incorporate key findings from youth development literature about the environmental factors that greatly increase student resiliency and increase the chances for academic and social success of youth living in high-risk environments
Using real-world problems in games, and simulating solutions and problem solving, has the potential to be applied in the real world
In the past five years, New York City’s small-school movement has begun to address these conditions by creating more than 100 secondary schools that function as caring environments where students are known and can excel with one another.
A "caring environment" is, I think, essential for letting learning grow. I was very fortunate to have a lot of caring environments as I went through school, and a lot of teachers who I knew cared about my learning and my growth as a person
57 percent, or about 12 million, of online teens between the ages of 12 and 17 are content creators of such things as blogs; a personal Web page; a Web page for a school, a friend, or an organization; original artwork, photos, stories, or videos; remixed content that forms a new creation (Lenhardt and Madden 2005, 8). Interestingly, of these content creators, urban and lower-income youth were more likely than their sub-urban and rural counterparts to engage in these activities.
This is really inspiring to me. Young people everywhere using their desire for creative output as a way of promoting and showing their learning, or maybe displaying their art as their learning.
In the meantime, although many students are alienated from school, other data show that their uses of digital media have increased
If learning about DML has taught me anything, it's that these two things (digital media and schooling) are not mutually exclusive, or they shouldn't have to be.
Accord-ing to a recent Gates Foundation–funded study, 81 percent of those who drop out of school claim that “opportunities for real world learning” would have improved their chances of staying in school, 69 percent were “not inspired to work hard,” and 47 percent said that “classes were not interesting.”
This is the real consequence of the mindset of "when are we going to use this in real life?" Craving that real-life experience is important, and I think it's even important that schools work harder to provide those opportunities
The preservation of democracy in a diverse country demands that schools give children and youth experiences and knowledge that will build the civic competen-cies of tolerance, intergroup communication, conflict resolu-tion, and engagement in public life
Making sure that everyone's voice is heard, recognized and considered
The school is a place where digital media meets books and where students learn to think like designers, inventors, mathematicians, and more.
There's an interesting distinction that's made here. They say that this school is where students learn to think about mathematicians, as opposed to just knowing how to do math, which is the energy I think a lot of students get from their math classes.
growing up in a digital, information-rich, globally complex era prizing creativity, inno-vation, and resourcefulness
So an era that really prizes DML, fostering engagement and self-expression, centered around creation and production, and solving complex problems
Giving and Receiving FeedbackMy learning is visible to me, and I know how to anticipate what I will need to learn next.
This is always the part that seems to be the hardest to find time for in education. A lot of times, especially in English classes, feedback on our writing was limited to loose peer critique time, with not a lot of discussion or discourse about the writer's intention, what works/doesn't, and how to make it clearer
Playing and ReflectingI play games and reflect on my learning within them.
The same reason you will sometimes do reflections at the end of a unit or assignment: thinking about what you learned, how you learned it, and figuring out how you can use it
Participants were less likely to report creating original online content as part of a school assignment, with approximately 65 percent of both high school and college students reporting “never” being given such an assignment
This, again, is frustrating to me. Some of the best and most rewarding assignments I had in high school were creation/project based. When we finished reading "To Kill a Mockingbird" freshman year, rather than doing an essay or a test for the end of the unit, the teacher let us do whatever kind of project or creation we wanted, as long as we were able to express what we learned
Both the network and the physical space provide youth with opportunities to develop media literacy skills and to express themselves through projects that often integrate music, art, books, personal interests, and issues in their lives and in the broader society. On and offline, YouMedia provides participants with both an audience and a space for discussion, collaboration, and debate
Creation and the sharing of it seems like the best way to express opinions and feelings, and a creation and discussion based approach like YouMedia sounds like a great way to develop the skills needed to do it
5The Internet presents risks as well as opportunities. While many aspects of civic and political life increasingly occur online, these changes create risks and challenges as well as opportunities. For example, it is often difficult to judge the quality of information found online;individuals may choose primarily to read viewpoints and engage with those whose views align with their own; the distribution of media access and participatory habits may exacerbate inequalities in civic and political voice; and online communities may, at times, be characterized by a disturbing lack of civility. Thus, in addition to recognizing the many ways civic and political life rely on digital media, it is important for civic educators to think about risks and challenges as they consider ways to engage with the digital dimensions of civic education.EDUCATORS CAN TAKE ADVANTAGE OF DIGITAL MEDIA TO FOSTER DESIRED FORMS OF CIVIC AND POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT AND DEVELOPMENT While youth participation with many different dimensions of civic and political life IS low, youth engagement with digital media is high. Ninety-five percent of teenagers aged 14!17 and 93 percent of young adults aged 18!29 use the Internetand almost a quarter of the Smartphone market is held by teenagers and young adults, aged 13!24.10Civic educators can foster youth civic and political engagement bymeeting youth where they are: in online and digital spaces.
The best social studies teacher I had was as good as he was, not just because he showed a lot of devotion and energy in his teaching, but also because he understood and used the tools that we used every day
Youth are increasingly engaged in informal online communities that define themselves around shared interests and that often center around expressive activities
When I think of "formal," I think of textbooks, classrooms, assignments, things of that like. And I believe that that's the approach that this writing is taking as well. But a lot of the informal approaches seem to stick with people a lot more because they're interest-driven
Clearly young people are developing skills, literacies, and social connections in their peer social exchanges and affinity networks that can be mobilized for contexts outside of these settings. These include the ability to tell stories, mobilize publics, conduct research, code, and manage publicity (Soep, 2014Soep, E. (2014). Participatory politics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. [Google Scholar])
Youth using their skills and their gifts to create and encourage the change that they want to see in the world
For example, DREAM activists have established multiple websites and networked organizations to build these connections. DREAMactivist.org was founded by students who only met in person several years after the site was established. It has grown over the years to become a coalition of 30 organizations that sponsor activities such as a new media intern program as well as campaigns such as the National DREAM Graduation, petitions, and fundraising (Zimmerman, 2012Zimmerman, A. M. (2012). Documenting dreams: New media, undocumented youth and the immigrant rights movement. Los Angeles, CA. Retrieved from http://dmlhub.net/publications/documenting-dreams-new-media-undocumented-youth-and-immigrant-rights-movement [Google Scholar], pp. 22-23)
"Openly-networked"
Unlike the HPA, however, the Nerdfighter community comes together through practices that are not explicitly civic in nature. The community grew around a daily video blog by writers, activists, and brothers John and Hank Green. Nerdfighters also engage in collaborative media production, particularly “collab channels” on YouTube
I've never heard of the Nerdfighter community, but it sounds like a good example of DML. It's production-centered (creating video blogs and collab channels) and it's something where everyone can participate
“If your poem is very general, then it's easy to ignore or dismiss it. But if you're speaking about something you've actually experienced, that's work that is beautiful and can help change things.”
