Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture
In this episode I unpack Jenkins et al.’s (2005) publication titled “Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st century,” which summarizes the three challenges in media literacy education and provides several core media literacy skills that can address these challenges.
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Welcome back to another episode of the
CSK8 podcast
my name is jared o'leary each week i
alternate between
an interview with a guest or multiple
guests and a solo episode where i unpack
some scholarship
this week's episode is an unpacking
scholarship episode where i will talk
about the paper
titled confronting the challenges of
participatory culture
media education for the 21st century
this is a white paper so it is available
for free anybody can read it
and i include a link to it in the show
notes and this particular white paper
was written by henry jenkins
katie clinton ravi puroshotma alice j
robison and margaret wiggle apologies if
i mispronounced anybody's names
alright so you might be wondering well
what exactly is participatory culture so
here's a quote from page three
quote 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
end quote alright so there are four
main forms of participatory culture
these include
affiliations expressions collaborative
problem solving
and circulations okay so affiliations
are like
the memberships or maybe even some like
formal or informal
group connections that you might have so
being a part of like csta
or isti those are affiliations however
it could also be that you are affiliated
with certain ways of making so for
example if you consider yourself to be a
maker
and that is an affiliation with maker
culture so it doesn't have to be like a
formal
here's my membership card now the
expressions are the
things that you create within those
affiliations so for example if you are a
maker then it would be the things that
you make or the things that you share
whether it be a tutorial on how to
create something or the actual product
that you created these are all forms of
expressions
now you'll notice in the episode two
weeks ago where i
unpacked a paper by resnick and rusk the
expressions within that particular paper
were the
projects made in scratch so coding can
be an expression
okay so the next form of participatory
culture is collaborative problem solving
so
in collaborative problem solving you are
working together with other people
in some kind of a shared discussion
that is attempting to solve some kind of
a problem now these teams can be formal
or informal teams
so you could be working together with
other cs educators to try and figure out
how do i best
design a learning experience that is
around abstraction and accounts for
multiple ways of learning
and being posing a question like this to
other members of like csta
could then engage in some kind of formal
problem solving
or it could be informal okay and the
last form of participatory culture
circulations so this is
the flow of media so examples might
include
a retweet this is circulating some ideas
or like this podcast is a form of
circulation if you are a blogger like
dan schneider is which listen to his
interview it's really good
any of those forms of sharing the
content or sharing the expressions
with various affiliations that is a form
of circulation
all right so jenkins at all mentions
there are some potential benefits of
engaging in participatory cultures
so these include quote opportunities for
peer-to-peer learning
a changed attitude toward intellectual
property the diversification of cultural
expression
the development of skills valued in the
modern workplace
and a more empowered concern of
citizenship end quote
that's from page three while there are
some benefits jenkins that all mentions
that there are some
potential concerns that need to be
addressed so these concerns are
one the participation gap two the
transparency problem
and three the ethics challenge all right
so this paper is going to unpack
each of those three particular
challenges and also talk about the
different forms of participatory culture
a little bit more
so what's interesting to note and this
builds off of some of the ideas in the
unpacking scholarship episode from two
weeks ago
is that quote participatory culture
shifts the focus of literacy
from one of individual expression to
community involvement
the new literacies almost all involve
social skills developed through
collaboration and networking
these skills build on the foundation of
traditional literacy
research skills technical skills and
critical analysis skills taught in the
classroom
end quote that's from page four so the
various skills
are outlined on page four and they
include
play performance simulation
appropriation multitasking distributed
cognition
collective intelligence judgment
transmedia navigation
networking and negotiation all right so
i'm going to unpack each of those
individually a little bit later in this
episode
so one of the interesting quotes that's
in here is that there was a study that
is cited and this study was from 2005 it
said that
be considered media creators
now i'd imagine that that number is
significantly higher with all the people
who
are engaging in platforms at the moment
like tiktok or who are
sharing things on youtube or streaming
things on services like twitch etc
so 15 years ago at least at the time of
this recording
more than half of teens were considered
to be some kind of a media creator
so the authors are arguing that this is
a very important skill to discuss
and to start learning within classes
however the authors also point out that
there are some
equity issues in terms of who is able to
create and who tends to create
so for example there are differences in
percentage of people who engage
and create media depending on if you're
in urban setting if you're in a suburban
setting a rural setting
depending on your gender etc now this
study also didn't account for different
ways of making
media such as podcasting it didn't also
account for
things like gaming or creating music
like in the hip hop community or
sampling etc
so even though the numbers are high it
didn't account for many things that the
