New Media & New Literacies

What is Participatory Culture?

A study from the Pew Internet & American Life project, that focuses on the involvement of teens to produce and share content media in Internet, showed that more than one-half of all teens have created media content, and one-third of teens have shared the content they produced.

Jenkins defines the culture that has low barriers to artistic expression and strongly supports the sharing of anyone’s creation, as participatory culture. In the participatory culture each member believes that their contributions are valuable and social connection is important. Forms of participatory culture include affiliations, expressions, collaborative problem solving and circulations.

Henry Jenkins, Katie Clinton, Ravi Purushotma, Alice J. Robison, and Margaret Weigel, 2009. Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Reports on Digital Media and Learning, June 5, 2009.

New Media Literacy Skills

The development of digital media has shifted learners toward digital literacy and has a massive impact in participatory culture as well. The following diagram demonstrates what the impact of new media is in the participatory culture, and what are some of the prerequisites for learners to get involved. Blogs, Youtube, Wikipedia, Flickr, Virtual life are some of platforms where learners can participate, create, share and access digital files. Even though the participants don’t know each other they can interact and collaborate with each other in distance. The online collaboration enhances social skills and also informs users about new trends in technology or in any other aspect of life. The following diagram shows the impact of digital media in participatory culture.

Henry Jenkins, Katie Clinton, Ravi Purushotma, Alice J. Robison, and Margaret Weigel, 2009. Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Reports on Digital Media and Learning, June 5, 2009.

Challenges of Participatory Cultures

According to Bill Ivey and Steven J. Tepper those who have the education, skills, financial resources, and time required to navigate through cultural choices will gain access to new cultural opportunities. Instead of, those individuals who have fewer resources will rely on the cultural fare offered by media. Therefore technology and economic change will influence the cultural division among people. The question that comes naturally is what are consequences for democracy, civility, community, and quality of life? Is it possible for US to prosper if the cultural inequality is so evident? Ivey and Tepper concerns are if all students will benefit from learning in ways that allow them to contribute in public, community, and economic life. The challenge is how to engage students in after-school programs, and give the youngest children a head start and allow more mature younger students the chance to develop and grow as collaborative participants and ethical communicators.

Affinity Spaces

James Gee defines informal learning cultures as affinity spaces and he explores why people learn more, participate more actively, and engage more with popular culture than they do with textbooks. According to Gee affinity spaces offer different opportunities for learning because:

a. There are several endeavors that bridge differences such as age, class, race, gender, and educational level.

b. Individuals can participate in various groups based on their skills and interests.

c. Peer to peer teaching encourages participants to learn new knowledge or improve existing skills.

d. Each individual feels as an expert while tapping the expertise of others.

Affinity spaces are different from formal educational systems because:

a. Gaining knowledge from popular culture is experimental instead of formal education is conservative.

b. Informal learning from popular culture is innovative and formal learning is more static.

c. Informal learning communities are ad hoc and l formal educational communities are bureaucratic.

The learning platform I'm considering is Moodle and the affinity spaces are more present in discussion forums and collaborative projects.

Critical Media Literacy

New Media Consortium defines 21st literacy as the set of abilities and skills where aural, visual, and digital literacy overlaps. The ability to visualize, recognize, manipulate and transform digital media is the skill that individuals should possess.

The new literacies require social skills that are improved through collaboration and networking and are built, to distribute them pervasively, and to easily adapt them to new forms.

The new literacies almost all involve social skills developed through collaboration and networking and are built on the traditional literacy taught in the classroom. Traditional literacy is a must for all students before they are engaged into new participatory culture.

New media literacy cannot be perceived as technical skills and in education system new media literacy cannot just be covered by installing computer labs. New media literacies is a social skill and the best way to interact with larger communities.

Digital Learning and Participatory Culture Role into Moodle LMS

Olgert Nazarko

Empire State College

Abstract

The expanse of technology has emerged the shift toward digital learning. Learners are more oriented toward e-learning and especially learning management systems. Moodle as an open-source platform is designed to engage learners in digital literacy and emphasize the participatory culture and its benefits.

Digital Learning and Participatory Culture

Reading from an electronic device was out of imagination 25 years ago, a printed book as the way to go. In the last ten years the technology is changing so rapidly that sometimes is hard to keep up. In the beginning of the technology boom, desktop and laptop was used as a commodity to read, but in nowadays smartphones are becoming day to day necessity to read and get information quickly and whenever we are. Kindle devices are used to access e-books and replace in a way the printed copy of a book for most of the youth generation.