I find that this is true with any sort of writing or creating. I've written stories that I was unable to connect with because I hadn't experienced the problems I was trying to address, and it didn't speak to who I was as a writer. That's a big thing I try to consider with the things I do now: how do I write what's personal to me, not what I think other people want?
What supports enable young people to move along a pathway towards learning connected civics? Three supports have emerged out of our research, which we take up in the following sections, centered on: 1. What young people produce when they engage connected civics (hybrid content worlds), 2. How they work together (shared practices), and 3. What conditions (cross-cutting infrastructures) render their activities increasingly sustainable and poised to achieve learning effects at scale
Civic practices, in a sense, are a participatory culture that is rooted from affinity-based interests
Our use of the term “interest,” then, is not meant to signal an individual or innate quality; we see interests as cultivated through social and cultural relationships and located within what we call an “affinity network” of commonly felt identity, practice, and purpose. We draw from Jim Gee's (2005Gee, J. P. (2005). Semiotic social spaces and affinity spaces: From the age of mythology to today's schools. In D. Barton & K. Tusting (Eds.), Beyond communities of practice: Language, power and social context (pp. 214–232). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge U. Press. [Crossref], [Google Scholar]) term “affinity spaces,” which he uses to describe online places where people interact around a common passion and/or set of commitments, but broaden our focus to civic and political action and wider networks
Here's the recurring use of "affinity groups," but thinking about it not as an individual quality reminds me of another article that we read in INTE 2500 that no matter what we think, it belongs, in theory, to at least one affinity group
Much of this research is concerned with the relationship between in-school and out-of-school learning, puzzling over: how classroom learning gets applied (or not) to everyday life (Hull & Shultz, 2002Hull, G., & Shultz, K. (2002). School's out! Bridging out-of-school literacies with classroom practice. New York: Teacher's College Press. [Google Scholar]; Lave, 1988Lave, J. (1988). Cognition in practice. New York: Cambridge University Press. [Crossref], [Google Scholar]); how children's home and peer cultures inflect school achievement (Carter, 2005Carter, P. (2005). Keepin' it real: School success beyond black and white. London: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar]; Goldman, 2006Goldman, S. (2006). A new angle on families: Connecting the mathematics in daily life with school mathematics. In Z. Bekerman, N. Burbules, & D. Silberman-Keller (Eds.), Learning in places: The informal education reader. Bern: Peter Lang. [Google Scholar]; Varenne & McDermott, 1998Varenne, H., & McDermott, R. (1998). The Farrells and the Kinneys at home: Literacies in action. In H. Varenne & R. McDermott (Eds.), Successful failure: The school America builds (pp. 45–62). Boulder, CO: Westview. [Google Scholar]); or how educators can intentionally design digitally-rich, production-oriented communities that bridge divides in access to robust learning environments (Barron, Gomez, Pinkard, & Martin, 2014Barron, B., Gomez, K., Pinkard, N., & Martin, C. (2014). The digital youth network. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. [Google Scholar]).
A lot of the DML projects we've done are meant to be "media rich" and one of the aspects of the framework for connected learning is that it is "production-centered"
Simply circulating civic content among peers does not necessarily do much of anything for the people who hit “share,” nor does it necessarily advance the set of concerns they aim to address (though it can, and sharing information can sometimes be anything but simple and carry serious risk)
By DML standards, this technically counts as "participating," but not in the meaningful ways that connected civics encourages.
“Learning” connected civics does not entail individually-driven “transfer” between the personally meaningful cultural projects young people actively create and modes of concerted political engagement, but is centered instead on building shared contexts that allow for what we elaborate below as “consequential connections” between these spheres of activity
What I get from this is that "connected" civics involves how the civic practices we engage in are shared with and influenced by other people, and participating with those people creates a shared whole in how to engage in political activites
Commentators bemoaning youth apathy worry that digitally-mediated, expression-based forms of civic activity will make young people less likely to take part in institutionalized politics (such as voting), but recent research has indicated the opposite. Involvement in participatory culture
Participatory culture, another one of the big words we discuss in DML. It makes sense that participation, and being encourage to participate in any form, can carry over to civic duites
Slam poets who have grown up competing individually for high scores decide to join forces, launching sustained campaigns related to violence prevention and environmental justice. Harry Potter fans organize collective actions for fair trade chocolate and marriage equality. Young activists fighting for U.S. immigration reform appropriate iconography and storylines from popular comics to make their case. These are all examples of youth mobilizing their cultural contexts and productions to pursue civic and political action
Everybody, no matter what their affinity groups are, have the capability of using those to make the positive change that they want to see in the world. That's really inspiring!
“Most teachers instead report using short-form games that students can finish within a single class period. While lack of time is a likely explanation, teachers may also find shorter-form games to be easier to map to curriculum standards.”
This is understandable. A lot of games do take time and commitment, and most periods in school are anywhere from 40 minutes to 1 hour.
“It gives the kids a visual,” Gilbert said. “They’re actually acting out and making decisions on things that people who lived thousands of years ago would have had to make.”