authors point out
was relevant when this paper was written
and is even more relevant
today
okay so that was kind of the intro of
some of the main things that are going
to be discussed in this particular paper
so
now the authors dive into well what
exactly is participatory culture
so participatory culture has five key
characteristics
and they are quote one with relatively
low barriers to artistic expression and
civic engagement
two with strong support for creating and
sharing one's creations with others
three with some type of informal
mentorship whereby what is known by the
most experienced is passed along to
novices
or where members believe that their
contributions matter
five where members feel some degree of
social connection with one another
at least they care what other people
think about what they have created
end quote from page seven here's an
interesting quote that really contrasts
what happens
in school settings this is also from
page seven quote
not every member must contribute but all
must believe they are free to contribute
when ready
and that what they contribute will be
appropriately valued in quote
so thinking back to some of the previous
episodes like the pedagogy of the press
episodes where i've
talked about how school can be
oppressive and some of the other
episodes where i have kind of talked
about how
the kids that i worked with could engage
in classes in different levels and
different ways
some being more active while others
being more passive
this was heavily informed initially by
this particular paper
so in a discussion that's going to come
out
down the road with melissa raspberry
from american
institute for research we talk about how
it's difficult to
measure participation in online spaces
and informal places
in particular because people engage with
content
and they don't necessarily share with
others
how they are engaging with that content
so as an example if you read a really
cool article on somebody's blog you
might go and implement that in the
classroom
that person who wrote the blog might not
have any idea that you did that unless
you go back
and actually share that with somebody
else so like responding to their blog
with a comment
so with all that being said i think it's
important for us as educators to kind of
consider
what kinds of participation count and
when is it okay to kind of just
sit back and give some time to think
through some things so one of the other
things that i have mentioned in previous
episodes that
was heavily informed by this particular
paper is that it's not as
important what tools we're using but how
we are using it and to what ends
so here's a quote that kind of
summarizes that quote
a focus on expanding access to new
technologies
carries us only so far if we do not also
foster the skills
and cultural knowledge necessary to
deploy those skills toward our own ends
in quote that's from page eight
so if we expand this quote and think of
it in
the context of computer science as a
whole
in my opinion it is not okay to just do
computer science for the sake of doing
computer science
but finding ways to use these skills and
concepts and practices
that one gains through an engagement of
computer science
in a way that is individually meaningful
for the person who is learning it
so in other words making it so that kids
have the opportunity to take what
they're learning and applying it in a
way that is interesting and relevant to
them
this connects with the unpacking
scholarship episode that i did
on l'oreal adson billings's seminal
paper on
culturally relevant pedagogy but it also
just connects with many of the
discussions i've had with other guests
and unpacking scholarship episodes on
interest-driven learning and the
importance of contextualizing learning
which chris woods talked about in a
recent interview
i think released last week so make sure
you listen to that if you haven't
alright so the next section of the paper
talks about affinity spaces
which is a concept that is built off of
laven wenger's
community of practice but it is in
particular
designed for more informal and online
spaces
however it can be applicable in a whole
bunch of different scenarios
and this concept is developed mainly by
james paul g
who's a professor of mine and who i've
talked about in several other episodes
now affinity spaces according to g
provide opportunities for learning
because
quote they are sustained by common
endeavors that bridge differences in
age class race gender and educational
level
and because people can participate in
various ways according to their skills
and interests
because they depend on peer-to-peer
teaching with each participant
constantly motivated
to acquire new knowledge or refine their
existing skills
and because they allow each participant
to feel like an expert
while tapping the expertise of others
for example
black finds that beta reading or
editorial feedback
provided by online fan communities helps
contributors grow as writers
mastering not only the basic building
blocks of sentence construction and
narrative structure
but also pushing them to be close
readers of the works that inspire them
participants in the beta reading process
learn both by receiving feedback on
their own work
and by giving feedback to others
creating an ideal peer-to-peer learning
community
end quote from page nine okay while a
great example of reading
and learning within online spaces i want
to now kind of apply this in computer
science education so in my own
dissertation
one of the things that was really
interesting is people were constantly
sharing their source code with other
people within this online discussion
forum and asking for comments
and ways to refine things or even
engaging in some kind of collaborative
problem solving like hey
i've got this bug i can't figure out how
to do this thing can somebody take a
look at my code and
help me solve this so what could be
argued
is that people are learning not only by
reading other people's code
but by also reading other people's
comments about their own code
or by providing feedback to other people
so it's this interesting
way of learning by sharing
or by learning by responding to people
who are sharing
so one of the things that i tried to do
in the classroom was find ways to do
