Working on my presentation for the Reading Revolution seminar due to be given at Penguin headquarters on Tuesday (soooo soon!) has relight my thinking on tagging. As I was leafing through Facebook and contemplating how this site illustrates the community and collaborative spirit of contemporary literacies (i.e. transliteracy) I began to visit people's "stories" (well, feeds of their stories) rather than linking directly to people and noticed how they are tagging their status. I say "tagging" rather than narrating because the stories are more like bits of information which the reader pieces together to create a story or profile of the person/organisation. As an example, friend a "is loving his anonymous gifts" and friend b "is a pirate. Aaaarrrggghhh." These two phrases, seem to me, to work as identity or status tags, giving the reader an idea of what's going on rather than the *whole* (I mean in an entirely problematic postmodern critical kind of way) story. Does the (over)use of the copula "to be" signify anything about people's states; in perpetuum?

Facebook has the new tagging application so users can tag (describe) friends...I've started describing myself (is that ego-tagging?). What I'd like to know: is Facebook tagging evolving in ways similar to delicious (using oft' cited tags rather than creating new ones, working with the community, etc...). In other words, are there "standards" for Facebooking? I wonder if tagging is moving from user-centric preferences to community-centric?

Adam Mathes notes that tagging is wild, it is uncontrolled: "A folksonomy represents simultaneously some of the best and worst in the organization of information. Its uncontrolled nature is fundamentally chaotic, suffers from problems of imprecision and ambiguity that well developed controlled vocabularies and name authorities effectively ameliorate. Conversely, systems employing free-‍form tagging that are encouraging users to organize information in their own ways are supremely responsive to user needs and vocabularies, and involve the users of information actively in the organizational system. Overall, transforming the creation of explicit metadata for resources from an isolated, professional activity into a shared, communicative activity by users is an important development that should be explored and considered for future systems development." 

For more information on tagging check out this handy tagging 101 video.

Bookshelf

Information Architecture for the World Wide Web By Louis Rosenfeld, Peter Morville

Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms By Dr Will Richardson

Knowing Knowledge By George Siemens

Tagging Books by Heather Green

On the 8th of June NLab held the Women, Business & Blogging conference with a welcome from Humanities Dean, Heidi Macpherson.

Why have a conference with the focus squarely on women you might ask? Well, Jory des Jardins of BlogHer gave us lots of reasons:

“WOMEN:

 …outnumber men online

 There more women than men online, overall as well as:

 Among marrieds

 Among people with kids at home

 In every age category but 65+

 …outspend men, online and off

 Women spend $5 trillion a year (U.S.) and control 83% of household spending.

 Women who blog are 30% more likely than average female Internet users to shop online—and spend more when they buy.

 …outpace men online

 Women are equally as likely as men to “Read a blog,” and “Create a blog”

 Women write between 46% and 53% of blogs

 Women’s use of words on a blog “far exceeds that of men”

(source: Jory des Jardins presentation at the Women, Business & Blogging conference)

But, how does women’s use of the online environment fit with the internet overall? Again, Jory had some great points for us:

“Web 1.0

• Use marketing dollars to draw traffic

 • Then drop them when they show up; pray they return

• Page views/clickthroughs • Invulnerability

 • The press release

• Ordained expertise

Web 2.0

• Devote resources to interaction

• Invite them to comment & interact; showcase them!

• Comments/posts/ links

• Authenticity

 • The public press corps

• Distributed, “nichified” Expertise"

(source: Jory des Jardins presentation at the Women, Business & Blogging conference)

Interestingly Jory reminded us that virtual identity is everything and whether you know it or not, we each have an online identity. Eileen Brown, a Microsoft Evangelist, gave us all a very good reason to maintain *professional* online identities – she for one googles prospective employees…hrm. Note to self – do not post when drinking (actually that was a tip from Eileen!):

“Blog frequently (a rhythm of blogging, not necessarily every day)

Answer every comment

Don't sell

Link. link. link

Traffic isn't the goal

Be authentic

Expect criticism - be humble

Don't blog when you're drunk / down / angry

Blog Smart

Never delete a post”

(source: Ruth Page’s post of Eileen’s presentation)

