Certain aspects of participatory culture are appropriate for classroom implementation. However, part of the appeal of participatory culture is the ability to choose whether or not to participate. In a school setting, once that participation is forced, it doesn’t matter if the students are blogging about an interesting topic or completing a programming sequence, the forced nature of the setting ruins the appeal of participatory culture. I encountered this problem a lot in my high school English classes. Once a teacher assigned a book to read over the summer or for a class discussion, it lost my general interest to take the book for its quality of meaning. I was so in tuned with dissecting the book for analytical reasons because it was assigned and therefore lost all enjoyment out of the read.
I appreciated the acknowledgement of disempowerment felt by much of the youth today. Young people are in the lowest voting bracket and have the least interest in political debate. However, many video games, especially war games, allow the player to choose which side it supports. In school settings, the information on war in text books is often constructed and “hand picked” to shed light on one side and demonize the other. The video game offers a sense of choice and political activism while avoiding criticism from curriculum norms.
I completely agree with the remarks made on the transparency problem in regards to using games in the classroom experience. While access to gaming systems and complex virtual competitions defines a gap between those who have technology use and those who don’t, the use of these tools in the classroom is hard to manage properly. The experience from Shrier, who noticed students taking the history game at face value, mirrored the problems faced at my middle school with the Oregon Trail game. While this game was a huge deal to us as students, the interactive nature of the game took away the learning experience. Halfway through the game students were more interested in who died the most interesting death then actually completing the game.
The comment you made about participatory culture is spot on! I have had very similar experiences with school. When you have to do something, especially when you are a hormonal teenager, it makes it very difficult to motivate yourself to want to do it.
I completely agree with your gaming reference. I think that “kids these days” have a lot of strong opinions and ideals that they want to get out there, but they often do not get to express these ideas in a school setting, and when they do it is typically at a very low level. The gaming world is one way to get their ideas out there as well as online organizations like anonymous.
I watched a video recently in one of my education classes where they were able to successfully institute gaming into the classroom, but this was an isolated incident.
I left a reply earlier and am just making sure it works.
I thought the approach you took on participatory was very intriguing. Forcing kids to do anything that they don’t want to never works out, but my question is why do you think that kids wouldn’t want to work with technology? If you look at a six year they are already playing with an ipad, so why do you think that when they are older they wouldn’t want to be working on the same thing? The reason I ask this is because this article is all about technology and how we can use it. This isn’t like when we were forced to read those boring book, this is technology! It is always exciting to everyone and anyone who has access to it.
I definitely agree with what you said in the first paragraph about participatory culture and once something is forced it losses all its appeal. I had the same experience in my high school with summer readings and it did indeed take away from the book. I also agree that video games are a way of making a subject more interesting. It was not until I got to college and took American Experience that I had a different perspective on Christopher Columbus. However, I think there is the issue that students will not even questions what happens in the games because they don’t know how to differentiate between fact and fiction. It is definitely something that schools should watch out for when incorporating more technology within their lessons.