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.