Participatory culture ..

Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture - Media Education for the 21st Century

Henry Jenkins describes a participatory culture as being one "with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby experienced participants pass along knowledge to novices. In a participatory culture, members also believe their contributions matter and feel some degree of social connection with one another (at the least, members care about others’ opinions of what they have created)."

Being able to participate successfully in this culture will have an influence on our students' lives. Many students are already part of this culture - and being able to navigate this culture successfully will impact on their success. So the question for educators is, how can we harness this, exploit it for the benefit of our students and ensure that there is equitable access to this for all students? Alongside this we need to explore how, in this environment we can ensure out students develop critical thinking so the don't just accept popular culture without critiquing it from a variety of perspectives. Helping students to develop an awareness of how media shapes the world they live in, empowers them to be less susceptible to the power of popular culture.

1. Ethics - understanding of ethical issues around the participatory culture is essential as they well might be making, creating and sharing forms of digital media without any background understanding of the ethical issues involved. 

While the ever increasing access to new technologies is great if we don't learn to use these tools in ways that work for us there is the potential for us to be overwhelmed - and the tools to rule rather than the way we want them to work for us. Social media is an example of this - strategies for use - need to help children develop these. We need to support young people  to develop the skills, knowledge, ethical frameworks and self-confidence needed to be full and responsible participants in contemporary culture, and in a range of digital environments that are often not well understood by adults. 

The days of teaching 'safe surfing' are well are truly gone. The issues for young people now are a lot more complex. The need to be guided to take an active role in developing the online participatory culture of which they are a part of, and using this in a positive way both to enhance their learning and their development as people. Children need to be guided in their development of critical thinking and ethical norms in a casual and organic environment which is free of many of the controls and ethical norms that are part of the non-digital world.

New digital literacies do not replace the traditional literacies of being able to read and write as students still need to be able to read and right before they can take their place as part of the participatory culture. It is not a matter of replacing old skills with new, but of supplementing them and enhancing them with the additional media literacies and critical thinking that will enable them to navigate the un-policed environment of the digital world.

In a participatory culture the new digital literacies are also social as they enable people to be able to negotiate the digital world and communicate and create effectively in this environment, identifying what is important and meaningful to them, from the vastness out there.

There is no doubt that the challenges are vast, and as teachers we are teaching for online environments that many of us are unfamiliar with. Yet, it is important we don't let our lack of understandings of these environments create a situation where we ignore the potential educational benefits for our students.