Reading Week #2 Henry Jenkins

What are Henry Jenkins main arguments about Wikipedia?

Henry Jenkins had quite a few excellent arguments regarding Wikipedia.

• What I thought was interesting was, he did not want to convince anyone to use Wikipedia in class, but gave some pretty strong arguments for it.
• Educators, such as myself, need to understand what is going on well enough to offer them meaningful advice and guidance because this is where the young students go first.
• ‘Old literacy ‘educators, like myself, need to adopt an “informed skepticism” rather than a dismissive attitude.
• I now have ‘informed skepticism”.

What is "participatory culture"?
This was pretty self-explanatory to me. But what is very important to remember is; it is a space where youth and adults learn from each other. I thoughts these points from the text said it best.

• Where there is strong support for creating and sharing what you create with others,
•  Where there is some kind of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced gets passed along to newbies and novices,
• Where members feel that their contributions matter.
• Where members feel some degree of social connection with each other at least to the degree to which they care what other people think about what they have created.
• Where teens and adults interact but with less fixed and hierarchical relations than found in formal education.
(http://henryjenkins.org/2007/06/what_wikipedia_can_teach_us_ab.html  Part1)

What is the relationship between "old literacies" and "new media literacies"?

• “Old literacies” are the aspects of traditional research methods, text-based literacies, and critical analysis that have long been valued within formal education. This includes spending time in musty old libraries searching for and photocopying journals to validate your theories.
•  “New Media Literacies” are the skills that have taken on new importance as young people move into emerging media institutions and practices. These new technologies have enabled shifts in how we as a society produce, dissect, and circulate information.

What are the reading and writing behaviors associated with "new media literacies".

I thought these four skills discussed in Part 1 were the most important and condensed so that, even I, was able to understand.

• Collective Intelligence — the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others towards a common goal. This also needs to be done without bias and egos.
• Judgment — the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information source.
• Networking — the ability to search for, synthesize and disseminate information.
• Negotiation — the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative sets of norms.
(http://henryjenkins.org/2007/06/what_wikipedia_can_teach_us_ab.html Part1)

According to Henry Jenkins why is it important to teach "new media literacies" in school?

There were so many points on why it is important to teach “new media literacies” in school , here are the ones I felt stood out to me. Mostly has to do with the older generation.

• Value what teachers, parents, librarians, youth workers, and others bring to the conversation. We may not know it all, but we know a lot.

• There’s still a strong role for adults to play in insuring that young people develop a critical vocabulary for thinking about the place of media in their lives and engage in meaningful reflection
about the ethical choices they make as media producers and participants in online communities.

• Help these adults respond to the changing circumstances young people face in a period of prolonged and profound media change. This is very important to me.

• New media literacies need to inform all aspects of the educational curriculum; they represent a philosophical shift in how we teach English, social science, science, math, and the other schoolroom subjects.

• If these skills are going to reach every American young people, it is going to require the active participation of collaboration of all of those individuals and institutions who impact young people’s moral, intellectual, social, and cultural development

• Access to this participatory culture functions as a new form of the hidden curriculum, shaping which kids will succeed and which will be left behind as they enter schools and workplaces.

• Educators need to work together to insure that every American young person has access to the skills and experiences needed to become a full participant.

• Young people are going to the site in search of quick data and may lack the critical vocabulary necessary to use its contents meaningfully. So, at the most basic level, a media literacy practice around Wikipedia needs to focus attention on the basic affordances of the site, so that students are encouraged to move beyond the top level and see what’s going on underneath the hood.

What can young people learn through contributing or even consuming Wikipedia?

• “An educated consumer is our best consumer” (syms.com) This was a saying from one of the retail shops from Cleveland. They have since gone out of business in Cleveland .

• New literacies are like almost all social skills which have to do with collaboration and networking.

• Just as earlier efforts at media literacy wanted to help young people to understand their roles as media consumers and producers, young people need to better understand their roles as participants in this emerging digital culture.

• Much as young people become more critical consumers of media when they have engaged in production activities, young people ask better questions about the nature of scholarship and research when they contribute to Wikipedia.

• What it is like to work together within a knowledge culture.

Jenkins, H. (2007, June 26). What Wikipedia can Teach us About New Media Literacies (Part One). Retrieved May 29, 2013, from Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The Official Webblog of Henry Jenkins: http://henryjenkins.org/2007/06/what_wikipedia_can_teach_us_ab.html

 

How do you feel about Wikipedia after reading or listening to Henry Jenkins? Do agree or disagree with his arguments? Why?

My jury is still out. I am totally waffling. On one hand it is an excellent tool to begin any project. On the other, I believe it is being used a quick fix to a research project. All of my student’s research papers started with a citation from Wikipedia. I also agree that if Wikipedia is to be used in the classroom, the student must know reliability, validation and  bias. Today’s students want fast, “if it’s on the internet it has to be true” attitude. The young students, before college, are hopefully being taught the ins and outs of Wikipedia. My students are the ‘in-betweens’ where they have not been taught about the power of media literacies. I will need someone to give a lecture on Wikipedia.

Find an online resource that supports your position on using Wikipedia as a resource for learning in school. Summarize the argument being made in the resource and explain how it supports your position.

 http://www.pbs.org/teachers/learning.now/2006/07/wikipedia_in_the_classroom_con.html
This is a blog posting from 2006, quite a while ago, but none the less very interesting. I also believe it will hold up today.  It supports my position, because like the teachers posted I have definite mixed feelings about Wikipedia.  Opinions varied, many valued it an excellent teaching tool, which I whole heartedly agree. But there was also skepticism because of who is allowed to edit and are they experts?


I though this is so me.
 http://themetapicture.com