A printed book is the way to go and not the internet on wireless devices is the right path to knowledge, I think this is what most of teenagers are getting as an advice from their parent every day. This is an ongoing debate in every household between parents and their children.

According to Wolf reading is not a natural act, because there are not reading genes in human DNA [1]. Reading is more a cultural activity and has evolved since its inception. Our generation can totally confirm this fact since the deployment of technology.
Because of dramatic social and technological change we should be prepared to foster new types of literacy. Prof. Kellner at UCLA propose that we should take in consideration printed literacy, combined with media literacy, computer and information literacy [2]. According to National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) literacy is defined as task-based and skills-based. The task-based literacy focuses on what an adult can or cannot perform in the everyday literacy task. The skills-based literacy focuses on the knowledge and skills an adult must possess in order to perform these tasks [3]. The media has changed tremendously and literacy has been flexible and transformed itself during these years. A big list of tools and number of high technologies are what people can refer to media landscape of our days. According to Henry Jenkins there are not tools, but is our relationship and logic that are directing our media, and to understand this relationship we have to develop skills that will lead us to understand our contemporary media landscape [4]. The contemporary media is innovative and follow the rhythm of technology and cultural changes. The printed era is approached by our digital time and things are changing rapidly. The internet has connected people and has brought out more changes in our culture.

Jenkins defines the culture that has low barriers to artistic expression and strongly supports the sharing of anyone’s creation, as participatory culture [5]. In the participatory culture each member believes that their contributions are valuable and social connection is important. Forms of participatory culture include affiliations, expressions, collaborative problem solving and circulations.

Figure 1: The impact of digital media in participatory culture

Open Source and E-Learning

Especially in Europe, when it first started open source technology refers to software’s source code that is freely available to programmers who wishes to modify, and improve the code [6]. Some of the most recognized open source projects are Linux kernel, Apache, Mozilla, and OpenOffice. Most of the open source products are released under General Public License (GPL) that is intended to guarantee freedom to share and change free software and make sure the software is free for all its users [7].

E-learning is the delivery of all education activities such as instructing, teaching and learning through Internet. It was the initiative of the higher education institutions to promote the development of enterprise open source applications such as course management systems and electronic portfolios. These institutions are aiming toward open source products; because they can freely audit their system. This shift toward open source course management systems CMS is because the system becomes transparent and more flexible.

What is Moodle?

Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment (Moodle) is a free, open source Learning Management System (LMS). Martin Dougiamas an employee of Curtin University is the creator of Moodle platform [8]. The goal of Moodle platform is to promote effective learning by facilitating instructors and learners with an interactive environment.

Moodle as an open-source product, allows developers to customize the system to individual needs. Moodle communicates easily with social media applications such as Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia, etc. Facebook and Twitter can be integrated with Moodle platform, and comments and announcements can be posted easily through Moodle to Facebook page, allowing educators to announce and engage learners in Moodle through social media. The design of Moodle is based on socio-constructivist pedagogy [8]. It provides an environment when learners contribute to their learning and allows collaborative interaction among participants. Also Moodle supports an inquiry and discovery based approach to online learning [9].

Moodle has several features that enhance the productivity for instructors such as flexible grading system, communication options, and performance assessment modules.

Learners in nowadays are classified as digital natives and immigrant. According to Prensky digital natives are learners who have spent their entire live surrounded by and using all tools of the digital age. Digital immigrants are users who are not born into the digital world but later in life they have been introduced to digital world [10]. The category of Moodle users can be classified as follows:

a. The majority of the learners are digital natives and they receive information really fast and are multi-task when it comes to technology.

b. Faculty based on their age-group might be digital natives and immigrants.

Every product is designed to target a specific audience; therefore e-learning environments can contribute to facilitate the process of the today’s audience that is classified as digital natives and immigrant learners.

Some of the advantages of using an open source platform such as Moodle LMS include:

· No LMS license and subscription costs

· Customize easily LMS’ features

· Freedom from vendor lock-in

· The support of collaborators to identify and fix bugs through the system

Classification of Moodle Features

Moodle as LMS platform has several features that will facilitate the learning process and will engage learners and educators in virtual classroom. The goal is to classify how these features fall under four categories of participatory culture such as affiliations, expressions, collaborative problem-solving and circulations [5].

· Affiliations include memberships formal and informal, in online communities and can include message boards.

· Expressions produce new creative forms, such as digital files.

