core skills for participatory culture

Henry Jenkins and three colleagues recently wrote a white paper for the MacArthur Foundation on participatory culture and media literacy. On his blog “Confessions of an Aca/Fan” Jenkins has published “general thoughts” on the paper.

In addressing the question how do we ensure that every child has access to the skills and experiences needed to become a full participant in the social, cultural, economic, and political future of our society?” the writers identified a “set of core social skills and cultural competencies that young people should acquire if they are to be full, active, creative, and ethical participants in this emerging participatory culture”.

Play — the capacity to experiment with your surroundings as a form of problem-solving
Performance — the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery
Simulation — the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real world processes
Appropriation — the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content
Multitasking — the ability to scan one’s environment and shift focus as needed to salient details
Distributed Cognition — the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities
Collective Intelligence — the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal
Judgment — the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources
Transmedia Navigation — the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities
Networking — the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information
Negotiation — the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms.

Not too sure about the term “networking” for what are in effect the skills typically associated with information literacy, but this is an extensive collection of skills and competencies that doesn’t map easily onto existing or draft New Zealand curriculum in any obvious way. However there are individual schools and educators who are experimenting with new media technologies as well as the “collaboration, networking, appropriation, participation, and expression” associated with the use of new media. Also the growing implementation in this country of inquiry-based learning set in authentic contexts provides opportunity for students to ” generate and share multimedia, assess digital documents, write for authentic audiences, and otherwise exploit the resources of the new participatory culture.” The white paper has a great deal of useful writing that can inform school discussions around meeting the needs of students.

TAGS: newmedia participatory culture 21stcenturylearning