Education in an emerging participatory culture

A paper co-authored by Henry Jenkins, Director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, titled Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century, considers the proliferation of online content creation and networking activities by teens in the USA.

Jenkins’ paper explains that most of these teens are involved in participatory cultures:

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).”

A growing body of scholarship suggests potential benefits of these forms of participatory culture, including 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 conception of citizenship. 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.

The new skills include:

  • Play — the capacity to experiment with one’s surroundings as a form of problem-solving.
  • Performance — the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery.
  • Simulation — the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-world processes.
  • Appropriation — the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content.
  • Multitasking — the ability to scan one’s environment and shift focus as needed to salient details.
  • Distributed Cognition — the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities.
  • Collective Intelligence — the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal.
  • Judgment — the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources.
  • Transmedia Navigation — the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities.
  • Networking — the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information.
  • Negotiation — the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms.

A central goal of this report is to shift the focus of the conversation about the digital divide from questions of technological access to those of opportunities to participate and to develop the cultural competencies and social skills needed for full involvement. Schools as institutions have been slow to react to the emergence of this new participatory culture; the greatest opportunity for change is currently found in afterschool programs and informal learning communities. Fostering such social skills and cultural competencies requires a more systemic approach to media education in the United States.

Question: is this relevant to youth and educators in developing countries? Can the same appropriation of technology be expected of youth in South Africa? Is there an equal need for cultural competencies and social skills needed there? And can these activities, which are clearly engaging for young people, be used as a vehicle for other forms of learning?

I believe the answers to be yes more than no. At the Shuttleworth Foundation, the focus area Education in an emerging participatory culture will frame all projects and research of the C&A theme.

Online social networks and teen safety

While on the point of online social networks and teen safety, Pete Reilly, President of the New York Association of Computers and Technology in Education (NYSCATE), has written an article that uses various and contrasting statistics to help teachers (and parents) evaluate the risks. This quote is interesting:

The question is, “Are we going to take a “zero risk” approach to using technology and the tools of the Web?”

We don’t take a “zero risk” approach with our sports programs where the chance of injury, paralysis, and, in rare cases, death, is always present. We don’t take that approach with field trips where students travel to museums and historical sites in locations where they might be touched by crime. We don’t take that approach with recess on our playgrounds, or transporting our kids to and from school.

I like this. There is no perfectly safe place in the world for young people. Of course there are measures that teachers and parents can take to make the internet experience somewhat safer for learners, but in the end they are the ones who need to be savvy enough to recognise danger signals and respond appropriately.

Online social networks and a teen's suicide

Last year Megan Meier, a 13-year-old from Missouri, committed suicide after an online relationship went sour. Megan thought she was dating a likable 16-year-old boy named Josh who she met on MySpace. After a month, Josh turned on her by sending cruel and abusive emails. It turns out that “Josh” was actually the 47-year-old mother — Lori Drew — of one of Megan’s ex-friends. Lori was avenging her daughter, who Megan had apparently spurned in the past.

The press have predictably dined out on the story, which has provided ammunition for those opposed to the dangers, and even evils, of online social networking. danah boyd’s post about this tragic event is interesting and mitigates somewhat against the media hype: Overprotective parenting and bullying: Who is to blame for the suicide of Megan Meier?

It’s true that mediating technology reduces social consequences — e.g. being punched by someone who you insult — because it takes away the immediacy of physical, real-time interaction. (This is not new. Good old-fashioned letters do the same. They shift time and space. But today’s mediating technologies are different because of persistence, searchability, replicability and invisible audiences.) So, does this reduction in social consequence mean that it’s easier to be rude and cruel in cyberspace? Another one of danah boyd’s posts — Musing about online social norms — provides some insight into answering this question.

What happened to Megan was the result of a deceiving, abusive, bullying adult. We should not blame the technology. Further, online activities usually mirror offline ones, e.g. if you are a vulnerable teenager offline, you’ll probably be one online. This looks like the case with Megan. While education about online activities and how to navigate this brave new world might not have saved Megan, it cannot be a bad thing and we should continue to educate young people about life in mediated publics. In this space certain social consequences are limited, but others are exaggerated due to the fact that what you say sticks around, it is searchable, it is replicable and it can be read by unintended audiences. Lori Drew was found out, after all.

Nokia study predicts rise of 'circular entertainment'

A new study from Nokia and The Future Laboratory predicts that by 2012, a quarter of all entertainment will be “circular”, that is created, edited, and shared within peer groups rather than being generated by traditional media. The bulk of the study was based on interviews with trend-setting consumers from 17 countries about their digital behaviors and lifestyles.

Mark Selby, Vice President, Multimedia, Nokia, said: “The trends we are seeing show us that people will have a genuine desire not only to create and share their own content, but also to remix it, mash it up and pass it on within their peer groups – a form of collaborative social media.” The term circular is based on the movement of content: it is created, shared with friends/family, gets edited/remixed and then shared on or returned again.

As Tim Leberecht of CNet says, one has to take these vendor-funded studies with a pinch of salt. He makes an interesting point about the study: that the distinction between traditional and “circular” entertainment is becoming increasingly difficult to define. But still, for what it is worth, the tech early adopters in these countries are living in and establishing a participatory culture.

I wonder, since the data is based on the actions of early-adopters, how much of this applies to South Africa (SA)? If the prediction is five years out, is it any more for SA? And if yes, how many more years? Only two of the 17 countries are traditionally comparable to SA: Brazil and India. Reading about the survey findings there didn’t help to answer these questions, but it does make for interesting reading.

