Participatory Culture

It is interesting to me that most of the skills needed by today’s youth are not necessarily taught in traditional schools.  “The skills they acquired—learning how to campaign and govern; how to read, write, edit, and defend civil liberties; how to program computers and run a business; how to make a movie and get it distributed—are the kinds of skills we might hope our best schools would teach.  Yet, none of these activities took place in schools.” (Jenkins, 2006, p.5).   In those sentences Jenkins makes note to the skills exhibited by some peculiar teenagers which she describes in the previous paragraphs.  Some at the early age of 14 were running to be elected mayors of cyber communities, creating web browsers and creating web pages to foment reading and writing skills.  It seems crazy that these important skills are not being addressed in educational institutions, but are learned independently in cyberspace.

In my opinion, it is the sole purpose of educational institutions to provide its members with the skills to become productive to the needs of the many.  While our society and culture are changing ever so fast in face to changes occurring in technology and media, it seems that academia seems to trail in the preparation of citizens to conduct modern task.  “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.” (Jenkins, 2006,p.3).  It appears that educational institutions are only preventing a participatory culture.  You may wonder what leads me to make such a remark.  Let’s start with the fact that some of the most prestigious universities close their doors to most students, with their very exclusive selection process;  therefore, excluding the opinions and ideas of the many in the discussion of many topics that are only shared among closed circles of these elitist institutions.  A second more concrete example is the fact that the one of our assign reading(Networked Publics) was posted on the internet originally for free, for the consumption of the public, but was removed by at the request of the publishing house [ MIT press]. “At long last, the Networked Publics book has been published by the MIT Press. At their request, we have taken down some of the chapters. Even with one of the most enlightened publishers, it was impossible to convince them of the virtues of free information.”  This is cited from a blog on the Networked Publics website. (http://networkedpublics.org/node) .   We must move to a new era of true access to information.  A place we all knowledge and information as accessible to all equally.   

People talk about teaching pour students the skills of tomorrow.  I say let’s prepare them for today.  “Our economy, public sphere, culture, and even our subjectivity are mutating rapidly and show little evidence of slowing down the pace of their evolution.” (Varnelis, 2006).  This alone is a sign that we cannot teach the skills of tomorrow because we do not yet know what they will be.  Today skills we do know.  We must teach our children not fixed curriculums that were created two and three generations ago, but an ever evolving curriculum that meets the needs of today; a curriculum that is not limited by publishing houses, policy makers or politicians, but one that is free, not limited by money or physical space.

  Henry Jenkins list what some of these skills are in Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture:Media Education for the 21st Century:

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.

These are the essential skills we need to include in today’s curriculums.  Mastering these skills will provide our students with a better chance a sucking in today’s global economy and culture. 

What counts as literacy?How literacy changes in response to the new media landscape?

Literacy is the ability to read and write (Merrian-Webster’s,2013). In order to move forward we must break apart and dissect the definition of literacy according to the dictionary.  There are three key words in the definition.  The first, ability, can be represented as having the skills to do something (Merrian-Webster’s,2013).   With this definition we can take away that literacy involves having the skills to read and write.  The second key word in the definition of literacy is read, which definition is, to look at and understand the meaning of letters, words, and symbols (Merrian-Webster’s,2013).  Now we can rewrite the original definition of literacy as, having the skills to look at and understand the meaning of letters, words, and symbols, and write.  This leads us to the third and final key word, write, which is define as, to form (as characters or symbols) on a surface with an instrument (Merrian-Webster’s,2013).  With a further understanding of all the key words in the definition of literacy, we can now, summarize literacy as, having the skills to, look at and understand the meaning of letters words, symbols, and forming characters or symbols on a surface with an instrument.  Therefore, any piece that was written using any set of characters, that someone can understand and make sense of is consider literacy.  It does not matter whether it is formal English or newer versions of electronic language.