Meg Pickard was the first speaker of the day and really set the scene with one key question: “how do consumption, interaction, curation, and creation work together in the online environment?” Meg has a slide that illustrates this concern very clearly and (yay!) she’s put it up on her site so I’ll add it here:

Meg drew her presentation to a close by focusing on the “holy trinity of community management” – how “human solutions,” “technical solutions” and “content solutions” are all required, it isn’t just a case of either/or. Here’s a slide courtesy of Meg’s blog post: 

To elaborate her point of how content, publishing, and community are all changing in this landscape of web 2.0, Meg concluded with Michael Wesch’s “classic” video:

As one of the conference organisers I hope the conference worked out as well for others as it did for me. It was stimulating to hear three different talks on technology by three amazing women. It was also great to have opportunities to meet with other delegates and share stories. The best bit (not that I’m swayed by Meg’s delicious looking photos who I went and copied and took some tasty pics of my own) was the wine and cake *networking* session at the end of the day…yum….

 2.     USING THE TERMINOLOGY List three blogs

­­­­­­­­­­­­___________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________­­­

___________________________________________________________________

Explain your choice of blogging platform.

___________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________­­­­

___________________________________________________________________

Where might you have a plugin and why?

___________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________­­­­

___________________________________________________________________

3.     MAKING SENSE

 Fill in the missing words using the words in the box below:

There are over 15.5 million ______ out there but not everyone knows how to read a blog. Blogs usually appear in ________ chronological order and are updated frequently.  Each blog post follows a house style and includes several elements like a title, the post body which is usually _____ including sounds, images, videos and/or text, tags which describe what the post is about, a _______ providing a static url directly to that particular post, a _______ stamp and author signature. Perhaps most important is the element of interactivity which allows all blog readers to add a ______ to posts (although there are a few blogs out there that don’t allow commenting).     

4.      WORDS USED WITH BLOGS

 Answer these questions.

 What is a blog reader? [hint: think of bloglines]

 ___________________________________________________________

 __________________________________________________________­­­­

___________________________________________________________________

What is it used for?

 ___________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________

    ___________________________________________________________________

What is bookmarking (give examples of platforms)?

 ___________________________________________________________

 ___________________________________________________________­­­­

___________________________________________________________________

How would you bookmark a particular post?

 ___________________________________________________________

 ___________________________________________________________­­­­

___________________________________________________________________

Give at least three examples of social bookmarking sites:

 ___________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

Tagging in Practise – How would you tag this photo? Click on the image to visit flickr.com where you will be able to add your own tags to this image.

5.     PARTS OF THE PROCESS

Take this blog for example:

Who is the blog author?

 What is the date of the most recent post visible on this image?

 What is the title of it?

 Can you spot tags for the newest post?

Bookshelf

Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms
 by Will Richardson

Classroom Blogging: A Teacher's Guide to the Blogosphere
by David Warlick

Digital Media in the Classroom
by Gigi Carlson

Literacy in a Digital World: Teaching and Learning in the Age of Information
by Kathleen Tyner

The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog
by Rebecca Blood

Check out these posts of note:

Blogging in the Classroom

Ways to Use Weblogs in Education

Using Blogs to Integrate Technology in the Classroom

Classroom Blogs: A Resource List

Start Blogging in the Classroom

At the recent Transliteracy Colloquium we discussed the necessity to not only understand a variety of representational modes but to critically interpret that flow of information simultaneously.  In an era where convergence is palpable in almost all aspects of life literacy includes a vast range of signifying devices.  As Kress says, literate in today’s world means “reading” (as interpreting) “words, spoken or written; image still and moving; musical…3D models…” 

While young people might be “digital natives” what about people whose first language is not tech-speak? 

UK “digital communications” regulator Ofcom has produced (published on 02|03|2006) its first audit of UK digital media use (including terrestrial TV and radio). Over 3,000 people were interviewed in an attempt to assess the extent of adult media literacy in the UK.  Ofcom defines media literacy as the ability to access, understand and create communications in a variety of contexts. Headline findings include:

• age is a major factor in understanding and using specific technologies. Mobile 'phone use is highest amongst 16-24 year-olds;

• little recognition so far of the possibilities of synergies between different digital media technologies;

• only 25% of adults understand how commercial internet sites are funded – compared with 75% who understand the basics of TV funding and regulation;

• the internet remains the main focus of interest – and concern (about viruses/email scams etc.) The preferred means of learning about the internet for adults is via friends and family rather than formal education or training.