This is a genius way of making children understand the time periods they're learning about. This removes the question, "what would they have even done without [blank]?" It lets the kids see for themselves
Thirty-four percent of teachers reported that it’s hard to find games that fit the current curriculum. Check out Graphite, Playful Learning, and Educade for ideas.
Or there's an element that was brought up in the last section: create your own game. You know the curriculum, so you can create some kind of activity that implements it
But this concern presumes that video games would take time away from instruction.
Here's that one-sided view coming into play again
These games often start simply and expand over time, so they can easily form the backbone of an entire curriculum.
In a sense, it functions in the same way as a kind of curriculum: you build the basics, until you can eventually get to mastery
ool has to do with a game’s aesthetics: the art, sound design, characters, narrative, et cetera. But a game does not need to be cool in order to be fun. Don’t be seduced by the spectacle. Making coolness a priority is tantamount to choosing to teach literature with People magazine because the students like to read it
Even outside of digital gaming, this holds true. A lot of games kids will play on the playground requires and utilizes nothing but the kids' imaginations and sense of play. Any game that uses that to its advantage in order to create something that involves students is fun
It involves imagination. It means investigating the world of the game and feeling the frustration, flow, and excitement that goes along with playing it.
I'd say that play falls into the "messing around" category. It's about experiencing the game, experimenting with it, finding what works, and discovering the mechanics of the game itself
With so many options for stimulation and entertainment, it is all too easy to imagine a generation of children that grows up believing that YouTube videos replace books.
It is fascinating, though, how generations of kids will never know a world without YouTube, or a world without being able to watch videos on the internet
Still, 52 percent of teachers assign digital games as independent activities for students. Only about a third (34 percent) “assign digital games to groups of 3-5 students.” And only 29 percent “direct the whole classroom to use digital games together.”
In my experience, we've had a few moments where our teachers would assign us games as a group, but they would take multiple class periods
But how do they define a simulation? Think of something that’s more interactive than an animated anatomy lesson and less game-like than Nintendo’s Super Smash Brothers.
I think of PhET simulations, which are part of a project at CU Boulder. They are these interactive games that are intended to simulate and recreate a concept, such as voltage or inertia. https://phet.colorado.edu/
Of course, the violent narrative content is not likely responsible for these benefits. It seems more likely that it has something to do with the fast pace which demands quick reflexes
Even "violent" video games have some kind of positive learning. They have the potential to build skills, such as problem solving or evaluation, that can be applied outside of the game
and would ideally incorporate students in the process all along the way. Students love to be involved and can take on a range of roles, from brainstorming ideas for the game to playtesting it once it is up and running
This is also the most surefire way of checking if you're reaching your intended demographic. The same reason that toy companies will get involved in toy fairs or studios will do test screenings of their films: making sure they're reaching the intended audience by involving them in the product
the novelty of the idea that activities that engage young people so wholly can be educational, too
I find it frustrating that, even at the time this was written, this was considered a "novelty" (something new or unusual). I don't see why it would be unusual because any activity that involves students and makes their actions a part of their learning experience makes the learning that much more meaningful and lasting
Access to a network of both peers and mentors who can model what it might mean toparticipate in a gaming space affects kids’ entry into games and learning.
The peers and mentors who do shape a kid's entry into gaming may have certain ways they want to do it, what they think is the correct way. This means they might serve as gatekeepers to what the child can and can't do when discovering gaming
There is no “one” game: the individual, social, and cultural motivations of any playeraffect what is experienced through play
People may beat a game in different ways, highlighting how people solve problems differently
Gaming can allow players to experience various perspectives
This is maybe one of the most beneficial aspects of gaming: being able to see a world, and then our world, through many different perspectives
Squire shows that as students progress, they develop new interests,which then propel them out of the community of practice toward new areas of interest, suchas game design or ancient history.
I've often found that one of the most important things about school is figuring out what it is you want to pursue, and what you want to make a career out of
participation genres
As we've discussed in DML, there are many different ways to be involved in a participatory culture. Thinking of them as "genres," we can figure out what genres speak to us and how we use them
What was missing in 1954, however, was the presence of a generation of kids who knew notime untouched by the promises and pitfalls of digital technology.
I'm part of that generation who never knew a time without the internet. Thinking about it this way, it really makes me realize how lucky I am, but also how I need to use it in a beneficial way
In fact, this was my first revelation. This game—and this turned out tobe true of video games more generally—requires the player to learn andthink in ways in which I am not adept
Maybe that's why the six-year-old wanted to figure the game out on his own: his way of learning is still being shaped and formed, so he's figuring out how he learns by trying it out. As you get older, it's almost like the way you learn becomes rigid or written in stone
we can all read and think in differ-ent ways when we read and think as members (or as if we are members) of dif-ferent groups. I, for one, know well what it is like to read the Bible differentlyas theology, as literature, and as a religious skeptic, thanks to different experi-ences and affiliations in my life thus far.
Point of view changes how we perceive literature, art and media. For instance, I was one of the people who enjoyed The Rise of Skywalker, even though a lot of people hated that movie. Although I acknowledge that the film has flaws, I enjoy it more than I don't, and I think it mostly boiled down to my mindset when watching it.
Does this mean you are not “free” to read and think as you like? No—you can always align yourself with new people and new groups—there is noshortage. But it does mean you cannot read or think outside of any groupwhatsoever. You cannot assign asocial and private meanings to texts andthings,
This is an interesting thing to think about: no matter what we think, it aligns with some sort of affinity group already
They arenatural problem solvers that way, but I put them in the sciencelab, and “Well I didn’t get the right answer.” “What did you get?”Not, “How did you get it?” or “What did you try?” but, “What didyou get?” So, I think there is this natural correlation with okay,this is how we problem-solve, this is how a scientist problem-solves.
Scientists are all about discovering new answers, and solving new problems as they arise. Maybe that's how we should all do life¯_(ツ)_/¯
Somewhat surprisingly, there was no consensus among the class aboutone correct answer. In fact, students argued their various positions soforcefully that the teachers had to reexamine the materials themselves toreaffirm the likely causes. We observed no examples of students eaves-dropping on other groups to get the “right” answer; rather, the classroomculture was such that effectively arguing one’s own position was muchmore highly valued than being “correct.”