The internet has brought a great deal of changes to our lives.  We no longer need to write letters to communicate messages across continents, a simple email or text message suffice. We do not need to visit a library to find rich texts, now we simply download them from the comfort of our homes. Along these changes have also come simpler forms of literacy.  These simpler forms of literacy did not happen overnight as some claim, they have happened over a period of nearly 20 years, since the exposure to emails, text messages, and ereaders.  Many scholars are outraged by these adaptations of the English language. In my opinion they are just natural progressions of the language. These changes lead to a simpler more accessible language for all. Whereas before the more formal aspects of the language where only open to does with high levels of education. These new ways we write have opened the door to access of information to those who were previously labeled as illiterate.  Some of the people involved in the argument about literacy seem to forget the purpose of literacy is one of encouraging communication.  New literacies create a space where the formally educated and the informally educated can communicate.

In conclusion, literacy involves the skills of being able to communicate with others using some form of writing.  Literacy has been adapted throughout time to meet the needs of those who want to communicate with others. Whether we agree or not with modern changes, we must embrace them because they are the future.  “literacy is a process which continues throughout life. To be literate is not to have arrived at some pre-determined destination, but to utilize reading, writing and speaking skills so that our understanding of the world is progressively enhanced.”(Mackie,1980) 

"The distinctive contribution of the approach to literacy as social practice lies in the ways in which it involves careful and sensitive attention to what people do with texts, how they make sense of them and use them to further their own purposes in their own learning lives"(Gillen and Barton, 2010, p. 9)

Wilber (2010) describes today’s world as “a place and space that is constantly changing with the development of new technologies and the current rise of complementary new languages and literacy practices.”   As a high school teacher, I witness firsthand how technology influences today’s youth.  At times I feel I can relate to my students in the use of current technologies to more efficiently communicate with others.  I remember when I was in high school, a teacher would either call home or send a letter home with the student or via mail, when he or she wanted to communicate a message to the parent or guardian of a student.  This process was lengthy and at times very inefficient.  Today by contrast, social networking and other technological advances such as email and text messages, provide a more efficient and less time consuming form of communication.  With changes comes adjustment periods, while our technology changes in the blink of an eye, we must be committed to adapt to such changes in a hasty manner.

Changes in technology affect the way we communicate.  Years back it was very common for people to communicate using hand written formal methods.  Such method followed an established format and etiquette.  Such format and etiquette restricted the use of the hand written methods to only those who knew them.  Today we see how format and etiquette have taken a secondary role in our communication.   By the reduction of the strictness of format and etiquette we have been able to open the channels of communication to those who don’t know or are not aware of such practices.  In the present we see how a 150 character micro blog carries powerful messages across borders, how a text message carries news worth knowing, and how a status on a social network can communicate ones views on a topic.  Furthermore, it is not the how we communicate, but the mere fact that we are communicating that now matters the most.

“Children, adolescents, and adults alike may find that stories help in understanding the world around them, and create or sustain relationships and contexts among peers.” (Denning, 2001)  Today we no longer need novels by famous and distinguish authors to communicate messages or relay past travesties.  Today, many take on social networks and blogs to publish their views of their world, tell their stories, and publish their version of today’s events.  At the moment many individuals are choosing to create their own realities, their own worlds, and sharing them with the rest of the world.

 
I am a passive participant of the changes happening with technology and literacy today.  I choose to communicate with friends, relatives, and acquaintances using Facebook.  Twitter provides me the opportunity to share current events with those who follow me.  A short text message allows my wife to know that I’m safe.  Wikipedia provides me all the information I need (with supporting sources).  Thus, I chose to be a participant of modern literacy and technology, I understand that these are not the only venues for the furthering of my knowledge.  I still resort to newspapers to obtain most of my news, a good novel to read on my free time, and traditional correspondence to share pictures with my love ones. In conclusion, as quickly as everything around us changes, it is important for us to adapt those new technologies to our needs.