Author Archives: laurelfelt

Post-DML 2012

  By laurelfelt | April 9, 2012 - 7:37 pm |
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A single conference cannot propel a movement; the work must continue on the ground. To that end, we convened a post-DML reflection session on March 21, 2012, in order for the USC community to: reflect on DML 2012; list out our projects to increase transparency and synergy across the university; support the development of conversations and working groups; and make our vision a reality!

Notes from post-DML reflection session


ATTENDEES
Otto Khera
Susan Harris
Zoe Corwin
Tracy Fullerton
Anthony Maddox
Pat Beckmann-Wells
Gabe Peters-Lazaro
Sean Bouchard
Elizabeth Swensen
Kristy Norindr
Laurel Felt
Brendesha Tynes
Susana Ruiz

INTRODUCTIONS & CURRENT PROJECTS
Otto Khera: two roles @ USC — Center for Scholarly Technology (service group on campus for teaching and learning with technology; particularly interested in embedded assessments as it relates to authentic activities, not traditional assessment measures; working with Susan Harris at JEP on badges and other things that relate to service learning initiatives in supporting her with “low hanging fruit” — here’s some infrastructure instead of Blackboard, Turnitin, for example; looking at badges and seeing an alternative for assessing learning and that is interesting and deserves a look); connection to ASCJ as a graduate student working with Francois Bar, Ben Stokes, George Villanueva & developed a platform called ParTour to design a bike ride to improve people’s mental map that had been crowded by ignorance or other perceptions, can take a picture and upload to a site, add some text, populated via SMS = crowd-sourced storytelling; will be officially announcing on 4/19 a USC Commuters’ bicycle site with Francois Bar & Melissa Loudon, intersects with gameification; Otto’s center puts on great PD/info sessions for faculty — May 1 Teaching with Technology conference called “Where is Learning?”, technologies and strategies can support learning in and outside of the classroom
Susan Harris: students get credit in courses for service projects, playing with ways to use technologies to bring students together in ways, build community; submitted badge application to DML competition (not funded but still looking for ways to move forward)
Zoe Corwin: significant USC presence at DML, sociologist by training who works with Bill Tierney at Rossier; practitioner conferences are more normative; DML feels like it’s where we need to be thinking and doing, at the cutting-edge; in Year 4 of Collegeology with Tracy, Sean, and Elizabeth = awesome card game and FB game that will go online as soon as college approves privacy policy; college access goal; potential of games to engage kids, function as scale-able
Tracy Fullerton: game designer, direct the GIL, working on Collegeology, projects with Todd on Thoreau’s stay at Walden Pond & alternative reality game “Reality Ends Here” that got incoming SCA freshmen to engage with community & number of other projects cooking around here; anti-badge, believes that motivation comes from within, games and badges don’t create motivation; great games take existing desires and channel and give permission for that desire to grow and be fostered in communities in wonderful experiences; badges are technological markers or states that can’t encapsulate that idea or its richness; does believe in some badge people’s aims
Anthony Maddox: science teacher educator at Rossier; introducing these students to participatory learning; believes that must co-create experiences, n ew technology has shifted control to learner, teaching inquiry-based learning; believes that informal learning space will dwarf formal learning space by many orders of magnitude; what is the credential you get out of learning in that space? probably not degree, badge, or something we’ve considered yet, will probably have many flavors; has to lead to employment/something that people must do — can’t divorce ourselves from end outcome; Learning in Informal and Formal Environments at U of Washington; professionally licensed as an engineer
Pat Beckmann-Wells: animator and game designer for years, written a few books on computer animation, creating believable diversity in games with artists at Activision, completed a universal design learning app on narrative skills, working to get that into skills; getting EdD at Rossier; working as art director at rehabilitation games company — do therapy with patients (Sheryl Wells, Blue Marble); partnering with Bone Clones, who research bones around the world (what makes skeletons different based on diet and regional variations) — studying differences in facial anatomy from forensic point of view in order to create believable diversity in games
Gabriel Peters-Lazaro: work in SCA at IML; full-time staffer, part-time iMAP PhD student, presented IML research at DML, looking at mostly early childhood education (4-8 years old), doing digital learning, technological interventions in their learning spaces, how different media production technologies might enhance traditional literacy, computational thinking, open pedagogies, interested in designing interventions in that space, and they tend to be playful and incorporate game-making especially
Sean Bouchard: staff at GIL, working on Collegeology
Elizabeth Swensen: staff at GIL, working on Collegeology; moving on to a game for middle schoolers around college access; also developing a game for students who are trying to understand financial literacy and choosing optimal college path; gave away 1000 card games and are trying to sell 4000 on Amazon; FB game is free; conscious of not making players buy things; students from NAI answered “What did you learn? What would you do differently the next time?” and it was as if they had spit back the game’s learning objectives
Kristy Norindr: research manager at GIL; working with Susana, Tracy, and Laurel through USC Impact Games; project management and event organizing; building new teams for future grant projects, forging new relationships and new projects; DML was back-to-back with Game Designers’ Conference
Laurel Felt: see laurelfelt.org
Brendesha Tynes: at Rossier, working on NIH study to look at online victimization’s impact on teens’ academic performance; wants to design something that will help teens to cope with the victimization they experience and be more critical about the messages they receive online; also working with Anthony on design of a platform to help teachers incorporate technology into their lesson plans
Susana Ruiz: PhD student in iMap with Gabe, alum of MFA with Sean and Elizabeth; games’ intersection with non-fiction documentary and activism; practice-based dissertation, designs games