Now look at the main findings of an Ofcom audit on media literacy among children between the ages of 8-15:

• Some 72% of children aged 8-15 have access to digital TV at home, 64% have access to the internet at home, 47% of parents say there is household access to digital radio services, and 65% of 8-15s have their own mobile phone. Just under half of 8-11s have their own mobile phone (49%) compared to 82% of 12-15s.

·         Just over one quarter (28%) of all children aged 8-15 have digital TV and the internet at home and have their own mobile phone. This is considerably more common amongst older children, accounting for 36% of 12-15 year olds compared to 21% of 8-11 year olds.

·         Half of children aged 8-15 own a games console (50%), and a further third (34%) use the one in the household.

But amazingly: “Parents who do not have blocks in place give reasons for this largely relating to trusting their child, although around one in five of these parents say they do not have controls set because they’re unsure how to do this or were not aware it was possible.”

A recent study headed by Jackie Marsh at the University of Sheffield, finds as is the case with literacy practices related to print-based texts (Cairney and Ruge, 1998), children were immersed in the use of digital literacy for a range of purposes and so were acquiring understanding of the uses to which particular media and artefacts were put.

Perhaps this is why media studies is enjoying a revival with the number of students taking media exams (at 16 and up) has doubled since 2002.

So, digital native or not, participants in the online landscape must learn to navigate this new environment.  Not only becoming literate in terms of the multimodality but literate also to experiences (like cyberbullying etc…) thus new media literacy or digital literacy is about becoming literate as readers and creators.  In other words, transliteracy might be the way teachers and parents can respond to the changes brought on by technology.

Listen to Professor David Buckingham talk about the challenges of changes in the media environment and how media teachers need to respond to them: http://www.mediaedassociation.org.uk/david.mp3

Listen to Former head of BFI Education, Cary Bazalgette opened challenge to the Media Education Association to ensure it embraces the primary sector and helps teachers build on the success they have already enjoyed in teaching media education in primary schools across the country: http://www.mediaedassociation.org.uk/cary.mp3

Images and Representation: Key concepts in Media Studies by Nick Lacey

Media Education in the U.K.

According to Marc Prensky, "motivation can be a challenge for students.[…] Video games come with a clear set of motivation tools, such as scores, moving to higher levels and reaping various rewards when a player performs well." “Computer and video games are so engaging – and education is often so unengaging – NOT because that is the “natural state of things,” or “the nature of the beast.” Although many hold the opinion that “learning hurts” and “games are fun,” any of us easily can think of enough counter-examples to prove this isn’t a universal truth.

The reason computer games are so engaging is because the primary objective of the game designer is to keep the user engaged. They need to keep that player coming back, day after day, for 30, 60 even 100+ hours, so that the person feels like he has gotten value for his money (and, in the case of online games, keeps paying.) That is their measure of success” (See The Motivation of Game Play).  Prensky goes on to explain that keeping students motivated is not the “primary goal” of teachers, rather their primary effort must lie in educating, in the passing on of knowledge. I disagree with this. How might teachers actually educate when students are not engaged? Part and parcel of good teaching is motivation and engagement, something teachers work into all lesson plans. While there are many ways to infuse classroom learning with motivation, incorporating gaming seems to follow a path that both engages students as well as incorporated digital media – something that satisfies teachers’ needs to develop 21^st learning skills.

As Professor Angela McFarlane says, “Games provide a forum in which learning arises as a result of tasks stimulated by the content of the games, knowledge is developed through the content of the game, and skills are developed as a result of playing the game.”

Rather than bring corporate games into the classroom (like those by Microsoft or E.A.) why not show students what is good (critical literacy) and freely available online, something like Mary Flanagan’s The Adventures of Josie True?   

“Join Josie True across time and space as she tries to find her missing inventor/science teacher Ms. Trombone!! Josie travels back in time to Chicago and then Paris, meeting fabulous historical figures such as Bessie Coleman, the world's first African-American woman aviator! Along the way, play fun activities to help Josie and her iCat in their search!”

