Participatory culture - Harry Potter's extensive inclusiveness embodies this.
Game - Powerful technology, can engage people in anything, even political process. Modern version of the power of a "good book." Real learning takes place. Changes the way people think about learning. One can learn the logic, for example, of a historical process and it will stick in a way facts won't...and can't. A good librarian can help open up this process.
Referenced: Mary Louise Pratt's Art of the Impact Zone
Similar efforts: NBC's iCue is an in-progress as of this writing initiative to see what kind of learning is happening through games.
- Spelling Bee -- This ends. No process
- Scrabble -- Learning throughout entire game. Engaging. Far superior.
- 57% of teens are media creators
- 33% share
- 22% have home pages
- 19% blog
- 19% remix
Participatory culture -- with low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement.
- Strong support for creating & sharing
- Members feel their contribution matters
- Informal Mentorship
- Social connection between members.
Participation gap -- digital divide is taken care of (except for Native American). The new divide is between kids with 24/7 connectivity and those who can only use a computer in school or the library, can't download, and deal with filtering. These kids are more likely to believe advertising because only have a few minutes to look over information. Less media literacy.
Transparency problem -- When there is no critical perspective on media.
Ethics problem -- LiveJournal is used mostly by 17-19. No one to help with thinking about ethics, thinking, perspective. Is this safe?
Students Need to know these things:
Traditional print literacy -- how to be a person.
Research skills -- to collect and process information.
Technical skills -- coding, computing, not just keyboarding.
Media literacy -- understanding is essential to surviving and thriving.
Play -- capacity to experiment with your surroundings as a form of problem solving.
Simulation -- ability to interpret & construct dynamic models of real world processes (Zoo Tycoon, Sim City, etc.)
Performance -- ability to adopt alternative identities for the purposes of improvisation & *discovery*.
Appropriation -- ability to meaningfully sample & remix media content. Homer mashed up stories into The Odyssey. Incarcerated street kids redid Moby Dick with giant white drug cartel. Big games. Teaching future skills.
Multitasking -- ability to scan one's environment and shift focus onto salient details on an ad-hoc basis.
Distributed cognition -- ability to interact meaningfully with tools which expand our mental capacities.
Collective intelligence -- ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others towards a common goal.
Judgment -- ability to evaluate reliability and credibility of different knowledge sources.
Transmedia navigation -- ability to deal with the flow of info and stories across multiple modalities (Pokemon has cards, TV show, film, etc.) where density of structure can be vast.
Networking -- ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information.
Negotiation -- ability to trace across diverse communities discerning and respecting multiple perspectives and grasping and following alternative sets of norms.
Librarian: information facilitator vs. simply an archivist. We shape access to network skills, are technology experts who help kids bridge gaps and get information. Goal:
Participatory culture -- we are the hub for home schoolers and everyone else willing and interested in learning.
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