TAKEAWAYS FROM DML
-keeping people at the center, technology as a bridge, better-than-nothing, not substitute for the
-Nokia Research Labs, Tico Ballagas, did an experiment with Where the Wild Things. In his version, Max + child + parent who were reading went on voyage in the book; webcam cuts out their image and inserts them in the boat, in the bushes, etc; weren’t in the same place but felt like they were — this little project had so much heart — both exclaimed when their images tipped toward each other because they felt like they were closer together, that’s when technology sings; technology is a can opener, what we remember is the experience
-refreshing absence of discussion of devices, platforms, technologies; for someone who goes to EduCause and everyone’s pretending it’s about learning; hearing different voices, seeing the people, including the K-12 where there’s so much energy
-at one panel, students had participated in critical research project through UCLA with emphasis on technology, 5 student groups presented what they had learned and how they had empowered by doing their research on technology; really moved by those sessions; social justice message; illustrating how they’re shut down in their classes when they use cell phones to take notes; don’t have high speed internet access; equity issues
-put feelers out to UCLA, UC-Irvine?; Kristy “I have become a bridge”
-how to reconcile exciting work that’s being done in extra-curricular with feeling of inability to penetrate school day; people have given up = interesting issue
-ways of bridging and integrating parent involvement more, not very many presentations addressing that
-Katie Salens’s keynote at Education Summit at GDC, inspiring to see how far they’ve come in their curriculum; kids have vocabulary about system design that parents don’t have, starting to involve parents in their projects so they can have a common language to discuss homework with kids; their vocabulary tries to couch things with that sense of allure, e.g., Science is called How Things Work
-does it take a wholesale, unified entity to make this type of change?

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
-compiling a list of all of the presentations, all the people there, JSB was opening keynote, sending this to President Nikias, tell him that we had a strong presence — list of attendees, list of attendees, here are three questions that we are moving forward with
-participation gap, what we do and do not know, what are kids around USC doing with technology?
-can we synergize in terms of methodology, digital ethnography, pool what we know about urban kids in LA
-Nikias is interested in impact, is learning happening, interdisciplinary work; calling attention to the fact that our different disciplines share interests and goals, important moment to acknowledge our work and relationship building
-can we create a global, one-room schoolhouse where teacher is coach, different age groups work together and older ones teach the younger ones — how can we recreate the one-room schoolhouse with the technology we have or build?
-participatory communities, affinity spaces where learning occurs, capture that and channel that towards something that takes itself even further
-games work ushers in a new area for education; have looked at qualitative, quantitative, and now this is computational; this is a good place to start, we can import from physical world; games = interactive, humanistic
-send letter to our deans
-capitalize on funding announcements for interdisciplinary research
-an actual event could probably get funded — like a one-day conference

Post-session progress


1. Gabe Peters-Lazaro is drafting a letter for USC administrators about who we are and what we intend to do.
2. Otto Khera is working on a Popplet visualization of USC folks’ research interests and projects.
3. I have compiled a list of USC’s attendees of DML 2012.
4. We would love if a kind-hearted soul with extra time or an appetite for evasion would do us the following favor: Please go through the DML program and copy and paste the overview of each presentation made by a USC person into a GoogleDoc. Let me know if you can take this on!
5. Finally, here are two DML-related reports from the FrameWorks Institute that may be of some interest.
In “The Stories We are Telling: How DML is Communicated by Ed Reformers,” the FrameWorks Institute mapped out the influential organizations in the ed reform field and analyzed if and where these orgs put DML on the larger ed reform agenda. “Valuing DML” presents the results of a values survey that assess which values work best for gaining support for DML from the public.