TEEM’s Report on the Educational Use of Games provides an interesting evaluation framework.  “The framework includes a range of questions and issues under the headings known to be significant when evaluating software. Some of the questions may be redundant when it comes to writing about particular games. However, whatever the software, the purpose of the framework is the same. It is a document that presents a number of headings under which teachers report on their findings and experience of a program, and offers prompting questions that have to be considered when writing about each of the particular issues – content, curriculum relevance, design and navigation and so on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I know Josie True was created specifically with an educational context in mind. Further evidence is available on the site which even has a “teachers guide” listing game segments alongside (maths) learning outcomes:

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

I wonder how something like Inanimate Alice might be considered alongside TEEM’s evaluative framework.  Especially since at the beginning readers are offered to play the game or “read only.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Winning the game means readers progress to the next episode while losing is detrimental to both readers and characters:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Something for the next post…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bookshelf:

Educational Video Games: Coming to a Classroom Near You? By Paul Korzeniowski

“Education Arcade: MIT Researchers Are Creating Academically Driven Computer Games That Rival Commercial Products and Make Learning Fun” by S. Atwood

“Online fanfiction: What technology and Popular Culture Can Teach Us about Writing and Literacy Instruction” by R.W. Black in New Horizons for Learning Online Journal, 11 (2) (Spring 2005).

“Media Literacy: Essential Survival Skills for the New Millennium” by B. Duncan in Orbit Magazine, 35 (2).

Situated Language and Learning: A Critique of Traditional Schooling by G.P. Gee. 

Fans, Bloggers and Gamers: Essays on Participatory Culture
Henry Jenkins

Critical literacy education, based on a socio-cultural theory of language, is particularly concerned with teaching learners to understand and manage the relationship between language and power. However, different realisations of critical literacy operate with different conceptions of this relationship by foregrounding one or other of domination, access, diversity or design. This article argues that these different orientations in critical literacy education are crucially interdependent. This interdependence is then illustrated with three examples.

Critical Language Awareness emphasises the fact that texts are constructed. Anything that has been constructed can be deconstructed. This unmaking or unpicking of the text increases our awareness of the choices1 that the writer or speaker has made. Every choice foregrounds what was selected and hides, silences or backgrounds what was not selected. Awareness of this prepares the reader to ask critical questions: why did the writer or speaker make these choices? Whose interests do they serve? Who is empowered or disempowered by the language used? (Janks, 1993: iii).

With the multimodal environment in mind, we can extend the question of who is empowered or disempowered through the use of images, sounds, videos, as well as the demand for interaction (holding a mouse, pressing the enter key etc…).

Dominance and access come together in a different question that confronts teachers of language and literacy.  How does one provide access to dominant forms, while at the same time valuing and promoting the diverse languages and literacies of our students and in the broader society?  If we provide students with access to dominant forms, this contributes to maintaining their dominance. If, on the other hand, we deny students access, we perpetuate their marginalisation in a society that continues to recognise the value and importance of these forms.  This is what Lodge (1997) refers to as the “access paradox.”  These dominant forms include dominant languages, dominant varieties, dominant Discourses (Gee, 1990), dominant literacies and knowledges, dominant genres, dominant modes of visual representation and a range of cultural practices related to social interaction.

How might we encourage critical literacy in response to what most of our students see every day?

Here is an example from a popular mystery fiction/online game: Perplex City:

To understand this video which forms part of the online story, readers must be able to read as there are subtitles, they should be able to hear the protagonist’s voice, they should be able to interpret the images – the arrangement of the flat, objects contained within it, the narrator’s body language etc… – and they should be able to “read” the relationship between protagonist Violet and cameraman Kurt.  At the beginning, as critical readers, we are made fully aware that Violet is uneasy about her new abode and also that she feels she must answer Kurt’s silent interruption: “Well, yes, Kurt, I know it’s not my home exactly, but -”

How might we respond to these aspects?

