Week 3 - New Digital Literacies

“We are moving away from a world in which some produce and many consume media, toward one in which everyone has a more active stake in the culture that is produced.” (Jenkins, p.10)

One of the areas that interested me is Ethics. Young learners today have the ability to place something on the Internet that may have a profound impact on their future perception when it comes to education and employment opportunities. The Three key concerns stated in “Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21^st Century” were;

1. 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?  
2. How do we ensure that every child has the ability to articulate his or her understanding of how media shapes perceptions of the world? 
3. How do we ensure that every child has been socialized into the emerging ethical standards that should shape their practices as media makers and as participants in online communities. (p. 18)

How do we ensure that every child can become a full participant in the constantly changing technological world we now live in? I have witnessed the difference in school districts from place to place on Long Island, let alone the world, in regard to what children are introduced or have access to because of the economic factors that are a part of their education and learning opportunities. Is there a way to allow all learners to have the same technological and cyber-social advantage? This will be one of the most difficult areas to address and can have a tremendous impact upon the outcome of their participation in the new world of technological evolution and literacy.

Using the new skills being implemented can help prepare the learner for the world they will meet. These new skills include;

Play; Performance; Simulation; Appropriation; Multitasking; Distributed Cognition; Collective Intelligence; Judgment; Transmedia Navigation; Networking and Negotiation (p.4)

But the biggest problem again will have to do with the access to the technologies used with these skills.

Reading is one of the most important aspects of learning and finding ones self. It doesn’t necessarily matter what you are reading but that you are understanding and taking in different ideas, views and thoughts created by other writers. It is in using this information to create your own ideas that makes reading and literacy such an important aspect of becoming a part of this world and the communication between us as individuals and collective groups.

Reference

Jenkins, H. (2006). Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21^st Century

Retrieved from http://digitallearning.macfound.org/atf/cf/%7B7E45C7E0-A3E0-4B89-AC9C-E807E1B0AE4E%7D/jenkins_white_paper.pdf