21stcenturyscholar.org


Thanks to Zoe Corwin‘s invitation, Elizabeth Swensen, Antero Garcia, Otto Khera and I wrote blog posts about DML that will be shared on 21stcenturyscholar.org from April 10-April 13.

Here is my post, “Digital Devotees are Made of People!: Leveraging Our Humanity to Enrich Digital Media and Learning.” In this piece, I argue for the importance of remaining people-centered.

I truly appreciate the opportunity to share my thoughts with a wider audience and hope this helps, in some small way, to keep the community (and, importantly, those outside the community) informed and engaged!

Branches

  By laurelfelt | April 8, 2012 - 10:18 pm | ,
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Still composing this post about my second cousin once removed, Beverly (Bev) Levin Copeland, and the extraordinary work she’s done to honor family. For now, the least I can do is share these resources and praise Bev to the stars. Bravo, Bev, and thank you.

The Erin Copeland Book Project, a charitable effort established by Bev and Shelly Copeland in honor of their late daughter Erin

An extraordinary history of the Greenman Family (Bev’s mother’s ancestors) from nineteenth century Russia to 2001

Interview with Bev’s father (my Grandpa Ray’s first cousin), Max Levin

Interview with Bev’s aunt (my Grandpa Ray’s first cousin), Bea

When I was in LA we visited the Los Angeles Holocaust Museum, the first Holocaust museum built in the U.S. As part of an exhibit they were playing this recording, which I found amazingly powerful and beautiful……. Paul Robeson singing in Yiddish

About

  By laurelfelt | April 8, 2012 - 9:43 pm | , , , ,
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The world is complicated.

While I AM willing to state the obvious, I refuse to back down from a challenge — and this complicated world presents quite a challenge. Too often, we peek out at it, catch a glimpse of the various social problems beleaguering folks near and far, and we shut down, numb out, close our eyes, disavow responsibility — that is, if we even stop to consider others. Now, that “we” I alluded to was a sincere “you and me” — I’m definitely including myself in this bunch of overwhelmed onlookers. We’re overwhelmed by so much; for, not only is the world complicated (as I so insightfully pointed out), but our own little lives are complicated, jampacked with sundry obligations and constantly buffeted by eddies of social/political/natural/technological change. I’m not sure that life was ever “easy” (and I’m not sure that that’s ever been the point), but life certainly isn’t easy in the 21st century.

Still. Just as bridging the local and the global has introduced complication, so too does it present possibility. We have the extraordinary opportunity to engage with one another, foreign and domestic, mediated and face-to-face, to try to make things better. In my opinion, the best way to fix a problem is to prevent its manifestation in the first place. That means ensuring communities’ and individuals’ access to the developmental assets they need to thrive. The second best way to fix a problem is to support locals as they endeavor to fix it. That means fostering communities’ and individuals’ mastery of the primary skills they need for lifelong learning.

Scholarship for Social Change is about working to bring about that rising tide that lifts all boats. There are several ways to get at it –conversation, rumination, theory-building, fieldwork. Luck. Love. Lots of good food… I hope you’ll join this team effort by commenting and, more importantly, getting out there and dirtying your hands in this messy business of making the world a better place.

Thanks. :)

_____________________________________________________________

“The greatest truth must be recognition that in every man, in every child is the potential for greatness.”

-Robert F. Kennedy

Scholarship for social change demands prowling the borders between cultural difference and universality, bridging diverse fields in order to identify and implement fundamental skills for rich learning. It requires using multi-disciplinary theory and real world data to craft curricula that better engages students intellectually, socially, emotionally, and ethically. If we can strike the right balance, respecting the old, the new, the unexpected, and the unstructured, then we will have discovered something truly extraordinary – not only the mechanisms of meaningful learning, but the means for better realizing our individual and collective potential.

How do we facilitate meaningful learning? Do certain skills function as a universal point of departure, enabling all learners’ future exploration and growth? How best can we share these primary skills with every individual who aspires to learn?

