Participatory Culture

1) What features of Participatory Culture are evident in the Networked Student video? Which are not?

The Networked Student video is a good example of many features of Participatory Culture and the skills associated with it. In terms of features, the video in and of itself is an example of the “low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement” as the creator is able to use his imagination to create the video, and thus engage our own imaginations to help us understand the concept. Even the character in the video was able to use his own artistic expression to put together his presentation. It also displays “strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations with others” since it is his creation and he has posted on youtube to share with others. The character in the video also share’s his creations with others. It also shows how “what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices”. The character also passes along his own experiences to novices as he is also having experiences passed to him from others. This person also clearly believes “that their contributions matter” or else he would not have taken the time to create and share his video, the same goes for the character within the video creating his bookmark website and sharing it. Though the video doesn’t directly show that the creator cares what others think of his video, the video mentions blogging and commenting on blogs which shows that people care what others think.

In terms of skills associated with Participatory culture, this video is a good display of many of them. For example, this video shows the skill of “play” as the creator experiments with his surrounding’s in creatively solve the problem of communicating this information. It is possible that he also adopted an alternative identity for the purpose of improvisation for his “performance”, though this is not clearly evident. This video also effectively shows a “simulation” constructing models of real-world processes in an active way. It also shows “appropriation” since the creator was able to sample media content before deciding how he wanted to convey his information, and then essentially “remixing” another creators style to make his own point. The video also demonstrates “distributed cognition” since the creator was able to interact with tools to enhance mental capacities and facilitate learning. Due to the credits at the end of the video, we can also assume that it demonstrates “collective intelligence” since one person wrote the script, and another created the visual media, an someone narrated, thus showing their ability to pool knowledge towards the accomplishment of a common goal. We can also assume that the creator(s) used “judgment” to determine what information to include in their communication. The character in the video shows us “networking” skills as he uses a social bookmarking page to collect, distribute, and compare information.

Some skills that perhaps were not entirely evident in this video were “multitasking”, since the narrator only needed to know his script and didn’t necessarily have to pay attention to the visual components, and “transmedia navigation” since the information was portrayed the same way throughout the video. Also “negotiation” wasn’t very prominently portrayed since there was no clear evidence of “discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms”.



2) How do the experiences of the student look similar/different from experiences students have in your classroom/context?

In my classroom context, the experiences of the student look fairly similar to those expected of my students. The character in the video uses the internet to research his topic, as my students will do. He also was involved with blogging and although blogging is not involved in my most recent lesson plan, it was an important part of my first lesson plan, and would be utilized in my classroom. Also, as the student is able to share his work with the web, in my classroom the students would also be sharing their work on the web through the course wiki, which is publicly viewable. There is no experience that the student in the video had that I would expect not to be found in my classroom, however, some of his experiences I had not originally planned on. For example, though I did not directly plan to use social bookmarking websites or google scholar specifically, I would certainly not rule out using them in my classroom.