Being right and being smart are two completely different things. I mentioned this earlier, but being right is knowing the answer, and being smart is having the ability to find it
The teachers were struck by the voracity of students’ claims and howthe game, particularly the roles, enabled them to argue positions—some-thing they reported that students do infrequently.
I think the reason this is infrequent is because in most standard learning situations, it's just about having the right answers to questions. It matters what you know, rather than what you think
There was nobody else to carry the weight.Which really pushed some of my students who don’t like to shareor would not be as interested in sharing. When they were theonly ones, there was no one else to fall back on.
While this can understandably be intimidated, taking a risk and putting yourself out there, both in media or in person, is the only way to make yourself heard
2580 Teachers College RecordStudent 1: When I was a wildlife ecologist I learned a lot about whatthey actually do instead of “you’re a wildlife ecologist.” Ididn’t know until I played it.Student 2: Before we did the game, I had no clue what a waterchemist was, and when I played the game, I kind a foundout what they do. It’s a pretty interesting job. I had thejob, and I was really doing what they do. It was kind ofinteresting.Student 3:Same thing with the wildlife ecologist. I thought thatthey played with animals.
These students' responses show that learning through application is what actually makes the information not just stay with them, but also makes it valuable
rs. In contrast, asreviewed in the outset, schools are one of the last places in the knowledgeeconomy where people must learn at the same pace, must take require-ments before pursuing advanced topics, are not afforded opportunitiesto pursue their passions, have little access to any real experts within adomain, and must (usually) work alone. P
When put in these terms, I understand why typical schooling feels like a chore to many students. There's of course these old words that get thrown around: "When are we going to need this in real life?"
Many texts consumed and produced within game cultures are opensource, or at least easily annotated and discussed by participa
In DML, we've discussed how a text is any sort of message or idea, written or not, that conveys a certain meaning. The texts in a game can be the programming, the world, the characters, or anything that regards either the story or production of the game
Whereas literature, film, and television are generally thought of as sto-rytelling media, games are perhaps better described as worlds
While I don't necessarily enjoy gaming that much (it just isn't for me), I do appreciate the immersive world that is created
Garageband software is revolutionizing home music recordin
This is sort of where you can tell the study is a bit dated (not that it's a problem). Because of the advancement of technology, a lot of my friends who produce music kind of look down upon GarageBand. Sure, it's free, but for some of the more professional sounding recording and synthesizing, they turn to more advanced programs like Sibelius or FL Studio
one’s ability to solve problems while (usually) sitting alone, with a penciland perhaps a piece of scratch paper (see also Brown, Campione,Webber, & McGilly, 1992). In most every other knowledge working sector,expertise is defined by one’s ability to identify problems, mobilizeresources to solve them, leverage social networks, communicate effec-tively, work over an extended period of time, and develop complex mul-timodal representations (Gee, Hull, & Lankshear, 1996; Reich, 1992).Today’s digital technologies make this kind of problem-solving moreaccessible than ever.
There's a big difference between knowing all the answers and being able to figure out the answers. I would definitely say that the latter is more useful and effective later in life, because you're not always going to be given the tools to succeed.
rom a classroom management perspective, the narrative elementsof the unit enabled teachers to create a dramatically different classroom culture, onethat was built around students performing as scientists
The best kind of learning is the kind that actually engages you in it. That's why interest-driven learning through media feels so much better: because you're active, searching for something that's not just going to be given to you
We are truly working together, only many miles apart. It’s not so much that the world is flat, but deep connections can be made across great distances between regular people with tools that are today common.
I feel like this is as true today in 2020 as ever. When we can't be together, communicating from many miles apart is sometimes the only way we have to work together. Lucky for us, we have the platform and the tools necessary to keep those connections alive
School did not let itself change under the influence of the new device; it saw the computer through the mental lens of its own ways of thinking and doing.
I feel like this is important. Being open to multiple perspectives is the best way to comprehend a new technology or idea. If you view something through a narrow lens, you won't see the whole picture
Recall, Papert doesn’t envision change coming from the top or arriving in the form of centralized reform
History has showed us time and time again that change comes from those who need it, those who are determined and brave enough to make a positive difference in the world
Bricolage
This was a new word for me.
Bricolage: construction or creation from a diverse range of available things.
We were like infants discovering the world. I thought about computers and children. I was playing like a child and experiencing a volcanic explosion of creativity
"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few" - Shunryu Suzuki
Leonardo’s airplane had to wait for the development of some thing that could come about only through great changes in the way society managed its resources. The Wright Brothers could succeed where Leonardo could only dream because a technological infrastructure supplied materials and tools and engines and fuels, while a scientific culture (which developed in coevolution with this infrastructure) supplied ideas that drew on the peculiar capabilities of these new resources
Technology is constantly changing, and with it the accessibility of that technology. There's a TED talk I watched where J.J. Abrams talked about how as a kid, having access to a Super 8 camera was considered a big thing. Now, almost everybody has access to the tools needed to tell stories with a camera. He also talks about how the mindset at his age: "yeah, go ahead and write, that'll be fun." However, the mindset now is: "Go make your movie. There's nothing stopping you" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpjVgF5JDq8&t=36s
learning that is expected to happen in evolutionary and emergent ways, instead of according to subject and timetable; and that what is valued as a route to knowledge might be expanded beyond simple individual efficacies within the narrow print literacies typically emphasized in School.
So much of our learning is based on deadlines and due dates, but I feel like where the most organic learning happens is in a space where you are given the time and the ability to fail and grow. You will stumble and fall, it's a natural part of becoming better. Being allowed to do that is where I feel I grow the best
School does not have in its institutional mind that teachers have a creative role; it sees them as technicians doing a technical job, and for this the word training is perfectly appropriate”
The best teachers I've had were the ones that took the creative route in the way they went about education, and those were always the teachers that other kids hoped they got when they signed up for a class. If you are engaged in what you're teaching, then your students will be engaged in what they're learning
Provide conversations.
