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Welcome January 31, 2009

NML Mapping Think Tank

Thank you for being part of this one-day “think tank.” We’ve assembled a reallyexciting group and we’re excited to meet you and to have you meet each other.The purpose of this gathering is to bring together teachers and other people in whowork at the intersection of new media and geography to generate ideas for how thenew media literacies might be used to meaningfully augment and complement what’salready happening in middle school social studies classrooms. These ideas will beedited and expanded by Project New Media Literacies staff and turned into aTeachers’ Strategy Guide.The Teachers’ Strategy Guide, tentatively titled

Mapping in a Participatory Cult ure

willconsist of a collection of activities, videos, and resources for teachers interestedinbringing new media literacies into the middle school social studies classroom.In this document, you will find:•

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An introduction to Project New Media Literacies, its goals and initiatives•

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Information about the five skills that we will focus on for this project•

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An introduction to “unconferences” and what we hope to accomplish that day•

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A set of starting thinking questions•

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Instructions on how to connect with other participants and get started•

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Official contracts and agreements

Please let us know if you have any questions.

Erin Reilly, research director,ebreilly@mit.eduLana Swartz, coordinator,deswartz@mit.eduNick Seaver, technical support,seaver@mit.eduKelly Whitney, logistics,leahy@mit.edu

Timeline

Before January 31

•read all prep materials•sign up for grouptumblr •post a short bio, initialresponses to thinkingquestions and prepmaterials, and respondto posts made by fellowparticipants•return signed copies of agreements andcontracts

On January 31

•participate in one day“think tank” from 9am -5pm at MIT (exactlocation to follow)•take notes throughoutthe day and post themto group tumblelog•be interviewed oncamera

February–June

•Continue to postrelevant ideas•Provide feedback asNML staff producesvideos segments andstrategy guide

January 31, 2009

NML Mapping Think Tank

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A participatoryculture is a culture withrelatively low barriers toartistic expression andcivic engagement, strongsupport for creating andsharing one’s creations,and some type of informal mentorshipwhereby what is knownby the most experiencedis passed along tonovices. A participatory culture is also onein which members believe their contributionsmatter, and feel some degree of socialconnection with one another. Participatoryculture shifts the focus of literacy from oneof individual expression to communityinvolvement.A growing body of scholarship suggestspotential benefits of these forms of participatory culture, includingopportunities for peer-to-peer learning, achanged attitude toward intellectualproperty,the diversification of culturalexpression,the development of skills valuedin the modern workplace, and a moreempowered conception of citizenship.Access to this participatory culture functionsas a new form of thehidden curriculum,shaping which youth willsucceed and which will beleft behind as they enter school and theworkplace.Project New MediaLiteracies has identifiedtwelve skills that are vitalto full participation in this emergent mediaenvironment. These new skills are not areplacement for traditional literacy, butrather additional practices andcompetencies to enable full participation.Everyone involved in preparing youngpeople to go out into the world hascontributions to make in helping studentsacquire the skills they need. Schools, after-school programs, and parents havedistinctive roles to play as they do whatthey can in their own spaces to encourageand nurture these skills.

“Educators must work together to ensure that everyAmerican young person has access to the skills andexperiences needed to become a full participant.”

adapted from

Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture:Media Education for the 21st Century

, by Henry Jenkins, with RaviPurushotma, Katherine Clinton, MargaretWeigel, and Alice J. Robison

(Lenhart & Madden, 2007)

Learning in a Participatory Culture

January 31, 2009

NML Mapping Think Tank

adapted from

Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture:Media Education for the 21st Century

, by Henry Jenkins, with RaviPurushotma, Katherine Clinton, MargaretWeigel, and Alice J. Robison

The Learning Library

The Learning Library is envisioned as aframework API that houses a collection of learning modules which encourage teens tolearn the New Media Literacy skills. Theselearning modules are nonlinear, consistingof activities and media prompts thattogether create a coherent lesson or thought-provoking concept. The activitiescan be online or offline, group or individual; they usually culminate in somekind of "your turn" project, where teenscreate material in response to the learningmodule they've just experienced. The mediaprompts can be of almost any kind,including video interviews with mediamakers, animations, data visualizations,illustrations, podcasts, and websites.

Teacher Strategy Guides

We believe that the New Media Literaciesneed to be integrated across the curriculum—not as an added-on subject, but as aparadigm shift in how we teach and thinkabout traditional school content. To offer amodel for how these skills might be better integrated into the curriculum, we aredeveloping a series of teacher strategyguides which we hope will inform andinspire teachers working in that field,sparking further experimentation andinnovation.

Ethics Casebook

The GoodPlay Project at Harvard seeks tounderstand the ethical issues that youthface in the virtual frontier of new digitalmedia. NML is collaborating withGoodPlay to produce learning tools thathelp youth understand the connectionsbetween the digital media skills they learnand their roles and responsibilities as"good" cyber citizens. By integrating theGoodPlay ethical framework with the newmedia skill set defined by NML, thecollaboration would develop activities thatencourage reflection about ethical issuesraised in various forms of mediaparticipation.

NML Initiatives