this
so encouraging kids to share their
projects so that
other classes other grade levels could
read their code and respond to it
this kind of feedback would help people
learn
by sharing their own creative
expressions and help people learn by
going oh wow that's a really cool
example of a project i wonder how i
could change it to do x y or z
i wonder how i could take this code and
apply it in my own projects
one of the interesting things that is
also noted on page nine is that
people are able to come and go as they
please through informal learning
communities
so if an individual is in a community
and they are not finding that their
needs are met they are not able to
solve the problems that they're trying
to solve or they don't feel that they
are able to
get as much out of the collaborative
process as they would like then they can
go to another affinity space or
informal place or even create their own
now this is very different
than within formalized education within
formalized education you are
required to be within certain spaces or
places
in classes and subject areas and you
don't have that luxury of being able to
go you know what this isn't really
working for me i'm gonna go find a new
class or i'm gonna go find a new teacher
et cetera all right so the next section
of the paper after the affinity spaces
discussion
talks about the three core problems or
challenges related to participatory
culture
and on why we should teach media
literacy to kids
so let's unpack the first one the
participation gap
so one that we are finding in this era
of covid is that there
is a huge lack of access
to devices or adequate internet speeds
to even engage
in online or remote teaching and
learning
one of the good things that has come out
of covid is educators and districts
understanding that what children have
access to at home
has a huge impact on their learning so
prior to this
one of the things that jenkins at all
mentions is that
kids who have access to fast internet
speeds
and powerful computers at home have more
opportunities to engage in these
participatory literacies
than students who do not this can create
a huge participation gap in terms of
everybody getting equal amount of time
within schools
ideally to be able to create something
but then outside of schools
on weeknights and on weekends the kids
who have access to
devices and internet are able to dive
much deeper into something
so how this relates to computer science
i think about the kids in
my school who had access to devices and
internet at home
and said they would continue learning
whether it be continuing through the
khan academy course or continuing to
work on their project in scratch
or being able to make something in xcode
on their computer at home
etc these were all ways that kids were
able to continue their participation
at home outside of school on their own
time
but the kids who didn't have that kind
of access
were unable to continue their learning
in the same ways that they could in
school
now because these participation gaps are
often not discussed in education
some kids might look at others and go oh
well i'm just not naturally
good at this because when i'm in my
class in my computer science class and i
look at my peers project
theirs is so much more interesting than
mine it has way more code it's got way
more sprites it's a lot more fun
etc but what they might not be realizing
is that that kid might have the
opportunity to go home and work on it
like i'd have some kids who would turn
in like projects on like
because they just wanted to go home and
work on it i didn't ask them to
but they were able to this can have a
huge impact on the quality of the
creative expressions that kids are able
to do within computer science
just because they have more time and
more ability to do this
and i may think about this in relation
to other areas so this
so this idea builds off of what was
popularized by malcolm gladwell but the
rule which really isn't a rule that was
developed by k
anders ericsson a sports psychologist
so the more time that you're able to
dedicate towards
something whether it's a literacy a
skill a
sport or whatever as long as you're
engaging in it in some kind of
deliberate way
and are intentionally striving to become
better at it a lot of research indicates
that you are going to consistently
outperform the people who put in less
time
into it hands down across basically any
subject area
cut that okay so that was the
participation gap
so here's the second challenge the
transparency problem
okay so the transparency problem quote
assumes that children are actively
reflecting on their media experiences
and can thus articulate what they learn
from their participation
so in other words just because kids are
engaging in technology and
are engaging in some of these
participatory ways of
creating and sharing and circulating and
learning etc
does not mean they're actually
critically reflecting on their processes
and engagement and thinking through
potential legal ramifications
or social ramifications et cetera so for
example
taking the works of others and not
giving credit whereas
this due or responding in ways that
are considered to be bullying or hurtful
or abusive
or creating a program that allows them
to
do distributed denial of service attacks
so ddoses
on a network like what happens to a lot
of gaming networks
so these are all ways of engaging in
media
or socially through technology that
might not
include critical reflections which can
cause some
harm which gets into the third challenge
which is the ethics challenge
so kids might not be aware of the
ethical ways of engaging
in media or in computer science so we as
educators need to
help assist them with finding the
ethical ways of doing things
so as an example some kids are really
interested in hacking and want to learn
how to do that but there are ethical
ways of hacking that can actually
help companies by finding flaws and
reporting those flaws as opposed to
exploiting those flaws all right so on
page 18 the authors kind of summarize
three core questions that kind of guide
a potential
response to these challenges quote
how do we ensure that every child has
access to the skills
and experiences needed to become a full
participant in the social
