New Literacies in an Era of Participatory Culture

1. What is a participatory culture?

Participatory culture is an environment that allows students to express themselves artistically. It is giving someone a voice in their community to produce something that is helpful and effective. In the classroom, it could be seen as a culture that helps students really make sense of what they are learning in schools. It allows them to connect what they are learning in school with their world outside of school. One responsibility that teachers have in the classroom is to create a culture that promotes the students to express themselves positively to those who are around them. 

I thought Henry Jenkins described the culture that a mentor could create very nicely. He summarized this environment as having 5 main qualities to promote student growth. Here is what he stated. 

How can you embrace the best of participatory culture into everyday practices of your classroom/schooling?

Navigating participatory culture in our day and age must be done with care. First, the teacher must stress and teach the dangers that come with expressing yourself or your work publicly. Students must be educated on safe ways to participate in our culture. At the same time, I firmly believe this is a necessary part of life if students want to full learn new literacy skills. Participatory culture challenges students to "make a change for good" in the world that we live in!

The next step is for teachers to teach their students how to create new ideas and share them with the world. Skills that students will need are ways to create, circulate, and collaborate information through new media. Questions that might need to be answered are: what should I create and through what type of media might I be able to express my thoughts or ideas? A good place for educators to begin is to find out your students interests and leverage that into the curriculum to promote good participation in our society. This might also be viewed as the main challenge that educators face as well! 

Libraries are places communities revolve around. This could be an excellent place for fifth graders to express themselves to their communities. One idea I like to do for fifth grade science is to allow students to make a project on "Healthy Lifestyle Choices". Students are given 2 options of ways they can express themselves:

1. Create a blog

2. Create a poster

If students make a poster, they are given the options to hang it up around our school or hang it in their local library (You must talk to the librarian in advance).