Most would agree, contemporary education requires retooling. Domestically, issues pertaining to students’ physical wellness (e.g., reproductive health, obesity) and social functioning (e.g., bullying, self-esteem) follow them to school, impacting both classroom climate and academic achievement. Internationally, education has been recognized as an imperative for development (Roudi-Fahimi & Moghadam, 2003), yet its efficacy is often blunted by lack of resources and community support[1]. Meanwhile, contemporary emphases on standardized testing and digital opportunity[2] call into question what to teach and how to teach it, often engendering controversy and highlighting the disparity between the world’s “have’s” and “have not’s.”

A Primary Skills Set

To respond to these challenges, as well as take on twenty-first century learning benchmarks (Trilling & Fadel, 2009) and millennium development goals (United Nations, 2010), educators must support the basics. But the basics do not refer to classic “reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic”; the basics are even more fundamental, constituting the skills that enable learning of “the R’s” in the first place. These primary skills pertain to new media literacies (NMLs), social and emotional learning (SEL), asset appreciation, and narrative.

New media literacies.

Seminal publication Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st century (Jenkins, Purushotma, Clinton, Weigel, & Robinson, 2006), defined NMLs as “a set of cultural competencies and social skills that young people need in the new media landscape” (p. 4). This bears repeating for the skills’ name is somewhat of a misnomer. While NMLs have become increasingly vital due to the demands of new technology, neither are the NMLs new nor are they technology-dependent (Felt, 2010c). The 12 NML skills are: play; performance; simulation; appropriation; multitasking; distributed cognition; collective intelligence; judgment; transmedia navigation; networking; negotiation; and visualization. Mastery of these useful, versatile skills both taps and fosters the development of dynamic processes, such as critically thinking, collaborating, and problem-solving. Because these processes are indispensable to learning (Gee, 2007; Lankshears & Knobel, 2003; Lyman, Ito, Thorne, & Carter, 2009), NMLs can be understood as elements of a “primary skills set.”

Social and emotional learning.

Self-awareness, self-regulation, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making constitute SEL’s five core groups of competencies (Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, 2009). Empirical research has found that recipients of SEL training tend to utilize more daily behaviors related to getting along with and cooperating with others, and report “more positive attitudes toward self and others (e.g., self-concept, self-esteem, prosocial attitudes toward aggression, and liking and feeling connected to school)” than peers in a control group. SEL programming has also been linked to an average gain on achievement test scores of 11 to 17 percentile points (Payton, Weissberg, Durlak, Dymnicki, Taylor, Schellinger, & Pachan, 2008, pp. 6-7). Moreover, SEL programs provide an impressive return on investment in terms of dollars and cents and sustained behavior change (Botvin, 1998, 2002; Hawkins, Kosterman, Catalano, Hill & Abbott, 2008; Schaps, Battistich, & Solomon, 2004). This sense of intrapersonal integration and social connectedness prepares individuals for meaningful learning (Durlak & Weissberg, 2007; Goleman, 1996, 2006; Hoffman, 2000; Zins & Elias, 2006) by freeing them from preoccupations and hang-ups and enabling richer engagement. Bulwarked by social and emotional health, learners are ready – ready to learn across their ecologies, participate fully, experiment courageously, collaborate productively, fail spectacularly, and keep on going.

Asset appreciation.

Immersion in diverse bodies of literature inspired the theoretical bricolage[3] that is the “asset appreciation” construct. Asset appreciation unifies academically separate yet philosophically complementary theory from research on resilience (Luthar, Cichetti, & Becker, 2000; Yates, Egeland, & Sroufe, 2003), possible selves (Markus & Nurius, 1986; Clark, Miller, Nagy, Avery, Roth, Liddon, & Mukherjee, 2005), positive deviance (Pascale, Sternin, & Sternin, 2010; Singhal, Sternin, & Dura, 2009), asset-based community development (Kretzmann & McKnight, 1997; Kretzmann, McKnight, Dobrowolski, & Puntenney, 2005), intrinsic motivation (Deci & Flaste, 1996) and appreciative inquiry (Bushe & Kassam, 2005; Cooperrider & Whitney, 2005). Asset appreciation aims to capture the extent to which an individual and/or community recognizes the availability of internal and external resources and exploits them to their fullest potential. Simply knowing about resources can help people to get their needs met with greater ease and comprehensiveness, particularly in times of stress. Appreciating resources as assets can boost people’s quality of life perceptions and sense of self and/or collective efficacy (Bandura, 1994; 1997) because it frames the environment as rich and oneself as embedded in a support network. Behaving resourcefully and framing situations productively facilitates meaningful learning because such acts, like NMLs, tap and foster processes of critical thinking, collaborating and problem-solving. Implicit in these acts are the SEL skills of self-awareness and social awareness; as such, asset appreciation similarly enables learners’ engagement and seeds unfettered exploration and growth.