cultural economic and political future
of our society
how do we ensure that every child has
the ability to articulate his or her
understanding
of how media shapes perceptions of the
world how do we ensure that every child
has been socialized into the emerging
ethical standards
that should shape their practices as
media practices
as media makers and as participants in
online communities
end quote all right so the rest of the
paper kind of provides a framework for
addressing
these three questions around those three
problems or challenges okay so the next
section is titled
what should we teach rethinking literacy
in this particular section they're
talking about how what they're arguing
for
is not a removal of the old forms of
engaging with literacy so for example
reading and writing text but engaging in
the
new social skill of media literacies
that expand upon
and complement the old forms of engaging
with literacy
tying this to computer science if we
think of coding as a literacy
they're not saying that we should get
rid of everything else and only focus on
coding but instead
incorporate coding into other forms of
literacy
so for example scratch is really good at
combining media literacy
the ability to create stories and games
and animations
with coding literacy because you have to
use algorithms to create
the stories games etc as another example
instead of doing
a book report on something you could
encourage kids to
engage in coding practices that allow
them to
synthesize and summarize their
understandings of the book through
a coding project so this combines the
old form of literacy of
writing a synthesis or summary
of something that you read by applying
it into
a project that involves code and other
forms of
media now one of the interesting quotes
from page 20
is that quote the new media literacies
should be seen as social skills as ways
of interacting within a larger community
and not simply an individualized skill
to be used for personal expression
end quote so this relates to the paper
that i unpacked two weeks ago
by resnick and rusk it resonates because
those authors
also mentioned the ability to engage in
creative expression
through a platform such as scratch
however it also emphasized the
importance of
engaging in a community and
participating in it in ways that allow
people to share and learn from each
other
so as computer science educators one of
the things that we can take into account
are
two frameworks for learning so one is
constructionism which is the idea that
you can create and learn through the
creation
of a product but constructivism which is
the idea that you learn through social
interactions
so if you combine those two approaches
and encourage kids to
create something in some kind of a
programming language but
also share their understandings and
learn from
their peers in some kind of a
collaborative and communicative
process this can make it so that kids
are learning not only through
the creation of an expression but
through the discussions around that
creative process
so in other words encourage peer-to-peer
learning encourage sharing of an
understanding
encourage kids to share their project
with somebody else get some feedback
revise what they're doing and keep
iterating on their abilities and their
understandings
in computer science education now i will
say this is very different than many
other classes and approaches
so when administrators were coming to my
room they would frequently comment on
the noise that was in the room because
one there's music playing through the
speakers
because i always had edm going but two
there was also
just so much dialogue with kids getting
up and walking around and talking to
each other and sharing
and it was mostly on task dialogue like
the administrators were like wow they're
really engaged
in coding and they're really engaged in
talking about this in
in co in this class then this was
different when they walk into
that same class in a math setting where
everyone was sitting and silently
working on a worksheet or something
there was no dialogue there was no
peer-to-peer sharing and learning so
it's something that can be valued and
can be used
in a computer science context now on
page 21 one of the things that the
authors mentions
is it doesn't need to just occur within
the classes that you're working on it
doesn't have to be within
even the school that you're working on
there are ways to make it so that kids
can collaborate
long distance whether it's synchronously
or asynchronously
so some educators that i know they have
back when classes were meeting in person
they would set up a
computer that was virtually connected to
another class that met at the same time
and kids could go up and ask each other
questions like hey what are you working
on hey what are you learning how did you
do this how did you do that
other educators like especially in the
high school settings
will also encourage engaging in
discussion forums or going to
resources like stack overflow and trying
to find
potential answers to questions that they
might have
and obviously critically reflecting
those answers to see if they fit within
what they're trying to do
but these are all ways of engaging in
long-distance learning
or collaborating with people outside of
the school
so what i would encourage you to do is
try and figure out ways to do that
one way might be to create studios in
platforms like scratch
another might be through a class website
or even a shared website
where multiple schools across the
district or across
states or countries might be able to
share understandings with each other
another way might be to create a
discussion forum or a wiki
that kids can use and is not publicly
available but is only accessible
to a group of teachers that you are
collaborating with
and their classes that they work with
etc all right so next up
in the paper is a discussion on the core
media literacy skills that i very
briefly mentioned at the start of this
podcast
so the first one that they talk about is
play which again
really resonates with resnick and rusk's
article from two weeks ago
okay so here's how the offices define
play quote
the capacity to experiment with one's
surroundings
as a form of problem solving end quote
from page 22.