This is what is so cool about sharing stories on the internet or through media. You, as the creator, have the capability to provide your insight on it, and communicate with your audience to see if what you've made is understandable and worthwhile
If there is one obvious finding of the innovative approaches to mobile learning presented here and generally, it is the way MML transcends typical divisions between age and experience level, subjects or disciplines, job classifications, and educational contexts
Digital media and the internet is a platform that is perfect for connecting and uniting people. Unfortunately, I feel like we as a whole need to use it that way more often
At this moment in history, so many ideas are suddenly possible, or so much easier as to feel newly possible, because of mobile
Not just ideas, but ways of sharing them. There are ways of communicating and sharing our ideas with people all over the world, as opposed to in our own backyard. You can connect with individuals who live in another country instantly, which even if it has become the standard, still amazes me
The definition of MML from the first book is really very helpful, though it flew under my radar until I began to put together this chapter.
I feel like this chapter is written in a very approachable way, with the writer communicating with his audience and understanding their position. I appreciate writing like this
For a long time, I thought about MML something like this: Okay, mobile, like mobile devices. Media, now I’m thinking about multimedia and all the conversations going back to the 90’s about multimedia in education, like the promise of the CD-ROM. And learning, well at least I think I know what that is.
This makes me think about the first day of INTE 2500, Digital Media and Learning. The first question our professor asked us was: "what is literacy?" I thought of pretty standard, albeit generic, answers to the question, like "the ability to read and write." I feel like I've come to understand so much more since then
Both of these projects exemplify a pedagogical and curricular approach that differs significantly from traditional models of social studies and civics education, and students’ often uninspired experiences of the discipline.
Traditional social studies courses teach you about history. These projects involve you in it.
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How many times, honestly, have we failed to connect with an event because we were not there to experience it? Thinking of it in this way opens up possibilities of connecting us to events that were not in our time to witness, and creating a fuller sense of history and community
To achieve this vision, students quickly realized they needed to learn more about the development plans, identify key issues and perspectives surrounding the debate, conduct fieldwork and documentation in the conservancy, and learn more about mobile storytelling and the associated technologies
This is quite the assortment of skills, but they really do connect in a lot of ways. Understanding the community, and key issues surrounding it, not only give you a better and more complete understanding of the world, but also give you the capacity to tell stories using that worldview
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Everybody's asked this question at least once, myself included. What makes us ask this question in some classes, but discard it in others? I think it's because something like PPS is interest-driven. The students are there because they want to be, and they're acquiring skills that they plan to use in real life.
In this first iteration there was no narrative arc; rather, students created items and characters based on what they learned through their documentation as citizen ethnographers.
Maybe it's just me, but I've considered virtual reality to be more story-centered, as opposed to augmented reality. The way I've thought of it is, AR puts a character next to you, VR makes you a character in a new world
PPS provided the infrastruc-ture, scaffolding, and flexibility for students to act.
I think what prevents a lot of people from acting or doing is the potential barriers between them and the resources needed to do it. PPS seems to remove those barriers and invite and encourage students to act
. First, it shows students commitment to representing the debate from multiple perspectives instead of producing a story that was explicitly persuasive
A lot of times you'll see presentations on issues that are meant to be persuasive, as they say, but how about ones that are purely informative? You'll either see arguments one way or the other, with not many that simply tell you the facts and let you form your own opinion around it. I feel like it's because either side of an argument feels like they have something on the line, and something to gain for having "won."
In recent implementations of PPS, mobile technologies have emerged as key tools for supporting students’ fieldwork and shaping the media products and experi-ences they design throughout the class.
Resources for media production are virtually universal now. Cameras, software and research platforms are more available to the general public than ever, and that makes it easier to create these media products, and might even change our view of communities when looking at it with these tools
Yet risks go hand in hand with opportunities in online participation.
On a broader level, risk is an essential piece in any sort of growth or development. There is no potential success without taking some risks
Although in prin-ciple, one might expect young people to do anything online, as fits their interests, in practice it appears that they climb a fairly predictable ‘ladder of opportunities’ as they become more skilled users (Livingstone and Helsper, 2007). This ‘ladder’, which parallels that conceived in the domain of civic engagement as a ‘ladder of participa-tion’ (Hill and Tisdall, 1997), captures the finding that while many young people take the fairly basic steps (such as checking Wikipedia for schoolwork, watching clips on YouTube, or playing single-person games), fewer undertake the more complex, social, or creative activities that techno-optimists have hoped for them. The EU Kids Online project shows that most youth do not progress very far up this ladder of opportuni-ties (Livingstone, Haddon, Görzig and Ólafsson, 2011), with only a minority creating, uploading or posting content or joining participatory communities (Livingstone et al., 2012; see also Lenhart and Madden, 2005)
I think part of this may be because that in the classroom, students are often discouraged from using sources other than the ones that are required/suggested. It is assumed that students will go the easy way and cheat, instead of finding information in creative ways, so they constrain students to what they can and cannot use in the classroom. That inadvertently can give youth moving forward a narrow-sighted idea of what the internet is for and how it can be used.
She’s all, “Get a real job.” Even though, I...yeah. Whatever. My dad thinks it’s pretty cool. About a third of my friends are really supportive of it. I’d say about two thirds... actually, about one third doesn’t care at all. And then another third actually despises me for it.
It's almost like we're groomed to seek out "real jobs," even if they're not personally fulfilling, and because of that, we think that there's no time for being creative. We think it's not worth our time to be creative, because that's apparently not where the real money is.
To the extent that educa-tion confers a relative, rather than an absolute, benefit, this trend will undermine the labor market returns of higher education for those in the upper brackets.