• Location information – where is Violet, what does the setting suggest?
• Question motive – why is Violet there, why is she making a video, how is the message represented, through who’s eyes are readers receiving the story?
• Critically react to information – why does Violet lower her voice at certain junctures, look at her body language

·         Suggest alternative action

Teaching young people to be critically literate is especially important, not just in knowing how to ask questions about what images, words, sounds, etc… might suggest in terms of power in a storyline, but also how those words and images might disempower those young people.  Such is the worry that young people are not adequately critically literate that spy software for mobile ‘phones have made an appearance:

“Retina-X Studios, LLC, announced today the immediate availability of Mobile Spy, the first activity monitoring software for Windows Mobile based smartphones. The software allows users to monitor SMS and call details online in real time.

The software is completely hidden from view. After being set up on the phone, it records all SMS text messages and call information. It then silently uploads logs to the user’s private account which they check online without needing further access to the phone. Mobile Spy runs in total stealth mode and no entries are shown inside Windows Mobile Task Manager.”

We need to educate all users, not just young people, to be critically literate so to avoid possible dangers (cyber bullying, predators, fraud, theft, privacy):

 www.gridclub.com/freearea/Presentation.ppt

As Tessa Jowell convincingly argues, “Children should grow up challenging everything. Questioning everything.”

Bookshelf

J. P. Gee, Sociolinguistics and Literacies. Ideology in Discourse.

H. Janks, (ed.) Critical Language Awareness Series  

Vivian Maria Vasquez, Negotiating Critical Literacies with Young Children  

New media literacy does not exist in its own bubble, hidden in the margins of print literacy.  It is in a constantly fluctuating relationship with access (to the internet and other technologies), ability (this might include knowledge of code, blogging, tagging, etc…), and articulacy (what are the ethics of participating in the arena of social software, how do various modes interact in an online environment).  Literacy itself also must be inclusive of various literacies – print, visual, cinematic, social, gender, cultural etc… (although some do disagree with this idea).  “Debates over literacy are, in short, debates about the manner and purposes of public participation in society. Without a democratic and critical approach to media literacy, the public will be positioned merely as selective receivers, consumers of online information and communication. The promise of media literacy, surely, is that it can form part of a strategy to reposition the media user - from passive to active, from recipient to participant, from consumer to citizen.”

Some Concerns:

1.  How do teachers (and parents) help nurture a framework for understanding the participative experience of social media?
2. What are some ways students of all levels and of all backgrounds may develop awareness of how new media (including gaming, messaging, myspace-ing) colours real-world perceptions?
3. What are the ethics involved in creating and maintaining online identities?
4. How to protect learners not yet fully “transliterate” of the possible threats arising from the creation of online identities?
5. What does “privacy” mean in the socially networked environment?
6. How do virtual realities (an example might be Second Life) affect “real” realities?
7. What competencies should be highlighted in the digital age? (Should we applaud “browsing” and rapid feedback?)
8.  What does “ownership” mean in the online environment?
9. How does ownership affect the information/content available?
10. How might students evaluate the validity of information found online (reliable sources, objectivity, validity)?
11. Is it necessary to illustrate (to students) the historical context of new media; where did it come from, do patterns emerge between the growth of new media and the original appearance of “the book”?
12. Who lives in the virtual world and what does that suggest about access, culture, type of information available?
13. What behaviour is acceptable online (that might not be offline)?
14. What is missing from new media? Whose voice is silent?

It is clichéd to note that technology (new and old) profoundly affects/influences/directs/prompts how we think and how act.  While new media technologies might greatly improve our lives and our work, issues arise in the context of “reality” especially with respect to identity, information, business. Conceptions of reality have been changing radically, not least if we think imagine Haraway’s metaphoric cyborg becoming more and more *real* everyday.  Think of Kevin Warwick fitted with cyborg technology enabling his nervous system to be linked to a computer in 2002 and Stelarc’s home-grown human ear grafted (with the addition of a blue-tooth device) to his forearm. 

Within 30 years we could have “direct links” between neurons in our brains and computers.: “By 2030, a thousand dollars of computation will be about a thousand times more powerful than a human brain. Keep in mind also that computers will not be organized as discrete objects as they are today. There will be a web of computing deeply integrated into the environment, our bodies and brains.”