· Collaborative problem-solving involves learners working together in teams, to complete assignments and develop new knowledge.

· Circulations shape the flow of media such as blogging.

I have considered eleven Moodle features such as following [11]:

1. Course reports include all grades for many kinds of activities and activity reports for each student; therefore it falls under affiliation form of participatory culture.

2. Assignment module is the place when the students can upload their assignments in any file format. It can be an individual or a group assignment; therefore it falls under expressions and collaborative problem-solving forms of participatory culture.

3. Chat module allows smooth, synchronous text interaction that can happen between a group of students that are part of a team collaborating to submit an assignment; therefore it falls under affiliations and collaborative problem-solving forms of participatory culture.

4. Forum module is available to students and used for asynchronous communication to post announcement or ask questions; therefore it falls under affiliations, expressions and collaborative problem-solving forms of participatory culture.

5. Glossary module allows participants to create and maintain a list of definitions, such as a dictionary; therefore it falls under collaborative problem-solving form of participatory culture.

6. Lesson module is a single activity where several pages are presented to the student, based upon a student's request; therefore it falls under circulations form of participatory culture.

7. Quiz module includes many types of standard questions formats and have a limited time window outside of which they are not available; therefore it falls under affiliations and collaborative problem-solving forms of participatory culture.

8. Resource module displays many types of media content files by a single link on the course page; therefore it falls under affiliations, collaborative problem-solving, and circulations forms of participatory culture.

9. Survey module includes built-in surveys that have been proven as instruments for analyzing online classes; therefore it falls under affiliations and circulations forms of participatory culture.

10. Wiki module includes several web pages that anyone can add to or edit; therefore it falls under collaborative problem-solving and circulations forms of participatory culture.

11. Workshop module allows peer assessment of documents, and the teacher can manage and grade the assessment; therefore it falls under affiliations form of participatory culture.

Forms Participatory Culture	Affiliations	Expressions	Collaborative Problem-solving	Circulations
Moodle Features
Course reports	x
Assignment		x	x
Chat	x		x
Forum	x	x	x	x
Glossary			x
Lesson				x
Quiz	x		x
Resource	x		x	x
Survey	x			x
Wiki			x	x
Workshop	x

Table 1: The classification of Moodle’s features as forms of participatory culture

Conclusion

Digital media direct learners toward digital literacy and categorize learners into two groups such as digital natives and immigrants. Digital media engage students into participatory culture and enhance their social skills into classroom communication. Blended learning in nowadays is a necessity because of fast pace that life has and the evolvement of digital media. Moodle as an open source is a suitable LMS for classroom activities. The features of Moodle platform fall under the four forms of participatory culture presented by Jenkins. We can conclude the digital media enhance digital literacy and participatory culture in the blended classroom environment.

References:

1. Maryanne Wolf, 2008. Proust and the squid: The story and science of the reading brain. New York: Harper Perennial, p.222.
2. Kellner, Douglas, 2000. New Technologies/New Literacies: reconstructing education for the new millennium, Teaching Education, Vol. 11, No. 3, 2000.
3. Institute of Education Sciences, 2007. National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) 2003 and National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS) 1992 Public-Use Data Files.

4. Jenkins, Henry, November, 2006. Eight Traits of the New Media Landscape, Retrieved from: http://henryjenkins.org/2006/11/eight_traits_of_the_new_media.html

5. Henry Jenkins, Katie Clinton, Ravi Purushotma, Alice J. Robison, and Margaret Weigel, 2009. Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Reports on Digital Media and Learning, June 5, 2009.
6. Alex Koohang and Keith Harman, Open Source: A Metaphor for E-Learning, Informing Science Journal, Volume 8, 2005.
7. GNU General Public License v. 2.0, accessed on December 5, 2013 from: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html#SEC3
8. Shulamit Kotzer, Yossi Elran, Learning and teaching with Moodle-based E-learning environments, combining learning skills and content in the fields of Math and Science & Technology, Proceedings of the 1st Moodle Research Conference (MRC2012), pp. 122-131, 2012.
9. Shaunda L. Wood, Technology for Teaching and Learning: Moodle as a Tool for Higher Education, International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 2010, Volume 22, Number 3, 299-307.
10. Marc Prensky, Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, NCB University Press, Vol. 9 No. 5, October 2001.
11. Moodle Features, accessed from: http://docs.moodle.org/19/en/Features

New Media & New Literacies

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

What is Participatory Culture?

Critical Media Literacy

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