Narrative.

The fourth pillar of this paradigm is narrative. Stories are hailed by various constituencies as a universal attribute of humankind (Campbell, 1949/2008), the most natural mode of thought (Schank & Abelson, 1995; Sarbin, 1986), a tool for establishing identity (Siegel & Hartzell, 2003), a frame for constructing reality (Berger & Luckmann, 1966), a means to gratify needs (Katz, Blumler, & Gurevitch, 1974), a commodity of enormous value (see Hollywood), or simply a good ol’ way to pass the time. Lately, health communication scholars have documented (Bandura, 1977, 2004a; Green & Brock, 2002; Singhal, Cody, Rogers, & Sabido, 2004) what Aesop’s and de la Fontaine’s fables long ago established: stories can teach. Moreover, stories can assess (Carr, 2001; Davies & Dart, 2005). Thus narrative skills – the capacities to comprehend and weave stories – can be understood as learning prerequisites.

[1] Sadly, the same can be said of education in the United States.

[2] which does not mean universal access and/or preparation, as access (“the digital divide”) pertains to equipment while preparation (“the participation gap”) pertains to literacy (Jenkins, Purushotma, Clinton, Weigel, & Robinson, 2006)

[3] A French term, bricolage is used by many American academics to refer to “a construction made of whatever materials are at hand; something created from a variety of available things” (Random House, Inc., 2010).

Exceptionalism

  By laurelfelt | April 8, 2012 - 9:35 pm |
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It was recently my honor and privilege to recommend a very dear friend for the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care Exceptional Educator Award. While it appears as though the amazing Jenn Guptill didn’t win — travesty! highway robbery! –, she still deserves recognition. I hope you enjoy this portrait of an extraordinary educator whose innovativeness, strength, and compassion “does not conform to a pattern or norm”. Jenn Guptill, you are exceptional!

Back in 2003, I was a 22-year-old novice in every sense of the term when I first met Jenn, a lead teacher at Somerville’s Open Center for Children. Already a master of her craft, Jenn modeled her best practices, shared her expertise, and showed me how to be comfortable in my own skin. In addition to her peer, I also consider myself to be one of Jenn’s students; indeed, no one has shaped my professional or pedagogical life more profoundly. This is no small statement for, if you tally up all of my years of schooling, I am in the 22nd grade! I’ve also been blessed with quality educational experiences, from my affluent public schooling in the Chicago suburbs, to majoring in Education & Social Policy at Northwestern University, to studying abroad at Paris’s Sorbonne Nouvelle, to earning a Master’s degree in Child Development at Tufts University, to pursuing a doctorate in Communication at the University of Southern California. Yet no one has managed to hold a candle to Jenn. When it comes to passion for her profession, knowledge in both theoretical and practical terms, total presence in the classroom, and commitment of myriad out-of-work hours to curriculum creation and professional development, Jenn is unequaled.

Jenn’s love for early childhood education is both overt and palpable. She applies what she knows about child development and cultivates wonderfully substantive silliness—engaging in give-and-take rhyming with her students; trading giggle-inducing nicknames; singing and composing social songs (her famous “Boo Boo Song,” which has remained with me all of these years, has comforted hundreds of children and saved untold quantities of Band-Aids!); voicing various characters in read-alouds and personifying them in full-bodied dramatic play; and joining in the running, jumping, and climbing of gross motor play. This would be reason enough for her students and their families to adore her, as indeed they do. But Jenn doesn’t stop there.

Jenn’s knowledge of child development also guides her design of classroom space, acquisition of materials, invitations for children’s and families’ engagement, facilitation of emergent curriculum, documentation of community members’ process, and sensitive scaffolding and reflection. To offer just a few examples…

Jenn manages the art corner at Garden Nursery School, where she has been lead teacher/director since 2004, such that it’s stocked with materials to support students’ sensory integration, investigations of color mixing, explorations of mixed media, group collaborations, and personal expressions. The school’s manipulatives are well-designed and open-ended, facilitating students’ fine motor development and creative construction. The print-rich environment that Jan and her students have co-created, evidenced in their hand-written signs and self-published books about their classroom, nurture literacy skills and a sense of coziness and belonging. These values are further supported by parents’ audio-recordings of their children’s beloved books. Any and all students are welcome to visit the listening center, slip on a pair of headphones, and listen to their own or friends’ parents reading in English and/or foreign languages spoken at home.