Workshop: Blogging in the classroom

ICT4Champions is a Google group concerned with the use of web 2.0 in South African schools. Today Maggie Verster, founder of the group, lead a workshop on blogging in the classroom. It was attended by 10 educators, all from private schools, who were shown how to create and customise a class blog using Edublogs. I attended to meet Maggie and the others in the group and to pick their brains on the state of Web 2.0 in our schools. The bottom line: basic use of ICTs, let alone for connected, creative, collaborative web 2.0 activities, is limited and problematic in South African schools. According to the attendees of the workshop, reasons for this include:

  • Lack of physical infrastructure: PCs, printers, etc.
  • No or slow connectivity, due to the prohibitively high cost of bandwidth.
  • Lack of support from school principals and management.
  • Lack of ICT literacy of educators.
  • Educators’ fear that their learners know more than they do about technology (which they usually do).
  • Time pressure on educators to work through the curriculum, leaving no time to learn how to blog and get blogging with their learners. Educators simply don’t have enough time in the day.
  • Overworked educators who resist taking on “just another thing.”

The attendees asked for:

  • More workshops such as this one. They appreciate practical “starter” lessons from someone who’s done research and knows which software, technologies and sites to use.
  • Educator guides for referencing and citing content.

Compared to public schools, private schools usually have fairly good ICT facilities, supportive management and a willingness to send educators on training courses. Right now in private and public schools there are champion educators and principals who implement web 2.0 in their classrooms. Their learners blog, create digital stories and participate in social networks. The educators themselves are active members of communities of practice, such as the Maths Literacy one in South Africa. But these cases are very very very rare. There is much work to be done to change this!

Image by Maggie Verster

Interview with danah boyd, social networking expert

danah boydIn an interview with danah boyd, she speaks about the impact of social networking on society and education.

Key points:

  • We live in a changing world, with new technologies and social media that allow people to easily connect, communicate, create and share content.
  • These changes are reshifting and reshaping public life as we know it. Our lives today, which consist in large part digitally, are more persistent, searchable, replicable and visible (in public spaces we don’t always anticipate).
  • We socialise young people into public life (what to wear, how to behave, who to stay away from, etc.) but we also need to socialise young people into these new mediated public spaces.

Impact on education:

  • We need to primarily educate on how to deal with constantly evolving and emerging technologies (above teaching about the technology or even with the technology itself). (Of course it can be argued that the best way to teach the primary goal is through playing with current technology.)
  • We need to teach critical thinking skills and new media literacies.
  • She is working on a teachers guide to Wikipedia (out next US summer, June/July 2008) that can be used to teach critical thinking skills around Wikipedia, and is happy for someone in Cape Town to localise the guide to the South African curriculum.
  • Social networking is here to stay, but it might not be as Facebook or MySpace. As a concept it will be integrated into other technologies and media, e.g. your cellphone.

Pull quote: “Let the kids do what they need to do, but teach them how to be critical.”

Image by Loren Earle-Cruickshanks (All rights reserved)

Teaching critical thinking in History class

BooksNext year a new matric History syllabus will be taught in South African schools. For the first time ever, Grade 12 learners will learn about apartheid.

But what is equally significant is the departure in teaching approach from rote learning of historical facts to discussion and open debate.

According to a Sunday Times article, the revised content aims “to make history more inclusive, representing different points of view” and that it encourages learners “to make up their own minds about the past.” In the article, historian Professor Nigel Worden from UCT says: “I’m a huge fan of this curriculum. It’s not just the new content but also the way it encourages skills of inquiry.”

This is very encouraging! By asking questions and holding the facts up to group discussion, learners develop analytical skills such as inquiry and critical thinking. And presenting their arguments for or against, whether in written or oral form, develops communication skills.

Image by Georg via Flickr (CC)

Mother-tongue education (part 1)

(I am currently researching and developing a position on mother-tongue education in South Africa for the Shuttleworth Foundation. This is the first in a series of posts on this topic.)

School where isiXhosa-speaking learners attend The Western Cape Education Department’s (WCED) Language Transformation Plan will promote six years of mother-tongue-based bilingual education, where practicable. Currently only grades 1-3 receive mother-tongue bilingual education. A pilot project is underway with 16 schools in the province where certain subjects are being taught in isiXhosa. The WCED claims positive results thus far: isiXhosa learners are far more lively in class, their academic performance is improving, and learner and educator self-esteem is growing.

I met with Prof Zubeida Desai, Dean of Education at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), who has been directly involved in a similar project, called Loitasa. Her views are as follows:

  • There is no doubt that mother-tongue bilingual education is a good thing. It allows learners to develop cognitive skills because they can focus on the subject being taught without having to struggle with language issues.
  • In Norway, learners are taught in Norwegian, but learn English as a subject. Most Norwegian learners speak relatively good English. The same goes for Holland.The key is that English is taught in an engaging way and for communication purposes.
  • In SA, we have learners who are taught in English from grades 4-12 and yet many leave school as very poor English speakers.

Essentially, Zubeida believes that English is crucial for living and working in the world today. Mother-tongue education should not be about doing away with English. Rather, for learners, it should allow learning in a language that is familiar, while at the same time learning English as a subject in an effective and engaging manner.

Image by Crivins via Flickr (CC)