While the last two posts have dealt with the idea of participation and enabling it – with pedagogical aspirations – it is important that readers cultivate a sense of critical literacy and critical thinking. Critical literacy becomes imperative, especially if we accept the report by Milton Chen, PhD, Sara Armstrong, PhD and Roberta Furger:

“When it comes to media, our children are mass consumers.

On average, each of them spends 1,500 hours a year watching television. Roughly 17 million children and teens have Internet access in their homes, and most of them use it daily for everything from researching school projects to playing online games to sending instant messages or chatting with their classmates. They go to movies and watch music videos. Headphones and CD players have become so much a part of the middle and high school students' "uniform" that backpacks are now designed to accommodate the gear.

But for all their exposure to mass media, American youth and teens spend precious little time analyzing the messages they're bombarded with every day.”

 With more and more teens involved in the creation, distribution, management, and exhibition of content and identity, it becomes crucial that teens are taught how to think about media – how it shapes culture, values, gender, literacy (etc…).  According to Daniel Rossi, director of the Midtown Manhattan campus of Satellite Academy, a four-year public high school with four New York City  “[teens’] opinions – about violence, about commercialism, about issues of race and gender – are often developed as a result of the media images around them […]but many aren’t even aware of it until they slow down and analyze the process.”

It is not so much about “protecting” teens from what is available on the internet (or on tv, computer games, music, and, yes, even books) but teaching them how to engage in a critical dialogue with what they see, hear, read, and experience. Just because teens (or anyone for that matter) engages, participates with media (current, future, and old) cannot be equated with a desire to articulate what that participation entails. 

“It’s not enough, though, to just talk to children about the media they’re consuming. Parents, teachers, and other interested adults need to give them opportunities to become creators of their own media – and then to talk about those experiences, too. ‘Everything we see, read, or listen to is the result of someone’s creative work […] The more our children participate in the creative process, the greater chance they have to understand what’s involved and the more they’ll realize that nothing is preordained, nothing just appeared.’”

Five Key Questions to Pose about Media:

1. Who created this message?
2. What techniques are used to attract my attention?
3. How might different people understand this message differently from me?
4. What lifestyles, values, and points of view are represented in or omitted from this message?
5. Why was this message sent?

Source: Center for Media Literacy (CML).

In an interview about journalism in the “digital age” Rebecca MacKinnon, Assistant Professor at The Hong Kong University's Journalism and Media Studies Centre explains that it isn’t so much about teaching people how to use new technologies – it’s more than showing someone how to use an rss reader, a blogging tool, Dreamweaver – it’s more appropriate to “thin[k] about how to build things in new ways…and how to innovate.”

Why Teach Media Literacy? Educators’ Responses:

 Bookshelf:

Teens & Technology Fact Sheet

Critical Literacy in a Digital Era: Technology, Rhetoric and the Public Interest
Barbara Warnick

E-Literature for Children: Enhancing Digital Literacy Learning
Len Unsworth

Literacy in a Digital World: Teaching and Learning in the Age of Information
Kathleen Tyner

Mediated: How the Media Shape the World Around You
Thomas de Zengotita

New Practices New Pedagogies: A Reader
Malcolm Miles

Teaching Media Literacy in the Age of YouTube
Posted by Chuck Tryon

“While to adults the Internet primarily means the world wide web, for children it means email, chat, games— and here they are already content producers. Too often neglected, except as a source of risk, these communication and entertainment focused activities, by contrast with the information-focused uses at the centre of public and policy agendas, are driving emerging media literacy. Through such uses, children are most engaged— multi-tasking, becoming proficient at navigation and manoeuvre so as to win, judging their participation and that of others, etc.... In terms of personal development, identity, expression and their social consequences— participation, social capital, civic culture- these are the activities that serve to network today’s younger generation.”

                                          Sonia Livingstone, 2003, 15-16

Important to all learning is the notion that what we learn builds on what we already know, just as new technologies build on existing features.  The current online realisation of participation transforms literacy (in my view) from a personal experience to a community endeavour highlighting networks and collaborative reading (in all senses of the word).  These skills thrive alongside the existing foundations of print literacy, film literacy, social literacy, critical literacy, and technical literacy.

