[finders] Participatory Culture

[finders at findability.org]

October 23, 2006: Participatory Culture

http://www.findability.org/archives/000138.php

The MacArthur Foundation recently launched a five-year, $50 million digital
media and learning initiative to help determine how digital technologies are
changing the way young people learn, play, socialize, and participate in
civic life.

There, I found Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture (PDF), an
interesting white paper by Henry Jenkins about media education.

Henry presents eleven new skills or literacies...

    * 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.

...and three concerns:

    * The Participation Gap - the unequal access to the opportunities,
experiences, skills, and knowledge that will prepare youth for full
participation in the world of tomorrow.

    * The Transparency Problem - the challenges young people face in
learning to see clearly the ways that media shape perceptions of the world.

    * The Ethics Challenge - the breakdown of traditional forms of
professional training and socialization that might prepare young people for
their increasingly public roles as media makers and community participants.

Henry also argues that "textual literacy remains a central skill in the
twenty-first century" and that traditional research skills "assume even
greater importance as students venture beyond collections that have been
screened by librarians into the more open space of the web."

In considering goals and challenges regarding the education of our two
daughters over the next decade or so, this feels like a pretty good roadmap.