College attendance could be a point of contention because of this right here: it's paying a large amount of money and putting in an extra load of energy for something that may only be a relative benefit. That's an interesting, if not worrying, thing to think about
She and her role playing friends critique each other’s writing and stories. She and a fellow role player from Oregon “had this sort of thing where we were reviewing each other’s work all the time ‘cause he just wanted all the input he could get.” The creative aspect of this site is part of what drew Clarissa to Faraway Lands. “It’s something I can do in my spare time, be creative and write and not have to be graded,” because, “you know how in school you’re creative, but you’re doing it for a grade so it doesn’t really count?”
That's the hardest part about writing for curriculum: yes, you are meant to be creative and explore your expression, but you're also doing it with set parameters and, more often than not, a time crunch. Writing on spare time is where I seem to do my best work, and the shared community of writers and filmmakers on the Internet, whether it's on discussion boards with writers or videos discussing different cameras and lenses, is helpful for me in learning outside of the classroom
The period from around 12 to 18 years old is a critical time when individuals form interests and social identities that are key to the connected learning model. We also see adolescence and early adulthood as periods when young people establish an orientation to schooling and learning that can carry into adulthood, and begin to make decisions that will lead them to certain job and career opportunities.
During these years of your life is where you really start to find out who you are and what it is you want to pursue. For me, it was a time where I sort of went from thing to thing, club to club, project to project, unsure of what it was that I truly wanted to do. I'm still not sure I've completely narrowed it down, but for the most part, I have ideas for what I want to do, and I'm learning the action steps I need to take to make it happen
adding value to a community by sharing her own knowledge and creating high-quality work.
This is one of the most active ways you can participate in this kind of culture. Expressing opinions or commenting on the opinions of others does make you involved, but contributing new creations and sharing knowledge that way is something I think is essential
Her passion is fantasy fiction. When friends introduced her to an online role-playing site that involved writing fiction interactive-ly,
It's amazing how there is so much access to sites and sources that one can use for interest-driven activities. Because of this shared learning community that is the internet, people share and create ways to spread learning and encourage positive growth in interest areas
The Needed Skills in the New Media CultureIf it were possible to define generally the mission of education, it could be said that its fundamental purpose is to ensure that all students bene-fit from learning in ways that allow them to participate fully in public, community, [creative,] and economic life
Why is creative put in brackets, almost like it's not meant to be included? If you ask me, that's one of the most essential things we can learn how to be. Not just for those who want to make a career out of creativity, but being able to think on your feet and come up with unique solutions to problems. Creativity is fundamental in public, community and creative life
Beyond core literacy, students need research skills. Among other things, they need to know how to access books and arti-cles through a library; to take notes on and integrate secondary sources; to assess the reliability of data; to read maps and charts; to make sense of scientific visualizations; to grasp what kinds of information are being conveyed by various systems of represen-tation; to distinguish between fact and fiction, fact and opinion; and to construct arguments and marshal evidence
Literacy is not only the comprehension of knowledge, but the application of it and the utilization as part of a greater culture
s. In a world in which the line between consumers and producers is blurring, young people are finding themselves in situations that no one would have anticipated a decade or two ago. Their writing is much more open to the public and can have more far-reaching consequences
This is ultimately why "self-publishing" is such a big deal. On the more professional level, you'll need to find a publisher for your work, but online there are countless websites dedicated to posting and self-publishing fanfiction or original work in a way that people all over the world can access and read
: “The Internet is more like a mall than a library; it resembles a gigan-tic public relations collection more than it does an archive of scholars.”31I
This also connects back to the idea of affinity groups. You don't hear many people say "let's meet up at the library" unless it's for a school project or something of the like. However, people meet at the mall all the time because it's something that's fun and engaging, more specifically something they enjoy doing
Our school systems’ inability to close this participation gap has negative consequences for everyone involved.
When remote learning became the new normal for the rest of my senior year of high school, I knew I didn't have to worry because I had both internet access and my own computer at home. I also know that there was a lot of talk and problem solving around those that didn't, and there was even conversation about supplying those kids with laptops. I'm not sure if that actually happened, though
laissez-fair
Word of the Day: laizzes-faire: a policy or attitude of letting things take their own course, without interfering
Yet the focus on negative effects of media consumption offers an incomplete picture. These accounts do not appropriately value the skills and knowledge young people are gaining through their involvement with new media, and, as a consequence, they may mislead us about the roles teachers and parents should play in helping children learn and grow
Screen time has always been a point of contention in my family, but I think it's because we often think of it as "messing around" in an unproductive way. When you think of screen time as using media and programs as ways of creating, learning or engaging, than it becomes a bit more complex
While the formal is static, the informal is innovative
I feel like this right here is the key word: innovation. When we have the opportunity to learn from ourselves, and influence this way of learning, we actually create the way that we learn about these affinities
xplores why people learn more, participate more actively, and engage more deeply with popular culture than they do with the contents of their textbook
As we discuss in class, we engage more with affinity spaces because it's stuff we like and stuff that we want to focus on. There is a definite difference in the energy of looking up something because you need to and digging deeper because you want to
ecological approac
Learning ecology, anyone? :)
The Pew study did not consider newer forms of expres-sion, such as podcasting, game modding, or machinima. Nor did it count other forms of creative expression and appropria-tion, such as music sampling in the hip-hop community. These activities are highly technological, but they use tools and tap production and distribution networks neglected in the Pew study. The study also does not include even more widespread practices, such as computer or video gaming, that can require an extensive focus on constructing and performing as fictional personas
It's incredible how things that people used to be lucky or privileged enough to have are now available to virtually everybody. If you need to make a movie on a shoestring budget, you use the camera on your phone and something as simple as iMovie. As you garner more experience, you use more professional equipment, but the tools needed to start are abundant and accessible
Many of the geeking out practices we describe in the chapters on gaming, creative production, and work involve youth engaged in passionate inter-ests who are concurrently innovating in ways that rewrite the existing rules of media engagement. For example, fans of various forms of commercial media have engaged in their own alternative readings of media and created secondary productions such as fan fi ction, video mashups, and fan art.