As Peg Syverson, Associate Director of the Computer Writing and Research Labs at the University of Texas, Austin explains: “Can I prove that online writing courses improve students' ability to write traditional essays? No, I can't. I also can't prove that driver's ed. courses improve students' equestrian ability.... What we're doing is preparing students for the kinds of writing they need in the future” (qtd. in Electronic Literacies: Language, Culture, and Power in Online Education, 155.)

Bookshelf:

Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms by Will Richardson

Digital Media in the Classroom by Gigi Carlson 

Convergence Culture by Henry Jenkins

Flexible Learning in a Digital World: Experiences and Expectations by Betty Collis and Jef Moonen

Electronic Literacies: Language, Culture, and Power in Online Education by Mark Warschauer

“A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies," Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Future edited by Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis.

According to the Pew Internet & American Life project some key findings entail:

§  54% of bloggers say that they have never published their writing or media creations anywhere else; 44% say they have published elsewhere.

• 54% of bloggers are under the age of 30.
• Women and men have statistical parity in the blogosphere, with women representing 46% of bloggers and men 54%.
• 76% of bloggers say a reason they blog is to document their personal experiences and share them with others.
• 64% of bloggers say a reason they blog is to share practical knowledge or skills with others.
• When asked to choose one main subject, 37% of bloggers say that the primary topic of their blog is "my life and experiences."
• Other topics ran distantly behind: 11% of bloggers focus on politics and government; 7% on entertainment; 6% on sports; 5% on general news and current events; 5% on business; 4% on technology; 2% on religion, spirituality or faith. Additional smaller groups focus on a specific hobby, a health problem or illness, or other topics.
• 1 in 5 school aged teens have a blog
• 38% of young people with online access read blogs

Thus, bloggers are young (under 30), are keen content creators and consumers and find making connections a key part of why they blog.  With teens making up a large portion of the blogosphere, inevitably it follows that they play an important role in this kind of participatory culture.  As bloggers, MySpace users, and Facebook profiles, they “engage in content-creating, sharing, and remixing activities more than their nonblogging counterparts.”

With the focus on sharing and making connections, teens are firmly enmeshed in a participatory culture or what Henry Jenkins refers to as “convergence culture”: “a cultural rather than a technological process.”  “The flow of stories, ideas, information, communities, brands, intellectual properties across media platforms has created new forms of ‘transmedia entertainment.’”  Vital to a participatory culture is the notion that all contributions matter (at least on some level).  It is this approach which seems especially suited to a pedagogical slant; in the classroom all contributions matter and, naturally, must be encouraged. 

Crucial to teaching and learning in a digital age (more specifically, a digitally literate age), educators must be prepared to recognise the importance of participating in content creation. Teachers can offer a class blog which students update and podcasts for students to use as study aids or reminders of what occurred in the lesson. Students should be taught to articulate the skills required to fully participate in the online world and they must also recognise that media (new, as with old) shape perceptions and play a certain role in emerging knowledges. 

Important to issues of literacy is the shift in focus from individual knowledge to communal expression.  Digital literacy and transliteracy and multimodal literacy involve skills accrued through collaboration and networking like the kind facilitated by blogging and social software platforms like Facebook, Flickr, and MySpace.  These platforms help build the skills necessary in the classroom. 

As Howard Rheingold says:

''Education – the means by which young people learn the skills necessary to succeed in their place and time – is diverging from schooling.

Media-literacy-wise, education is happening now after school and on weekends and when the teacher isn't looking, in the SMS messages, MySpace pages, blog posts, podcasts, videoblogs that technology-equipped digital natives exchange among themselves.

This population is both self-guided and in need of guidance, and although a willingness to learn new media by point-and-click exploration might come naturally to today's student cohort, there's nothing innate about knowing how to apply their skills to the processes of democracy.''

More on Participatory Culture:

Bookshelf:

The Virtual Community by Howard Rheingold

The New Media Literacy Handbook: An Educator's Guide to Bringing New Media Into the Classroom by Cornelia Brunner, William Tally, and William Talley

Blogging for Teens by John Gosney

Fans, Bloggers and Gamers: Essays on Participatory Culture by Henry Jenkins

The Digital Classroom: How Technology Is Changing the Way We Teach and Learn edited by David T. Gordon