Participatory Culture - Week Three

“If it works on an organizational level to mobilize citizenship, shouldn’t we bring it into our classrooms?” were the closing words of Henry Jenkins in his presentation on Participatory Culture in the TEDx NYED video. These words sum up my sentiment on the use of digital technologies in the classroom. I have heard many students, my own children included, ask the question, “How does this apply to real life?” in regards to the curriculum they are being taught. Yet, it appears that participatory cultures have found a way to teach and develop transferrable skills at play and through leisure activities.

            In his White Paper, Jenkins points out how participatory culture games use the world of politics to allow those who normally stand on the side lines to get into the game.  He states, “The new participatory culture offers many opportunities for youth to engage in civic debates, to participate in community life, to become political leaders, even if sometimes only through the “second lives” offered by massively multiplayer games or online fan communities. Empowerment comes from making meaningful decisions within a real civic context: we learn the skills of citizenship by becoming political actors and gradually coming to understand the choices we make in political terms. Today’s children learn through play the skills they will apply to more serious tasks later.” (2006: p.10) He also makes reference to the Pew study (Lenhardt & Madden, 2005), which found that “young people who create and circulate their own media are more likely to respect the intellectual property rights of others because they feel a greater stake in the cultural economy.”

            I’m sure it is no surprise to most of us that students learn by doing. Digital technology presents an opportunity for students to have hands on activities that we can’t necessarily give them in the classroom. Yes, we can teach them the mechanics and the principles offline, while online they learn the value of not plagiarizing or of active citizenship.  Still, there are so many challenges that we face on this matter. These include ethics, access to technology, and cross-curricular skills development.  I believe the main challenge of the 21^st century educator is to find the pedagogical recipe that interfuses the lessons students can learn in the informal classroom called the internet with the formal lessons we teach in the schoolroom.