Jenn’s commitment to her students’ social and emotional development is infinitely valuable. Through games, modeling, and discussion, Jenn’s students learn to identify and label facial expressions, body language, and their associated emotional underpinnings for themselves and for others. She offers observations, language, and encouragement for students to manage conflicts and solve problems themselves. Songs such as “We Don’t Leave Anyone Out” and books like Mean Soup normatize feelings, scaffold empathy, and articulate the values of a caring community; group projects and visual reminders (such as a poster with the tracing of each student’s hand) further undergird these messages. Through keen examination and rich positive reinforcement, Jenn helps her students to discover and appreciate their own and others’ strengths and challenges; it is not uncommon to hear her students shower their friends with both compliments and constructive criticism. Because Jenn is careful to praise process over product, students and their families learn to value intrinsic skills rather than external validation. In our world of constant change and competition, these relative priorities are essential. Additionally, since parents volunteer daily in Jenn’s classroom, their comprehension and delivery of best practices directly affects the group.

In terms of professional development, Jenn has shown remarkable perseverance and dedication. She overcame multiple obstacles in order to earn her bachelor’s degree, first studying Young Children with Special Needs for three years at Wheelock College and then returning years later to study Psychology at Cambridge College. She voluntarily attended scores of seminars, joined enrichment-oriented organizations like Cambridge’s Safe and Caring Classrooms Study Group, and taught workshops for fellow early childhood educators at the Teaching for Change conference and conference of the New England Association for the Education of Young Children. Jenn also has been a leader in advocating for her field, her colleagues, and young children and their families by acting as a community liaison and teacher assistant for classes related to the Massachusetts Leadership Empowerment Project (LEAP), in addition to petitioning at the State House on behalf of the Early Education for All campaign. She stays up-to-date with professional literature and research, and eagerly enlightens any and all conversational partners on the dynamics of childhood development and the lasting impacts of early experiences.

Thanks to Jenn, I learned how to stem my torrent of speech and carefully select vocabulary so that my discourse with young children was appropriate. She invited me to join her and the children in end-of-the-day dance parties to Stevie Wonder’s “Songs in the Key of Life,” and reassured me that my silly sandbox game of pretending to sicken from the children’s servings of “Poisiki” buckets was just what the doctor ordered. I grew confident in my ability to identify situations that merited intervention and mete out discipline with consistency and fairness. I learned how to pay attention to the children’s play and build off of it in order to advance their learning and growth. Under Jenn’s tutelage, I came into my own as a teacher.

Since our days as co-workers in Somerville, I have taught early childhood at Cambridge’s Harvard Yard Child Care Center and Medford’s Eliot-Pearson Children’s School. Additionally, I have taught: school-age children in Mumbai, India’s Expanding Minds Program; teens in Dakar, Senegal’s Sunukaddu Youth Communication Initiative and urban Los Angeles’s Explore Locally, Excel Digitally workshop; and undergraduates at Tufts University and the University of Southern California. Like Jenn, I also have endeavored to give back to my community and impact learners beyond my direct reach by offering professional development to educators in Boston, Dakar, and Los Angeles, and designing curriculum for Pearson, Houghton Mifflin, PBS, and Nickelodeon. I am currently working with USC’s Annenberg Innovation Lab, USC’s Impact Games Network, and cutting-edge non-profit GameDesk to develop and disseminate developmentally sound pedagogical tools and practices for 21st century learning.

Like so many of Jenn’s students, I owe a great measure of my interpersonal competence, capacity for play, and sense of self-efficacy to Jan Gilpin. I also attribute some of my own students’ strides to Jenn. I cannot imagine a more worthy recipient of the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care Exceptional Educator Award. She already is an exceptional educator – but it’d sure be nice for her to get the certificate that says so!

Jenn Guptill, you are a marvel. Thank you for all that you do, and all you have done. Thank you.

Convergence Culture

  By laurelfelt | April 8, 2012 - 8:03 pm | , ,
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Thursday, March 22, 2012, was the inauguration of the USC Annenberg School of Communication & Journalism‘s Dean’s Open Forum: One School, One Book. Dean Ernie Wilson chose to explore Henry Jenkins’s seminal 2006 Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide.

