Jenkins, Henry et.
al. “Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for
the 21^st Century.” 

I’ve excerpted two quotes from Jenkins et. al’s occasional
paper with the intent of focusing on the way that these perspectives are
allowing (forcing?) me to re-examine my teaching philosophy, as well as the
structure of formal education. The authors detail the extent to which students
are acquiring new media literacy skills outside of formal education settings,
as the dynamics of participatory cultures encourage inclusion, informal, yet
rule-governed mentorship, with seemingly unfettered access to texts, images,
and entire communities of individuals with experiential and professional
knowledge; it seems as if these communities are everything formal education isn’t.

Quote 1: from The Transparency Problem

“Although youth are becoming more adept at using media as
resources (for creative expression, research, social life, etc.), they often
are limited in their ability to examine
the media themselves” (18).

This quote has prompted my consideration of specific pedagogical
issues that have become particularly relevant for me, as I have just begun
planning and teaching a Dual Enrollment first-year composition course at a
rural high school (today was my first day!). In requiring students to examine
media and the technologies they know (intuit) and love, I anticipate
encountering a bit of resistance primarily because students see these
technologies and participatory communities as theirs; as the instructor, I don’t have the expertise they want or
need. What do I have to offer students here? Critical examination and guidance?
 In asking myself that question, I
understand the very real waves of panic that many educators must have been
experiencing over the past decade (or more). If an instructor’s pedagogies are
reliant on the leverage she has over students (professional and experiential
knowledge of the subject matter, access to requisite technologies), then what
is she to do when the leverage is considerably lessened, if not entirely
removed? How much of our current (formal) education system relies on leverage based
in part on access to resources and learning experiences that students simply
can’t get anywhere else? Is the prevalence of technologies outside of
traditional learning environments in part causing an identity crisis for
individual instructors, as well as educational institutions? Perhaps, if we use
it correctly, this is one of many tipping points for formal education; perhaps
we can use this moment of crisis to re-examine what we hope to do for and with
students, what we have to offer them, and why they should want to listen to and
learn from us. What do we have to offer that students cannot get anywhere else?

This question leads me to the
second excerpted quote from Jenkins et.al:

Quote
2: from Why We Should Teach Media Literacy:  Three Core Problems

"In fact, we do not need to protect them so much as engage them in critical dialogues that
help them to articulate more fully their
intuitive understandings of these experiences. To say that children are not
victims of media is not to say that they, any more than anyone else, have fully
mastered what are, after all, complex and still emerging social practices” (15).

A very dear friend of mine teaches in Chesterfield County, a
relatively short distance from the school district I am currently teaching in.
Recently, she and I were discussing the excitement around the beginning of the
school year and I made a passing remark about how quickly that excitement seems
to die off by the end of the first week. However, she and many other teachers
in her district were certain that students would remain engaged this year because each middle school student is being given a
Chromebook.

In the most recent story on the subject, WRIC--ABC Channel
8  suggests that the most pressing issue is not how prepared the students or
teachers are to use the machines; instead, the issue most worthy of our
collective attention is the children’s safety in being allowed to roam the
internet unsupervised. The district superintendent is quick to reassure parents that their
children will be protected, as the machines will have content filters and student
activity will be monitored; similarly, the machines will be protected, as each
child will be issued a padded case, funded in part by an additional $50
technology fee that parents are required to pay this year. Though the fee can
be waived in the case of financial hardships, the story seems to suggest that
there is no real need for such a waiver, as “92% of Chesterfield School families
have internet at home.” The connections to Jenkins et. al’s discussion of the
digital divide and participation gap are clear, as is the need for “new educational initiatives to help youth and
adults learn how to use those tools effectively” (16). Faculty have only been provided
with one training session with the Chromebooks, which centered on surveillance and how to ensure that the machine's security programs would keep students off of prohibited sites. The majority of teachers had no reservations about students' ability to utilize the technology and programs, but asked a number of questions about how to best/most efficiently upload content for students to view at home. After a number of conversations with both individuals and small groups of instructors, it was clear that most of them viewed the Chromebook as an "innovative" means to deliver course content. 

So what conclusions am I drawing from any of this? Frankly, I'm not sure. I have only ever taught in F2F environments, but I've spent the past year participating in and completing courses at a distance. I'm now trying to understand and marry the affordances of both experiences in designing a hybrid dual enrollment course that introduces students to critical reading, writing, and thinking. It is incredibly difficult to feel confident or secure enough to experiment with using technologies when this is my first semester teaching for this college and with these textbooks (I was hired to teach dual enrollment a week ago; neither the college nor the high school has offered it as a hybrid). The stakes are high for me, but they're also especially high for students who want to do well in this class so that they may graduate and proceed to the four-year university of their choice, unimpeded by the required first-year composition sequence. They need to do well, and so do I; how do I overcome the fear and anxiety of experimentation and play when the stakes are this high?