Digital Media and Learning

This article is in response to a paper funded by the MacArthur Foundation called "Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century.  The paper discussed our new digital generation and the current participatory culture that has come out of it, along with the new skills needed in this environment. Although I agree with the intent of the paper and agree with most everything it says, I disagree with a few points it makes.  This is from my own bias on the importance gaming, but I felt there were too many references and examples of gaming, or at least not enough of other forms of digital media that in my mind would have done a better job of making the argument for the paper.  The argument as I understood it, or the most important issue that stood out to me -- 
            
 "Schools as institutions have been slow to react to the emergence of this new participatory clulture; the greatest opportunity for change is currently found in after-school programs and informal learning communities.(Jenkins p.4)"


I'm not so sure why this statement is so shocking to me because I was in high school only four years ago, but I find it very unsettling that most students learn valuable skills and retain more information outside the classrooms.  I don't feel like this is the teachers fault, because I know many work hard to include digital media in lessons whenever they can, but it comes down to the school system that limits what teachers should teach, how they should teach it, and the resources to do so.  Jenkins list three concerns about students interacting on their own that include unequal opportunities, misperception, and ethical concerns.  I believe this is just the tip of the iceberg for reasons why there is need for a more formal education in digital media in the classroom.


There are skills listed that come in play with digital media literacy.  Of these eleven, I feel that the two most important in my experience are judgement and collective intelligence. Digital media should be taught in the classroom because with the availability of the internet, students need to be able to set apart virtual reality and real world concepts along with reliability and credibility and understanding the intent of the information being given.  Also, I feel that there has always been taboo around techie-computer literate people and that they keep to themselves, game all day long, and have little interactions with others.  Collective intelligence along with networking is a great to link people, ideas, and information together.  The digital media world is no longer as individualized at it use to be and it think that is the whole point for the participatory culture.