I'll admit that I have sometimes looked down on the concept of fan art or fan fiction, but I've come to understand that these are people who have passions for a lot of the same stuff I do, and they choose to share them through their own creative mediums. Plus, I've seen some genuinely good works surface from fanart/fanfiction
although “geeking out” describes a particular way of interacting with media and technology, this genre of participation is not necessarily driven by technology. The interests that support and encourage geeking out can vary from offl ine, nonmediated activities, such as sports, to media-driven interests, such as music, which are larger than the technological compo-nent of the interest.
I "geek out" in a variety of different topics, such as musical theatre, filmmaking, and specifically, "Star Wars"
For young people without access to digital media at home, after-school programs can be an important place for experimentation and play, provid-ing technical and social resources and a time and space for messing around with technology that they do not have at home.
This reminds me of the other reading we did for INTE 2500, the one with the Computer Clubhouse. That was really a safe haven for kids and teens to mess around with technology, to understand how to use it in ways that develop you as a person and skills to use the tools that can help you grow
By messing around and being creative with technology, Jack was able to fi nd an acceptable interim solution until he could get his iPod.
In terms of technology, what is messing around but problem solving?
In chapter 7 we describe how young people who started successful online and digital media ventures enjoyed a certain amount of time and auton-omy during which they could try out various modes of working that were different from the standard forms of part-time labor available to teenagers. Indeed, messing around requires a good deal of time for self-directed learn-ing.
"Messing around" really does help to give you some comprehension by discovering on your own. For instance, my early days of film editing were just putting together slideshows in iMovie. After that, I learned a bit more about using the camera, including music and sound effects, etc. I first discovered how to use green screen by "messing around"
As with looking around, experimentation and play are central practices for young people messing around with new media.
Interestingly, I feel like "messing around" sometimes gets a bad rep, like the connotation implies that it's unproductive or pointless. But seeing that experimentation with new technologies and media is included with "messing around" is refreshing, because messing with something can be exploring and experimenting with something new, or new ways to utilize technologies that we are already accustomed with
The vast majority of the young people we interviewed engaged in “fortuitous searching,” a term that distinguishes itself as more open ended as opposed to being goal directed. Rather than fi nding discrete forms of information, such as the exchange rate between the United States and Great Britain, the color of a particular fl ower, or the name of the twentieth U.S. president, fortuitous searching involves moving from link to link, looking around for what many teenagers describe as “random” information.
I can very much relate to this. Even when I try to find something specific, it ends up becoming this rabbit hole of different searches and different findings.
She “loved those women who would go on these voyages acting like they were boys for months, and months, and months. It was daring and crazy. And I was like, ‘I want to do that. That would be fun.’“ While this sort of adventuring is not feasible for Clarissa, her characters can live out these fantasies.
I do feel like a lot of writers, me included, pursue this in our writing: we want to create the kinds of adventures that we want to experience, the kind of stories that we want to see
Many parents, teachers, and other adults we interviewed described kids’ and teenagers’ inclination toward hanging out as “a waste of time,” a stance that seemed to be heightened when hanging out was supported by new media.
Seeing hanging out as a "waste of time" is sort of a backwards way of thinking. Sure, it could potentially be a distraction, but interactions with people and sharing interests can be an important element in growing social skills and becoming a more involved and participating member of a social group, or even society in general
For Rose, not knowing as much about the computer as Michelle produces a great deal of anxiety and leads her to closely supervise and often limit her daughter’s time online, particularly for “hanging out” and “messing around.”
It is understandable how not having knowledge about a certain concept can make you afraid of it. After all, something like the internet has a lot of nuances and potential troubles you could run into
Like other youth, Michelle uses MySpace
MySpace... now that's a name that I've not heard in a long time
use new media to help orchestrate face-to-face hanging out, but their examples also reveal how proximity, or neighborhood, affects their ability to get together.
This is pretty common. Like, if I have a friend who lives in Aurora, we'd probably call or snap each other to see if there's some place we can meet in the middle, or after school where we're both there
As we describe in this book’s introduction, contemporary teens generally see their peers at school as their primary reference point for socializing and identity construction. At the same time, they remain largely dependent on adults for providing space and new media and they possess limited opportunities to socialize with peers and romantic partners without the supervision of adults.
This sort of reminds me of the concept of "cliques." You have a "small group of people with shared interests," which is the official definition, but you also have the idea that it helps construct your identity. For instance, I was involved in theatre in high school, and so were a lot of my friends (many of whom I still keep in contact with), so that socialization sort of helped to identify me as a "theatre kid"
The distinction between a genre-based approach centered on participa-tion and a categorical approach based on individual characteristics is sig-nifi cant for a number of reasons. First, it enables us to move away from the assumption that individuals have stable media identities that are inde-pendent of contexts and situations.
The thing about a genre is that there are certain characteristics that help to define a genre, but as they say in Pirates of the Caribbean, "it's more guidelines than actual rules." By using the broader strokes of genre, they are able to include more in their research about how these different types of social interaction work
For example, Holloway and Valentine (2003) suggest the categories of “techno boys,” “lads,” “luddettes,” and “computer competent girls” to understand how gender intersects with computer-based activity and competence.
I can understand some of these, but what is a "luddette?"
The three genres of participation that we introduce in this chapter—“hanging out,” “messing around,” and “geeking out”—are also genres that are defi ned relationally. The notion of “participation genre” enables us to emphasize the relational dimensions of how subcultures and mainstream cultures are defi ned; it also allows us to use an emergent, fl exible, and interpretive rubric for framing certain forms of practice.
I've never particularly considered the idea that different ways we communicate and interact with each other are "genres" of participation, like a genre of film, book or television show. But it actually does make a lot of sense. The different ways we participate in socializing have defining characteristics that set them apart from all the rest, and maybe even some genres can come together and intertwine
Links between the clubhouse, home, and school were present but could have been stronger. D e s p i t e h i s s l i p p i n g g r a d e s a t s c h o o l , L u i s ’ s w o r k a t t h e c l u b h o u s e clearly demonstrated a rich imagination, persistence, attention to detail, and resourcefulness in furthering his own development. These characteristics are markers of the potential to thrive as a learner. Had his teachers been attuned to his expertise development earlier, they may have found ways to build on his excellent out-of-school learning skills to reengage him in academic content.
