The article, Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture, offered several good insights into the changes of the classroom and the way technology can play a role.  I do agree that children should be given every opportunity to access educational digital media, but I also feel the article overstated the value of some programs.  For example, using a game like Cyber Nations as homework for a history class may not be such a great idea, contrary to what Jenkins suggests.  After reading the article, I looked for some of the games, including this one, and found that they would be beyond time consuming for students and, in the case of Cyber Nations, offer little advice on how to run a country.  In its benefit, it does teach money management.

I do not think that Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture answered many questions about how to close the digital divide.  Jenkins states that after school programs should not just be used for assignment catch up, but should integrate media literacy skills into the curriculum.  This would be a great idea if the majority of children in the programs did not need extra assistance with their schoolwork.  Having tutored for several after school programs, I have seen that this is not the case.  Most of the children have either fallen behind on work or need help understanding what they learned in class that day.  Not all schools have a plethora of options for teaching media literacy, and parents can be even more limited.

While Jenkins maintains that the core skills and competencies required for full participation in the participatory culture are being haphazardly integrated into educational settings, he suggests very little in the way of how to improve.  I am not against media literacy education but I believe it is much harder to systematically implement than Jenkins says.  Some schools and parents have more resources so they will be able to produce media literate students who are savvy at adapting and taking credit for their published work.  But other schools will have difficulty integrating advanced technology (that is technology beyond the VHS player) and there is a whole bundle of policies that Jenkins does not address.  How can we, as teachers, help students become meaningful members of the participatory culture when we do not always have the resources to do so?