and here's another quote that kind of
elaborates on
this quote play as psychologists and
anthropologists have long recognized
is key in shaping children's relations
to their bodies
tools communities surroundings and
knowledge
most of children's earliest learning
comes through playing with the materials
at hand
through play children try on roles
experiment culturally central processes
manipulate core resources and explore
their immediate environments
as they grow older they can motivate
other forms of learning
end quote from page 22 now the authors
note that while play
is generally viewed as fun there are
many times
when the process is a grind
so as an example if you're creating a
game that involves
some kind of physics it might be
difficult to
code the object detection or
to code the right amount of
friction or gravity or etc in a game
this is a tedious and laborious process
that
isn't necessarily viewed as fun but is
engaged in
in a very fierce and passionate way
because kids want to learn how to do it
to create their game
and the reason why they want to invest
the time into it
that the authors would argue and that i
would argue is because they're motivated
to do it
if however you were to give a worksheet
on friction
or on gravity or whatever
in like a physics class kids might not
be interested in it
but if you suddenly situate that
knowledge and that understanding within
a problem for creating a game
suddenly there's a lot of interest in it
and by engaging in play
and in particular in some computational
thinking practices like debugging and
whatnot
it makes it so that failure is not a
huge problem it's oh i have this bug
that i needed to solve
and i'm going to solve it in order to
fix my game this is something that the
authors
really argue is a good thing and that is
thankfully something that is a huge part
of computer science education it's one
of those standards where even when you
don't want to you're going to engage in
some debugging
so towards the end of this on page 24
the authors
have the following quote play in the
context argued here is a mode of active
engagement
one that encourages experimentation and
risk taking
one that views the process of solving a
problem as important as finding the
answer
one that offers clearly defined goals
and roles that encourage strong
identifications and emotional
investments end quote from page 24.
now by the way after each one of these
discussions on
the core media literacy skills there is
a section that says what might be done
and within that there are several
paragraphs of how
this particular core media literacy
skill might be applied in a different
subject area
rather than summarizing and reading
through each one of those i'm going to
kind of
embed some of the ideas relevant to
computer science education
into the discussion of each of these
however because this paper is free
i highly recommend that you actually go
through and read through
these to get some more ideas this is
just a very quick overview of
a paper that is like 70 pages long all
right so the next core media literacy
skill
is simulation here's a quote from page
what simulation is quote the ability to
interpret
and construct dynamic models of
real-world processes end quote
this obviously highly relates to
computer science education
as there are standards that are related
to this
now the authors note that in this
discussion
kids learn a lot by engaging in
simulations
through video games and there are a lot
of authors who discuss that
so for example check out works by james
paul g
or kurt squire or sasha barab
or or constant stein's killer
etc i'll link to the google scholar
profiles in
the show notes so if you're interested
in learning more about this
you'll be able to dive deeper into some
of their publications now one of the
things that i
add is that instead of just engaging in
simulations
from a computer science context we can
actually encourage kids
to create these simulations so while it
is an
awesome core media literacy skill to
engage in and learn from simulations
might be even more interesting to create
them
all right so the next core media
literacy skill is performance
so here's a quote from page 28 on what
it is
quote the ability to adopt alternative
identities for the purpose of
improvisation and discovery end quote
so the authors note that kids can learn
a lot by taking on
different identities and so one way that
we can actually situate this
within like some of the common core
standards related to ela
is taking on either fictional
or non-fiction identities and thinking
through different scenarios
or problems through different
perspectives so one of the computer
science standards is
seeking diverse perspectives for some
kind of a product that you're creating
so whether it be
software or hardware or whatever you get
perspectives from different people
from different cultures different
abilities or disabilities from
different genders et cetera like they
all can provide different forms of
feedback
all right so the next one appropriation
so this quote is from page
sample and remix media content
end quote now appropriation has kind of
been given a bad label lately
in that a lot of well-intentioned
individuals label
many things as cultural appropriation
and are saying that it's problematic
however there is a difference between
cultural appropriation
or just appropriation and
misappropriation
so there are many ways to engage
inappropriate content in a way that is
meaningful
and relevant and appropriate and still
maintains
respect for the person who created
the object and then there are ways to do
it in problematic ways
so i'm not going to get into a rant on
my thoughts about
the misuse of cultural appropriation and
misappropriation
but just know that the way that jenkins
and the other authors
are describing this are not how most
people describe
appropriation nowadays so as an example
of the ways that they kind of talk about
it
think of a scratch project in particular
it's really easy to click the remix
button clicking the remix button and
making your own variation of that is an
appropriation
and it is something that is encouraged
within communities like scratch
or platforms like scratch another way of
appropriating is by going to something
like stack overflow
taking somebody else's code and
modifying it to do something
for your particular program that is
another form of
appropriation you are essentially
remixing
somebody else's code if we think about
