In a 2009 report entitled, Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century, Henry Jenkins and his colleagues argued that there was a growing gap between youth who were engaged in use of digital media to collaborate and share and those who were not.
The authors were concerned that unequal distribution of resources and knowledgeable mentors would produce a participation gap – youth who were left out of show, tell, and collaborate opportunities.
They identified requirements to support participation, “relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices” (Jenkins et al., 2009, p.3).
As educators, we are positioned to create participatory opportunities which support conversation, sharing, playing, and creating in both virtual and physical spaces. Using today’s inexpensive and accessible information and communication technologies, we can engage with authentic audiences, elicit and provide feedback, and experience collaborative learning in virtual sharing spaces. In our classrooms, libraries, after-school programs, summer programs, and enrichment programs we can provide face-to-face sharing spaces.
Educators are also charged with keeping students safe and adhering to guidelines and policies that ensure well-being and security. However, even in the most controlled environments, there are options to provide a wider audience for student work while protecting student identity. The examples below achieve the dual goals of sharing and privacy using audio only podcasts, drawings, and masks!
We’d love to post some of your student work and innovative approaches for showing, telling, and collaborating. Please consider joining in this conversation as a guest blogger.
Kindergarteners
Podcast sharing – before and after learning about whales:
before….
after…
Podcast sharing of hard copy books:
First Graders
What we learned about the octopus:
Performance of Book, Book, Book by Pam Brus adapted as a Reader’s Theater Play by Toni Buzzeo (4:02)
Second Graders
Retell of a familiar story using paper cut-outs (0-1:59) and performance guided by teacher’s narration (2:00-5:57):
Third Graders
Newspaper articles on self-selected topics:
Five star book reviews:
References
Jenkins, H., Clinton, K., Purushotma, R., Robinson, A.J., and Weigel, M., 2006. Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st century. Chicago, IL: John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.