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Why we mustn’t have a participation gap: 2 students’ experiences

August 24, 2012 By Anne Leave a Comment

The other day, two school librarians posted an insightful article about two students – Jessica, just starting her junior of high school, and Michael, who just graduated – who stand on opposite sides of the “participation gap,” Prof. Henry Jenkins’s term for the digital divide of participatory media and today’s networked world. They describe what conditions in schools close the gap and what conditions widen it. It won’t be hard for you to see the benefits to students of closing the gap. Here are just a few of the conditions on either side (please read librarians Michelle Luhtala and Deb Svec’s post for more detail):

Michael’s school…

  • Has an “underlying principle … of trust” behind student codes of conduct and policies around the appropriate use of technology
  • Encourages students to use their own digital devices in the classroom
  • Supports collaborative learning among students, teachers, and “external instructional partners” using the devices during classtime
  • Enabled Michael to learn “how to use social media to increase his productivity and learning” – tools such as “blogs, microblog hashtags, photo and video uploads.”
  • Helped Michael to be “always mindful when posting to his profile accounts that there were “adults in the room.”
  • Prepared Michael for college, where he “will continue to grow his social bookmarking account to construct his own archive of learning resources.”

Jessica’s school, in one of the US’s 12 largest school districts, takes just about the opposite approach: Luhtala and Svec write that it bans all personal devices and “blocks many sites that would be appropriate for secondary students because the district maintains the same settings for all K–12 learners”; provides no opportunities for students to communicate online with students or experts beyond the school campus; and offers “precious few lessons in digital citizenship and ethical use” of media. Since starting high school, Jessica “has actively sought opportunities to communicate and collaborate with outside organizations, but most of these exchanges rely on free tools like Skype, Google+, Facebook, and Twitter, which are strictly prohibited on campus,” the librarians write. “Any 21st-century preparedness Jessica develops will occur in spite of, not because of, her K-12 education.”

In our report to Congress in 2010, one of the recommendations of the Online Safety & Technology Working Group was very close to Luhtala and Svec’s conclusion that “it is imperative that K-12 educational programs integrate real-world technologies to embed digital citizenship throughout the curriculum.” So I agree it’s imperative. But it also seems intuitive: How can cooking be learned anywhere but in a kitchen? How do we learn digital literacy and citizenship without digital environments in which to model and practice them?

Others agree too; maybe there’ll be a groundswell: In an interview with Dr. Jenkins, Howard Rheingold, author of the new book Net Smart: How to Thrive Online, said that “knowing how to cultivate and make use of personal learning networks has become a life skill in school and the workplace. And Manuel Castells has argued, with impressive evidence, that the linkage of global communication networks with human social networks is transforming world civilization into a ‘network society’.” If we want school to prepare students for effective participation in this “network society,” we’d better bring network experiences into school.

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Filed Under: education technology, School & Tech, school policy, Social Media Tagged With: digital media, education technology, Howard Rheingold, Net Smart, network society, participation gap, school policy, Social Media

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2016 TEDx Talk on
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IMPORTANT RESOURCES

Our (DIGITAL) PARENTING BASICS: Safety + Social
NAMLE, the National Association for Media Literacy Education
CASEL.org & the 5 core social-emotional competencies of SEL
Center for Democracy & Technology
Center for Innovative Public Health Research
Childnet International
Committee for Children
Congressional Internet Caucus Academy
ConnectSafely.org
Control Shift: a pivotal book for Internet safety
Crimes Against Children Research Center
Crisis Textline
Cyber Civil Rights Initiative's Revenge Porn Crisis Line
Cyberwise.org
danah boyd's blog and book about networked youth
Disconnected, Carrie James's book on digital ethics
FOSI.org's Good Digital Parenting
The research of Global Kids Online
The Good Project at Harvard's School of Education
If you watch nothing else: "Parenting in a Digital Age" TED Talk by Prof. Sonia Livingstone
The International Bullying Prevention Association
Let Grow Foundation
Making Caring Common
Raising Digital Natives, author Devorah Heitner's site
Renee Hobbs at the Media Education Lab
MediaSmarts.ca
The New Media Literacies
Report of the Aspen Task Force on Learning & the Internet and our guide to Creating Trusted Learning Environments
The Ruler Approach to social-emotional learning (Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence)
Sources of Strength
"Young & Online: Perspectives on life in a digital age" from young people in 26 countries (via UNICEF)
"Youth Safety on a Living Internet": 2010 report of the Online Safety & Technology Working Group (and my post about it)

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