this outside of computer science
one of the easy ways you can think of
appropriation is in music
so i did a paper in my master's on
appropriation that was involved in wrap
and how
the mini sampling techniques and
remixing techniques take little snippets
of sounds or beats or melodies or
whatever
and applies it in some kind of a new
context and combines it with other
artists so it's a way
of basically paying homage to
musicians who have came before the
artists and
taking some of their ideas and remixing
them in a new way or appropriating them
in a new way
another example of this outside of music
or computer science is fan fiction so
fan fiction is basically when
people take some kind of a work of
fiction and they
create side stories or side paths
related to it so they build off of it
so for example in harry potter there's
fan fiction around that where people
will take the characters within the
world of harry potter
and will make their own side stories for
like ron
or for harry or for whoever that they
really like
this is a form of appropriation that the
authors are talking about
now tying this back again into computer
science we can use appropriation
in the classroom so for example if kids
are really into a particular
anime or a particular video game or
work of fiction we can essentially
engage in our own version of fan fiction
through like storytelling in platforms
like scratch or
creating a game based off of a game etc
these are all forms of appropriation
that we can engage in in computer
science classes okay so the next core
media literacy skill is multitasking so
here's a quote from page
the ability to scan one's environment
and shift focus onto salient details
on an ad hoc basis end quote so here's a
quote from page 35 that
talks about this a little bit more quote
instead of focusing on narrowing
attention
young people often respond to a rich
media environment by multitasking
scanning for relevance shifts in the
information flow while simultaneously
taking in
multiple stimuli multitasking and
attention should not be seen as
oppositional forces
rather we should think of them as two
complementary skills
both strategically employed by the brain
to intelligently manage constraints
on short-term memory whereas attention
seeks to prevent
information overload by controlling what
information enters
short-term memory successful
multitaskers seek to reduce demands on
short-term memory
by mapping where different information
is externally stored within their
immediate environment end quote
so in other words multitasking is to
being able to look at
a wide range of information and to be
able to kind of
draw out the important information that
is relevant at the given moment
in particular it is being able to
respond to that overwhelming amount of
information
so in computer science education
multitasking might be encouraging people
to find answers
by going out to search for it on the web
and being able to sift through a bunch
of information
and find what is relevant and responding
to that
by applying it into their problem
all right so the next core media
literacy skill is distributed cognition
this one in particular has really had a
profound impact on me
so here's a quote on page 37 that talks
about what it is
quote the ability to interact
meaningfully with tools that expand our
mental capacities
end quote so as an easy example of
distributed cognition
think of the contacts on your phone
so on your phone you likely have the
ability to save
a person's full name a person's address
a person's phone number maybe their
email address maybe their
social media handles etc and you can do
that for hundreds if not
thousands of people on your phone the
way that this is distributed cognition
is it allows you to not have to store
that information into your own brain but
instead
you are offloading that information onto
your phone
so that way you can focus on other
things another very simple example is
that a calculator is a form of
distributed cognition
although you could sit there and by hand
like do
all sorts of large equations and
problems a calculator allows you to
solve more complex math problems
much more faster by simply inputting in
the
equation or formula so you can focus on
the answer as it relates to the problem
you are trying to solve
rather than having to focus on the
individual details of
solving the math equation the authors
point out that distributed cognition can
also
relate to social productions of
knowledge
which ties into the very next media
literacy skill
which is collective intelligence okay so
collective intelligence here's a quote
from page 39
quote the ability to pool knowledge and
compare nodes with others towards a
common goal
end quote okay so one really easy
example of collective intelligence is a
wiki
so a wiki on any particular topic
is basically an article about something
that is
collaboratively written and revised by
hundreds if not thousands of people so
rather than having to rely on one source
of information to
explain something or elaborate on
something you are in
collective intelligence is tapping into
many people and their expertise or
intelligences
on a particular subject alright so how
distributed cognition
and collective intelligence might work
within a class so think
of all the kids in your classes and
think about how they all have different
types of expertise in relation to
computer science so some kids that i
knew were really good at creating player
controls
other kids i knew were really good at
creating physics while some are really
good at conditionals etc
what i would do in my classes is
whenever a kid would have a problem
and they'd ask their friends for help
and a couple of their friends couldn't
help they would typically come to me and
say hey
i'm having trouble with x what i would
typically respond with is
oh susie is awesome at helping people
with x
how about you go ask susie and they'll
be able to help you
so this is a form of distributed
cognition where you're distributing
forms of expertise across
groups of people so it doesn't have to
just be with tools now
how this relates to collective
intelligence is the class as
a whole was able to work together
to kind of solve some kind of problem
whether it be
a project that they are working on in
groups or
just computer science as a whole now
what
be really neat and ideal is engaging in
distributed cognition and collective
intelligence outside of just the class