Were his "slipping grades" a result of his teachers not realizing, or just not utilizing, his skills and creativity?
His language re fl ects his attention to aspects of the expressive and designed aspects of what he creates and we hear from him terms such as “choreography,” “realistic,” and “animate,” as he described goals for his future work, marking his membership in the broader community of practice of animators
His involvement with the clubhouse, as well as his background knowledge of watching films by Jet Li, gives him a broader vocabulary
Luis was able to recruit the help of the club-house coordinators, his mother, his brother, teachers at school, and peers in the clubhouse to support his movie-making work. He also drew on Internet-based resources, professional movies, and storyboarding examples within videogames as inspirations and sources of learning.
His background and garnering of knowledge comes from a melting pot of different interests, and he was able to get support from people close to him in order to make his visions a reality
hey don’t let them go into the computer only when he’s in class. I don’t think they ... they don’t let them use the computers to do fun projects.”
In retrospect, I sort of agree with what the mother is saying here. So much of what we did in elementary school computer classes were just these projects that they assigned to us, like activities on ComicLife or TypingPal. They had these other fun apps like KidPix, but we were never really encouraged to use them
Luis’s workspace at the clubhouse was frequently crowded with boys who were very much a part of the scene, laughing and giggling while making sound effects, and gesturing with the action fi gures that appear in the movies. They con-tributed ideas and offered advice in terms of what they liked or did not like. In addi-tion to being audience and critic, they also occasionally contributed sound effects to the fi lms. Luis’s process of revision entailed re fl ecting on movies he had already made and setting goals for new ones. In some cases, this was self-critical, attempting to fi x mistakes he saw in his previous work.
Luis understands and employs the need for collaboration when working on any sort of creative effort. He knows that past mistakes are just stepping stones for him to make better films, but he also understands the need for people to be by his side to help him. I love this kid!
“To begin with, I guess he’s always been into movies and stuff so we would always take the cameras out and him and his buddies would go out there and shoot these little fi ght scenes and make little sound effects with their mouths and stuff like that and bring it back in. They made little clips of them fi ghting and stuff. We had a box of clay that we would bring out ... we showed them how to use the stop-animation tool in the software
I think it's just so cool that Luis was able to figure a lot of this stuff out, and he and his friends would think of clever ways to make things, like making all the sound effects with their mouths. It speaks volumes, not just about the program, but also about him, and what he was able to get from it
af fi nity groups
Here's one of the big terms that we discussed in our first reading for INTE 2500. Affinity groups are groups that are joined by a collective focus or interest, and this shows that what affinity group you may belong to can have a big impact on how you learn or how you understand technology
w e f o u n d t h a t p a r e n t s a d v a n c e d t h e i r c h i l d r e n ’ s l e a r n i n g w h e n they collaborated with them, learned from them, brokered outside learning opportu-nities for them, provided nontechnical support to them, or hired them to do technical work. Parents also played instrumental roles when they shared their technical expertise through informal teaching processes or provided their children with learning resources such as books or new media tools.
Parents truly are instrumental in whether or not their child gets the learning they need. By actively engaging in their child's learning, they are giving them the best possible experience in terms of their education with technology
techno-logical fl uency— de fi ned generally as the capacity to express oneself using a broad
I like the idea that being fluent in technology doesn't just mean to know how it works, but how you can use it as a way of expressing yourself
a coffee table that doubles as a jigsaw puzzle
Why does that actually sound like something I would love to do? It's just the right amount of ridiculous!
“None of this would’ve happened if I didn’t just put it out there,” he says. “Just start something and share it with the world. Trust me: Nothing is too stupid.”
I love the idea that "nothing is too stupid." It inspires me to think of crazy ideas, and maybe even follow through with them.
One invention — a pair of gloves fashioned to look like a pair of Crocs — even earned him a cease and desist letter. (He later had to change the name from “Croc Gloves” to “Gator Gloves.”)
I love how much he just relishes in the insanity that he creates. He loves the fact that he got this cease and desist letter, because it displays how much his weirdness is being noticed by people. Some hilarious stories he'll get to tell later down the line!
The FingerBeanies: A set of mini beanies that cover just your fingertips.
You ever seen those fingerless gloves that people sometimes wear? Couple that with these finger beanies, and you've got a full glove!
The products on Benedetto’s list shared a theme: They solved non-existent problems
If he created a solution for a non-existent problem, does that mean the problem now does exist and he has created the problem and the solution simultaneously?
But they’re also a call to action — a reminder that we should all put our ideas out into the world, no matter how zany they may be.
This can be very much a wake up call for creators, like a lot of us plan to be. If you think your idea is too weird to work, just look as this guy. He might give you a new sense of motivation in pursuing and embracing the weird
“The patronizer uses your emotions as weapons against you and makes you feel small, so that he can feel big,” Tersigni said.
I found it interesting when it mentions "using your emotions as weapons." A lot of times, we actually use them that way. We use light and humor as weapons against pain or hardship. What is anger but a weapon against repression, releasing that tension that has boiled up for so long?
“They’ll say things like, ‘I agree with your point, but you shouldn’t use that tone or you’ll alienate your audience.’”
I find it fascinating that they would say you'll "alienate your audience." How do they know what your audience is?
‘Let me explain your lived experience.’”
Everyone thinks they're an expert, and as a result, everybody is a critic whether or not they realize it. It can be an interesting tick with people, thinking that our way is the only way. Sometimes, you just gotta let people do what they do
a platform-specific indication that Tersigni had playfully captured everyday instances of misogyny that many women found uncomfortably familiar.
Sometimes, humor is actually a good way of shedding light on a subject that is either unseen or ignored. By bringing humor to this kind of topic, it can be a subtle but effective motion for change