Pondering participatory culture

First, I have to say that I found this to be a pretty dense piece of writing with lots of jargon - Participatory community, affinity spaces, repurposed content, etc.
Anyway, I think of the sort of postings I have seen in the "participatory community" on-line and wonder how many would have bothered to plow through this article, with deathless prose such as "we are taking part in a prolonged experiment in what happens when one lowers the barriers into a communication landscape." Not a lot of transparency here, at least not for me. I have to grit my teeth to continue.

My dislike of this type of writing aside, I do agree with the authors that we are moving into a new world (a brave new world?) where these technologies will be essential. That is, unless we have a worldwide conflagration and are thrown into a Mad Max scenario with no technology or ethical niceties. We are at an "historical juncture" and what we do with the tools at hand is very important. If we look at television, we might despair for the future. There were probably articles very similar to this one written when television came into just about every home. I wonder if, in twenty years, more than 40% (I'm fudging that figure, I know), will be able to say who is the Vice-President of the country.(Maybe if they'd played a game about government, they would be more interested.) There's not going to be a lot of political engagement unless there is some political knowledge. I wonder if the authors would consider knowledge as too static for the participatory culture.

So what did I glean from this article: As a reading teacher, I said a hallelujah to their insistence that reading and writing remain essential for communication and that students will expand their competencies rather than push aside the "old skills." Another hallelujah for their insistence on traditional skills such as critical research, and the ability to formulate cogent arguments. I have for a long time believed that we should be doing more to teach our middle schoolers about mass media, "one of the most powerful social, economic, political, and cultural institutions of our era." We are so constrained by our curriculum that even this is difficult to fit in. I see a lot of the elements of this new media as a progression of the mass media, though I realize that there is also a much larger grass-roots or "participatory" component.

I am grappling with the whole idea of the online community and I know this dates me as a "digital immigrant." I do believe, as they say when talking about student newspapers, that strong social ties give people pause to think about the consequences of what they are doing before they publish. What about the growth of antisocial behavior? At my very small town middle school we have called the police every day for the last five days. How does the impulsiveness of middle schoolers gel with the impulsiveness of the online community? We have done an appalling job of preparing students to be critical users of mass media - will we do a better job with the new media?

I have never played video games, so I felt really out of it in the long section about play and simulation, etc. We addressed this to an extent in the "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants" discussion and I think there certainly is a role for games in engagement in learning. I can only hope that the people who create these games are factually correct. I know that application and construction of dynamic models is a higher order thinking skill, but please let there be a correct factual basis. I know that my son adored the simulation in the Civilization games and that he continues to have an great interest in history.

I thought there were some excellent ideas for combining the old with the new. One was "Medieval Space", the MySpace clone. I will also be researching more the website "My Pop Studio" with a view to working with my middle students.

The issue of appropriation is really a murky one. Appropriation, plagiarism - what are we talking about here. Of course the situation in which the appropriation occurs is important. The authors here have certainly appropriated the works of other writers, but they have acknowledged that appropriation. This is a formal situation. We often have students move from a known plot to create something new, but we didn't need technology to do that. There is a huge temptation for students to "pick up" ideas and make them their own.

As I read about multitasking, I wondered about the validity of "continuous partial attention." I thought about the studies that have been done on the use of cell phones while driving and which have shown an increase in accident rates when a cell phone is being used. So, I was comforted that the authors again took the middle ground and allowed that neither the attentional style of the farmer (me) or the hunter (my son) is superior.

These articles are making me feel increasingly out of touch and perhaps that is one reason that by the time I had finished reading up to page 36 I was feeling quite tense and quite ready to take my outmoded ideas out to pasture like the farmer I am.

Technology rich projects

The first article I looked at is called "Choose Your Own Adventure: A Hypertext Writing Experience." It is a unit from the web site ReadWriteThink, which is one I really like.

The unit is designed to last six to eight fifty minute sessions and it comes after the students have read adventure novels in literature sessions. What drew me to it at first (aside from the needed technology aspect) was that it is combining reading and writing and also providing students with a chance to publish their writing.

After they have read their own stories, students in groups of four write a Choose Your Own Adventure Story. They use web-authoring software, create their own Web site on which the different parts of their story are hyperlinked to each other. When planning the adventure, students can use an interactive webbing tool to create their stories.

In order to complete this assignment, students have to understand the elements of story-telling, and, more specifically, the elements of Choose Your Own Adventure stories. Students can see an example from a website that can be shown via a projector.

This project has a lot of elements: planning, writing, collaboration, revising, making a WebPage, etc. To do this the first time would be daunting, but the way the lesson is laid out in RWT is very clear. It gives the teacher a path to follow, as well as all the necessary materials (planning guides, graphic organizers, rubrics), a link to Microsoft FrontPage and to some useful websites.

I can see this activity appealing to many students, especially boys, who don't very often get excited about literature, but will often pick up a Choose Your Own Adventure story. You could certainly have students do the same activity and create a paper book, but I think the idea of designing a webpage would add to their motivation.

As with all such activities at my school, the problem might be in finding time in the computer lab. Much of the typing can be done on alphasmarts and transferred to the computers, but it takes time to teach the students to create a Webpage (especially as, if you are me, you would be doing it for the first time.) Our computer lab guru, however, is always happy to teach the students such skills.

All in all, I think this would be a really interesting experiment in combining reading,writing, and technology. I can see it being most appropriate with sixth graders, and I would not try this for the first time with a low skilled class. At my school, I would experiment with the TAG students.

I have a real thing for the Civil War and I find there are many excellent Civil War novels. So, I was quite excited to find "A WebQuest of the Civil War in Historical Fiction." The website is http://www.mcps.k12.md.us/schools/leems/histfic.html.
This requires students to use the library catalog to find a Civil War book and then to read that book. This assignment requires them to work in pairs, so I can only assume that their library has two copies of each book - ours certainly doesn't. Then the students would fill out a Multi-media Book Report Worksheet. Unfortunately, this was not on the web, so I would have to produce one of my own. Students would then research the author of their novel, either with a teacher cited link or by searching the web. Students are introduced to a Boolean search.
Students are required to prepare a PowerPoint presentation on the book, if it feels historically accurate, and who the author is. They need to scan an illustration/graphic from the book with historic detail. Finally students present their PowerPoint to the class.
The instructions are on the web and, for the student, they seem clear and have some useful information. However, as the teacher presenting this unit, I would be left with questions.
I would pursue this unit further because I like the idea of students reading a variety of books and then sharing information about them. I know that in my reading classes we do a weekly "Talk Around" about books and the students do enjoy that. Also, this unit is one that would be, at some level, within the reach of all students. I prefer it to the standard book talk because the PowerPoint is going to provide a point of focus for the audience.