that you are working with
so connecting kids with others within
the school
outside of the school outside of the
district etc now the authors point out
that this approach is very different
than what typically goes on in schools
so here's a quote from page
often seek to develop generalists rather
than allowing students to assume
different roles based on their emerging
expertise
the idea of the renaissance man was
someone who knew everything or at least
knew a great deal about a range of
different topics
the idea of a collective intelligence is
a community that knows everything
and individuals who know how to tap the
community to acquire knowledge on a
just-in-time basis
minimally schools should be teaching
students to thrive in both worlds
having a broad background on a range of
topics but also knowing
when they should turn to a larger
community for relevant expertise
end quote that is such an important
quote and it
really resonates with my own approach to
all the classes that i worked with
whether it was k-12 or higher education
highly recommend finding a way to apply
these different core media literacy
skills in the class and again
read the actual paper to get even more
ideas this podcast is a very short
well relatively short summary of what
you'll find in the paper itself
all right so the next core media
literacy skill is judgment which is
quote the ability to evaluate the
reliability and credibility of different
information
sources end quote from page 43. all
right
this has been discussed a lot since this
particular paper came out 15 years ago
in 2005.
so think about all the claims for fake
news etc
and alternative facts or whatever that's
going on
in political and social environments
right now but tying it into computer
science education
kids need to be able to verify is this a
reliable source of information so when
you're searching for something online
you're trying to find some kind of
a solution to a bug or a problem or
whatever
kids need to be able to identify is this
reliable in
source of information should i trust
this so it's not only important
information
just in social context but it's also
important to be able to engage with this
in computer science context okay so the
next chord media literacy skill is trans
media navigation
so this is quote the ability to deal
with the flow of stories and
information across multiple modalities
end quote
from page 46. so an example of this is
learning about a particular subject area
so if you were
a computer science teacher who
is brand new to learning a particular
programming language
you might engage in transmedia
navigation by trying to learn more about
a particular topic
so for example if you're trying to
figure out how a language
deals with different versions of
conditionals
you could read a blog post you could
watch a youtube video
you could listen to a podcast you could
look at somebody's code
etc these are all forms of media that
you can engage with
and as you're navigating across these
different types of media whether it's
a video or audio or text based or
whatever
these are all forms of media that you
are navigating through and so that's why
it's called transmedia
navigation so tying this into the
classroom one of the things that i would
recommend
is with kids in your class encouraging
them to try and find a
variety of different sources and
platforms
for learning more about a particular
topic so rather than always going to
stack overflow or always going to a
particular youtuber who
answers coding questions or whatever
encourage
getting a variety of perspectives and a
variety of media sources to assist with
understanding all right so the next core
media literacy
skill is networking so this is quote the
ability to search for
synthesize and disseminate information
end quote
from page 49. so here's a good quote
from page 50 that distinguishes
transmedia navigation with networking
quote if transmedia navigation involves
learning to understand the relations
between different media systems
networking involves the ability to
navigate across different social
communities
end quote so one way you might think of
networking
is engaging with different types of
social communities in terms of
maybe you'll encourage kids to
communicate with other kids
for an answer or maybe across different
grade levels
or maybe they might ask different
teachers for help or maybe they might
ask
professional programmers for help or a
professor etc
these are all different types of social
communities that might be considered
within the networking
skill and depending on the kinds of
firewalls and things that are in place
with your district you may or may not be
able to engage in some kinds of
networking
versus others depending on the grade
levels you are working with
but again going back to what i said
previously this encourages a
multi-perspectival approach
in terms of you're not just engaging
with different media sources
but you're also engaging with different
perspectives from different communities
or different types of people that you
are
seeking expertise from so one thing that
we could do
is potentially encourage social media
within our class but again
that's really kind of up to
administrative policies and whatnot and
what you're able to get away with
in your classes alright so the very last
core media literacy skill
is negotiation here's a quote from page
quote the ability to travel across
diverse communities
discerning and respecting multiple
perspectives and grasping and following
alternative sets of norms in quote
here's a quote from page 53. 53
it becomes increasingly critical to help
students acquire skills in
understanding multiple perspectives
respecting and even embracing diversity
of views
understanding a variety of social norms
and negotiating between
conflicting opinions and quote so while
engaging in
all these different platforms and
different social groups
it is important for students to
understand that each platform or social
group has different norms in terms of
the expectations for how you're supposed
to engage
so the authors argue that we need to be
able to negotiate in order to fit within
these norms or expectations
well i would argue that this approach
that they're calling negotiation is
useful
for participatory culture it's also just
useful for general social engagement
i wish more people were willing to
listen to and respect multiple
perspectives
that would be wonderful right now but
you know it's 2020.
