Week 4-Participatory Culture

First off, wow, what an awesome reading from H.J. Jenkins!  This material has spurred some very interesting conversations with my colleagues and myself and I think I came a realization about networked culture that has changed my perspective completely.  I've always assumed that education should always create an environment that is similar to the one students will encounter when they leave the safe confines of school and enter the harsh reality of the real world.  I have known that the internet and the various spaces created in it are very prevalent in everyday life but I now know that when the education system does not effectively teach in the network culture it is detrimental to the development of students.  Not only does it not prepare them for the world by using internet based resources but the culture itself teaches so many valuable lessons, many of which are highlighted in this reading. 

I'd like to center this post around a statement that was introduced in the assignment for this week.  Most people assume that people, especially young people, are reading less and have too much screen time.  On a superficial level, I would agree.  Young people are socializing more through networked culture and are relying on the internet for entertainment.  Some young people play video games and often enough they are educated more in video game culture than they are in academia.  But honestly, who can blame them?  From what I can tell, to most pre college students school is boring.  I love learning and talking to people in person because I feel like that is a complete experience you can not get online but I see the alluring nature of technology.  Technology is forgiving, does not judge, and is there all the time.  I think that the skill of play, discussed in the reading, is the main reason why tech culture is more popular than academic culture.  The user gets the chance to learn at their speed, in their preferred medium, experiment, and go back and learn afterwards.  All of this is done with little to no pressure.  How is the "user" treated in school?  The school user does work, inside of class and out, and then is tested.  After tests, that is it!  And the tests for some, are in high stakes situations, full of pressure that is corrosive to true learning.  Sure there is some scaffolding that occurs that would make students recall information they have previously learned but the "Renaissance Man(woman)" culture that schools have cultivated puts less importance on specializing on something and makes students learn just a little bit of everything.  What is the reason that students would want to remember something if they just move to something else later?  More importantly, what is high school doing to prepare young people to enter the world if they do not go to college. 

In my opinion, most people start learning in kindergarten and stop learning when they reach 7th or 8th grade, and that is it!  I would bet the farm that most people don't remember what they learned in high school and can recall more accurately the information from their younger years.  What is that telling you about the validity of high school education.  If I was given the key to the city and the ability to restructure the school system, the college format would start earlier.  Students would pick what they want to pursue earlier in school instead of the "Renaissance Man" curriculum.  And to simulate the real world, instead of tests that are fairly arbitrary and do not give a complete view of knowledge gained, students would be evaluated through tasks that they must accomplish.   

I know that I am opinionated and I think that is because I work in a school.  I have had discussions with teachers and students and they have similar views.  Teachers feel that they are inhibited to teach and go off on valuable tangents because they are teaching to a test, the end point of a curriculum. They must tailor a whole school year, 180 days of learning, to a test that lasts two to three hours.  (When did school become so Machiavellian?)  Students on the other hand, are not sure why they are learning the things that they are learning.  I know that not all students are advanced but I know a student that is doing highly sophisticated work with people in college and beyond and is applying for patents for technology that he and his team created.  How is school servicing him?  He goes to school, sits in the library and watches Netflix on his computer because he has to be in a building for a certain amount of time in order to graduate.  In my mind, he has already graduated. 

So to conclude, I think that the system is broken.  I know that the system was created to benefit the greatest number of people but I think it can be differentiated to accommodate more students.  We can use the ideas presented by Jenkins and others that harness the positive aspects of a networked, participatory culture.  We, as educators and a public that is concerned for the youth of society, must make learning more intrinsically motivating.  Sure, people are getting a bit more screen time but where else would they go, or better yet, where would they want to go?  Let us make the screen time work more effectively for us.  Let us direct the screen time in a way that can allow people to develop more intellectually.  Why not make a learning environment that has meaning for students and enable teachers  of all types to be facilitators of knowledge?  Why not use technology to educate students in the proper uses of technology and enrich their education through it?  There are definitely technological skills that need to be harnessed if we want to be more successful and the only way that we are going to do that is joining the internet revolution, not resisting it.