participatory culture is a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one's creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices. A participatory culture is also one in which members believe their contributions matter, and feel some degree of social connection with one another (at the least they care what other people think about what they have created). Forms of participatory culture include: Affiliations-memberships, formal and informal, in online communities centered around various forms of media, such as Friendster, Facebook, message boards, metagaming, game clans, or MySpace). Expressions-producing new creative forms, such as digital sampling, skinning and modding, fan videomaking, fan fiction writing, zines, mash-ups). Collaborative Problem-solving-working together in teams, formal and informal, to complete tasks and develop new knowledge (such as through Wikipedia, alternative reality gaming, spoiling). Circulations-Shaping the flow of media (such as podcasting, blogging). Play-the capacity to experiment with one's surroundings as a form of problem-solving Performance-the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery Simulation-the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-world processes Appropriation-the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content Multitasking-the ability to scan one's environment and shift focus as needed to salient details. Distributed Cognition-the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities Collective Intelligence-the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal Judgment-the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources Transmedia Navigation-the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities Networking-the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information Negotiation-the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms.

Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st century (Part two)

Retrieved February, 2009

The MacArthur Foundation launched its five-year, $50 million digital media and learning initiative in 2006 to help determine how digital technologies are changing the way young people learn, play, socialize, and participate in civic life. Answers are critical to developing educational and other social institutions that can meet the needs of this and future generations. The initiative is both marshaling what it is already known about the field and seeding innovation for continued growth. For more information, visit www.digitallearning.macfound.org.To engage in conversations about these projects and the field of digital learning, visit the Spotlight blog at spotlight.macfound.org.

Youth, identity, and digital media

In recent years, digital media and networks have become embedded in our everyday lives, and are part of broad-based changes to how we engage in knowledge production, communication, and creative expression. Unlike the early years in the development of computers and computer-based media, digital media are now commonplace and pervasive, having been taken up by a wide range of individuals and institutions in all walks of life. Digital media have escaped the boundaries of professional and formal practice, and the academic, governmental, and industry homes that initially fostered their development. Now they have been taken up by diverse populations and non-institutionalized practices, including the peer activities of youth. Although specific forms of technology uptake are highly diverse, a generation is growing up in an era where digital media are part of the taken-for-granted social and cultural fabric of learning, play, and social communication. In 2005, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation began a new grant-making initiative in the area of digital media and learning. An initial set of exploratory grants in the study of youth practices and the development of digital literacy programs has expanded into a major initiative spanning research, educational reform, and technology development. One component of this effort is the support of this book series. As part of the broader MacArthur Foundation initiative, this series is aimed at timely dissemination of new scholarship, fostering an interdisciplinary conversation, and archiving the best research in this emerging field. Through the course of producing the six initial volumes, the foundation convened a set of meetings to discuss the framing issues for this book series. As a result of these discussions we identified a set of shared commitments and areas of focus. Although we recognize that the terrain is being reshaped even as we seek to identify it, we see these as initial frames for the ongoing work to be put forward by this series. This book series is founded upon the working hypothesis that those immersed in new digital tools and networks are engaged in an unprecedented exploration of language, games, social interaction, problem solving, and self-directed activity that leads to diverse forms of learning. These diverse forms of learning are reflected in expressions of identity, how individuals express independence and creativity, and in their ability to learn, exercise judgment, and think systematically. The defining frame for this series is not a particular theoretical or disciplinary approach, nor is it a fixed set of topics. Rather, the series revolves around a constellation of topics investigated from multiple disciplinary and practical frames. The series as a whole looks at the relation between youth, learning, and digital media, but each book or essay might deal with only a subset of this constellation. Erecting strict topical boundaries can exclude

Youth, Technology, and DIY: Developing Participatory Competencies in Creative Media Production

In book: Youth Cultures, Language, and Literacy, Chapter: 4, Publisher: Sage Publications, Inc., Editors: V.L. Gadsden, Stanton Wortham, R. Lukose, pp.89-119, 2011

Traditionally, educational researchers and practitioners have focused on the development of youths’ critical understanding of media as a key aspect of new media literacies. The 21st Century media landscape suggests an extension of this traditional notion of literacy – an extension that sees creative designs, ethical considerations, and technical skills as part of youth's expressive and intellectual engagement with media as participatory competencies. These engagements with media are also part of a growing Do-It-Yourself, or DIY, movement involving arts, crafts, and new technologies. The purpose of this chapter is to provide a framework and a language for understanding the multiple DIY practices in which youth engage while producing media. In the review, we will first provide a historical overview of the shifting perspectives of two related fields—new media literacies and computer literacy —before outlining the general trends in DIY media cultures that see youth moving towards becoming content creators. We then introduce how a single framework allows us to consider different participatory competencies in DIY under one umbrella. Special attention will be given to the digital practices of remixing, reworking, and repurposing popular media among disadvantaged youth. We will conclude with considerations of equity, access, and participation in after-school settings and possible implications for K-12 education.

Minds in Motion, Media in Transition Growing up in the digital age: Areas of change

childresearch.net

Many new tools and mediations are at today's children's avail that we couldn't dream of when we were growing up. At the same time, the millennium generation is also facing new challenges, which call for creative solutions. Today's kids are growing up in a world increasingly shielded from nature; of ever more busy work and entertainment schedules; longer commutes; ‗disappearing' third places; reorganizing neighborhoods; communities in transition; and recomposed families. And yet the children are extraordinarily resourceful. They invent their own surprising ways of navigating rough seas and seizing opportunities. Much can be learned from their genres of engagement. This chapter addresses six areas of change that inform how today's kids play and learn, and, more generally, how they see themselves, relate to others, dwell in place, and treat things. Together, these areas offer a framework to rethink some of our own assumptions on what it means to be literate, knowledgeable, and creative, thus opening new venues for designers and educators to cater the native's strengths while, at the same time, providing support for what they may be missing on, if left on their own.

Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the

Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century (original) (raw)

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