On the Challenges of Participatory Culture

Originally composed and posted on the my class blog on Wednesday, 10 June...

This assignment links back to the very beginning of the class. However, since my journey has been circuitous, at best, it's no surprise perhaps that I'm posting it here.

Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture...my notes and my blog

I’ve taken several sessions to digest these 60 pages...I appreciated the introductory portion:
Forms of participatory culture
Affiliations – memberships in online communities (my start for myself – flickr, twitter,
Expressions – mash-ups
Collaborative problem-solving: Wikipedia, our blogs (thinking through what I can put on my web that might help me access some resources I need to my 7 Acre Wood)
Circulations – podcasting, blogging (thinking I’ll try to create a podcast or a video on how to start/log into an ASU class, based on what I wish I’d known from the start.)

Three main concerns
Participation gap – unequal access to opportunities, experiences, skills, & knowledge (I’m experiencing this...Web 2.0 is a new world for me; lots of opportunities for learning and personal growth!)
Transparency problem – challenges faced in learning to clearly see ways media shape our perceptions of the world (I didn’t know much about this “world,” so my perspective is changing rapidly.)
Ethics – breakdown of traditional forms of professional training and socialization that might prepare young people for public roles as media makers and community participants

I’ve started notes elsewhere that I’d planned to use for my entry, but reading the print material and commenting as I go along will be a more efficient use of my time. I suspect I’ll need to write a more concise entry for the class, so this blog will primarily be for my own reference later.

I liked the example of TA’s blog in real time to support the classroom instructor. It reminds me of how our blogs have helped me in this class.

If technology is interwoven with thinking, cognitive activity is shared among people and artifacts. (This changes the educational environment, the mode.... I see its value here, and I feel connected to the class even though I haven’t met my classmates on the physical level. Hmmm...what to put in the second video that we’re asked to upload...

Distributed cognition is about technologies, people, and accessing/using social institutions and practices as resources. (Reminds me somehow of Mom’s reference years ago to genetic memory. If we have distributed cognition, we work as an organization, as an entity together. Reminds me of the reference in Phenomenon, the movie, to aspen trees – how they appear to be independent but are connected at the roots, are one organism.

The key is to have expertise available within the environment and to ensure that students know how to access and use the resources. (Perhaps I could start some sort of “how to get started” and classmates could add to that, since they’ve had more experience with the ASU online classes that I. Some sort of mash-up that others can view and use in the future. I envision us starting something and a finalized video being uploaded for new students. It’s possible and perhaps probable that the information is already on site, buried in a gazillion references. I’d love to see a student blog with a “view this before you get started” so newbies have insider advice and can start out the gate in a timely and efficient fashion.)

p. 40 – reference to knowledge communities changing the nature of media consumption...shifting from personal media to socialized/communalized media. Moving from the digital revolution to media convergence (Will this change be exponential? Are we at the beginning of the curve, where things are just beginning to take off?)

p. 41 - We train students to function within bureaucracies, when they are best served to work within ad-hoc groups. (I’ve noticed a change in how students function and how many prefer to function in classrooms. They don’t gravitate to working in small groups; they demand it.

p. 42 – Schools develop generalists rather than encouraging student to assume different roles that build on their evolving expertise....Students...need a broad background on a range of topics and to know when to go to others for expertise. (I loved the reference to the Renaissance Man...)
Hmmm. Reference to ning.com ( to create social web applications...users interact with/share information with one another.)

Judgement....knowledge – always in process. (Makes me think of Rip Van Wrinkle...if we “sleep” and stay out of the loop, how much information have we lost? What kind of time frame is needed to get “caught up” or is one able to do so? That makes the participation gap even more significant. For years, I’ve stated that if someone would pay me, I’d be a full-time student. The possibility for that exists for everyone who has a internet access and a computer that allows one to access the most current programs, tools, and applications. )

Possibility/likelihood for errors when collective intelligence is involved. Misinformation.... the larger the audience for a wiki, the more likely the information will be updated and accuracy, the end result. (I’m still musing over what topic to edit in Wikipedia. I don’t memorize well...perhaps there’s a well-referenced math concept on Wikipedia to which I can add a note.)

Students need skills to evaluate quality of different sources... to understand how perspectives and interests can affect representation of material/information...bloggers challenge and correct others’ work. (I liked the comment that “misinformation abounds online, but so do the mechanics for self-correction.” That Wikipedia can serve as strong a reference as the mighty Britannica has in the past is a wonderful thing!)

p. 44 Students need to know how to determine fact/fiction; to recognize argument and documentation; to identify real/fake; see marketing as different from enlightenment. To know what’s “truth” and fact and what’s there to market one’s idea and/or product. – Often difficult for children to do these things since they lack the real-world experiences that act as a reference. (reminds me of National Public Radio’s “Whadda ya know?” on Saturday mornings. www.npr.org
Tools for posting suspect work; www.snopes.com and www.lijit.com I’m familiar with the former, not the latter. Will have to check that out.

Tags: participatory, culture, gap, distributed cognition, media convergence, Renaissance Man, social application, collective intelligence

If I really wanted a slew of nonclassmates to read this post, I'd add the tags. Those listed above are the tags I originally put on the post in my class blog.