At the event, Henry discussed the the context in which he wrote this book and reflected a bit on its relevance six years post-publication. He also invited four of his students — Francesca Marie Smith, Kevin Driscoll, Meryl Alper, and myself — to speak about the book’s impact(s) on our scholarship and the research we’re currently conducting.

Francesca talked about disability rhetoric and the utility of fan culture/writing around Batman’s the Joker for demystifying mental illness.

Kevin, a member of the Civic Paths research group, discussed a couple of cases in which fans leveraged both their mutual passion for making music and the affordances of networked information and communication to fight for their rights.

Meryl discussed her work with Flotsam, a children’s transmedia play experience that enables story creation, telling, and re-telling across multiple analog and digital media platforms.

And I explained my motivations for doctoral study and the philosophies and projects that constitute the PLAY! program. In the video embedded below, I speak from 16:15-23:30.

Here are my notes:
-”all sides want to claim a share in how we educate the young, since shaping childhood is often seen as a way of shaping the future direction of our culture” (p. 177)
-”…what rights we have to read and write about core cultural myths–that is, a struggle over literacy. … We may also see the current struggle over literacy as having the effect of determining who has the right to participate in our culture and on what terms” (pp. 176-177)
-Youth were motivated by their passions to engage deeply. A yearning for creativity may have stoked their passion, and the communities and processes in which they engaged were certainly creative. Colearning occurred organically as they sought information, mutually struggled to realize their visions, and shared the roles of learner and mentor. Their passions and these communities seemed relevant to them, hooked into their identities and goals, delivering a meaningful reward. As such, youths connected this experience to their larger learning ecosystems in such grand ways as the Harry Potter Alliance, where they applied the morals from that world to the injustices in ours, attempting to act as Dumbledore’s Army in stamping out manifestations of the Dark Arts like illiteracy and exploitation, and more “modest” ways, like talking about Harry Potter at home and bringing one’s personal experience into fandom (as in youths’ profiles on The Daily Prophet).
-these are the CPLs: motivation & engagement; creativity; colearning; relevance; and learning ecosystem
-”more and more, educators are coming to value the learning that occurs in these informal and recreational spaces” (p. 185); “Gee and other educators worry that students who are comfortable participating in and exchanging knowledge through affinity spaces are being deskilled as they enter the classroom” (p. 192)
-conclusion of CC also mentions a participation gap (which is “the unequal access to the opportunities, experiences, skills, and knowledge that will prepare youth for full participation in the world of tomorrow” (Jenkins, Purushotma, Clinton, Weigel, & Robison, 2006, p. 3)) — “… we need to confront the cultural factors that diminish the likelihood that different groups will participate. Race, class, language differences amplify these inequalities in opportunities for participation” (p. 269)
-So, we at PLAY! are trying to support the adoption of these best practices from informal spaces into formal spaces
-we have begun by:

  • ELED: running a youth program that relied on the CPLs and digital citizenship (Explore Locally, Excel Digitally);
  • SS & POTB: then leading a two-part professional development workshop for LAUSD teachers in participatory learning and play (Summer Sandbox and PLAYing Outside the Box);
  • PLAYground: asking teachers and their students to alphatest an online, multimedia platform for participatory learning that bridges to transmedia experiences ;
  • PLAY! On workshops: simultaneously supporting teachers’ applied experiences of playful learning and technological exploration (PLAY On! workshops); and
  • Laughter for a Change: extending this experience back to students and educators alike in an afterschool improvisational theater workshop

    • -”…role-playing both as a means of exploring a fictional realm and as a means of developing a richer understanding of the yourself and the culture around you” (p. 185)
    -OVERALL, we have a healthy respect for games and voice; we hope to create ourselves and encourage our colleagues to co-configure with students a non-hierarchical culture in which it’s safe to be who you are, try, fail, reflect, and keep on going

    Here is a series of images that ran in the background as we spoke, illustrating themes of participatory culture. And here are our collective notes:
    Questions to Consider

    About the Book

    What do you see as the most important new developments in media since 2006 when Convergence Culture was published? Which of the emerging trends identified in the book blossomed, and which of its predictions came true? What needs to be adjusted in the book’s argument based on subsequent developments? If you could add a new chapter to the book, what would you talk about?

    How might the growth of social media impact the book’s core themes?