now if you want to explore this topic
some more check out the interview with
brian brown
it is a fantastic discussion on
discourse and language as it relates to
education
all right so the next section of the
paper is titled who should respond a
systematic approach to media
education so in this section it provides
suggestions for how schools after school
and parents
might respond to new media literacy
education
while this section is useful i'm not
going to summarize it here because
much of what is discussed i've kind of
already talked about
in the earlier parts of this episode
alright so the paper concludes with a
one-page discussion on the challenge
ahead ensuring that all benefit from the
expanding media landscape
there is a quote from page 61 that kind
of
ends this paper quote how can we ensure
that all students benefit from learning
in ways that allow them to participate
fully in public
community creative and economic life
how do we guarantee that the rich
opportunities afforded by the expanding
media landscape are available to all
what can we do through schools after
school programs and the home to give our
youngest children
a head start and allow our more mature
youth the chance to develop and grow as
effective participants and ethical
communicators
this is a challenge that faces education
at all levels at the dawn of a new era
of participatory culture
end quote from page 61. so if we take
that sentiment and apply it to computer
science education
this strongly relates to what i was
talking about two weeks ago with the
discussion on resnick and rusk's recent
article
on coding at the crossroads so if we
think that
computer science or coding is something
that
people should engage in within schools
in after school programs at home
etc how can we do it in a way that helps
them become
more effective participants within
computer science
education and computer science community
and become ethical communicators
and creators so as always i like to kind
of end
these unpacking scholarship episodes
with a discussion
on some of my lingering thoughts or
questions
so when i initially read this paper it
was in 2012
so about eight years ago and my
main lingering question was okay how
could i do this
in a classroom so when i went back into
the classroom after i finished my
coursework i was
intentionally trying to find ways to
test these
approaches or skills and attempt to
apply them into the classroom
whether it was in the k-12 setting like
in the elementary and middle school
coding programs i worked with the high
school drum line
or in the undergrad and graduate courses
that i was facilitating at universities
in each one of these contexts i was
trying to apply the different core media
literacy skills that i have briefly
mentioned in this
podcast and so what i'm going to
recommend for any educator
is to actually go through and read
through the paper itself
get some ideas and try and apply them
into the classes that you work with
in some way hopefully this podcast has
helped with that
but what i will say is that having
attempted these in the class
it can work and it can work really well
kids really enjoyed my class generally
speaking i really enjoyed my classes
they were a lot of fun to facilitate
there was so much excitement with like
kids being able to create things that
were interesting to them
and engage in media and computer science
and coding
in relevant and interesting ways and it
was heavily informed by this particular
paper
so i've talked about the different
successes and the things that have
worked well
in other interviews and unpacking
scholarship episodes
i'm going to just kind of leave with the
question of
how might you apply these core media
literacy skills in your class
whether you are a full-time computer
science educator or you are an educator
who is integrating computer science
or you are a person who is interested in
computer science but haven't really
tried anything yet there are many
interesting things that you can apply
from this paper
in your classroom whether that's a
formalized classroom or an informal
classroom i hope this podcast was a good
teaser to encourage you to want to read
the actual paper
again you can find it by going to the
show notes which are
linked to in the description of the app
that you're listening to this on
or by simply going to jared o'leary.com
if you enjoyed this episode
please consider sharing with somebody
else and stay tuned next week for
another interview
and two weeks from now for another
unpacking scholarship episode
i hope you're all having a wonderful
week and are staying safe
Article
Jenkins, H., Clinton, K., Purushotma, R., Robison, A. J., & Weigel, M. (2005). Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st century.
My One Sentence Summary
This paper summarizes the three challenges in media literacy education and provides several core media literacy skills that can address these challenges.
Some Of My Lingering Questions/Thoughts
How can we apply the core media literacy skills in the classroom?
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