    How do you think convergence culture and spreadable media models are contributing to shifts in journalistic practices and also to how we talk about journalism?

    Do you think that convergence culture and spreadable media have altered the nature of what it means to be a public figure, locally and globally? If so, how? (e.g., how one becomes a public figure, how one maintains their public image, how one becomes a public figure while attached to a story they might not want to be publicly associated with)

    Reflect on enduring phrase “the whole world is watching” from Chicago in 1968, Jenkins asks in Convergence Culture, “Is there any place on the web where the whole world is watching?” (p. 211). How might we compare the livestreamers at the Occupy Wall Street protests to the protestors at the 1968 political conventions?

    What similarities or differences might we see between fans “spoiling” Survivor and the impact that WikiLeaks and Anonymous have had on contemporary politics? Are there other political ramifications of convergence culture beyond what’s described in the book that we might talk about?

    One recurring idea in Convergence Culture is the “Black Box Fallacy”: “the attempt to reduce convergence to a purely technological model for identifying which black box will be the nexus through which all future media content will flow” (p. 280). Is this fallacy still in play? Where have you seen it recently? Can we identify material effects of this ideology in the products and services available to us today? (Think about Netflix, Apple TV, or Xbox Live…)

    Reflecting on the election in 2004, Jenkins wrote that “candidates may build their base on the internet but they need television to win elections” (p. 213). Is this still true in 2012? What is the relationship of broadcast media to the internet so far in this year’s election?

    Jenkins writes, “For some, the concern is with the specific content of those fantasies—whether they are consistent with a Christian worldview. For others, the concern is with the marketing of those fantasies to children—whether we want opportunities for participation to be commodified. Ironically, at the same time, corporations are anxious about this fantasy play because it operates outside their control” (p. 205). So, various adults with different agendas are struggling to control youths’ experience. This suggests that such a thing can be controlled, and that youths need adults to play the role of cultural gatekeeper because youths lack the strength or skepticism to resist “harmful” influences. What do you think of such a position? First, is it possible to shape (or even predict) youths’ experience? Second, is “protection” for youths best achieved from adults’ censorship or adults’ guidance?

    About Yourself

    Are there stories that you consume across media?

    Do you watch television on a television set or on your computer?

    How do you think YouTube shapes the way that you assess and value information? How do you think you shape your own YouTube experience? How are these two forces complementary or contradictory?

    Do you pass along YouTube videos to others? If so, which videos have you wanted to spread?

    What forms of popular culture are you a fan of? What does being a fan mean to you?

    How, if at all, have you been affected by the push/pull between consumers and producers of popular media products? Have you illegally downloaded music or movies? Scored your own YouTube videos with copyrighted songs?

    Jenkins discusses a then-emerging concern over the shift from Thorburn’s “consensus culture” to de Sola Pool’s “communication niches” (or Negroponte’s “daily me” or Sunstein’s “echo chambers” or “digital enclaves”) (pp. 236-237). Jenkins writes, “Sunstein’s arguments assume that Web groups are primarily formed around ideological rather than cultural axes. Yet, few of us simply interact in political communities; most of us also join communities on the basis of our recreational interests” (p. 238). He adds, “We need to create a context where we listen and learn from one another. We need to deliberate together” (p. 239). Do you have spaces in your life for listening and learning with people from different political points of view? Where do you find them?

    Many teachers complain that youths’ adoption of digital norms has harmed their writing skills, specifically in terms of their spelling and grammar. But Chapter Five paints a different story vis-à-vis writing development. Have you ever experienced a similar phenomenon as Heather and Flourish—growing as writers, but also as responsible and responsive community members—due to reading and writing emails, Facebook notes, blogs, fan forum posts, etc.?

    About Annenberg

    Jenkins writes, “These kids are passionate about writing because they are passionate about what they are writing about. To some degree, pulling such activities into schools is apt to deaden them because school culture generates a different mindset than our recreational life” (p. 194). What do you think about this? Damned if you do, damned if you don’t? Have you ever had an experience at ASCJ in which you were able to work on a passion project, where interest in the subject dictated the extent of your participation (as opposed to consideration of grades/rubrics/etc.)? If so, what happened? What occurred in terms of the hours you put in relative to other projects, your feelings about working on this particular project, your relationship with the passion, and outcomes after turning it in? How can ASCJ encourage professors and create curricula that allow students access to their passions without deadening their recreational quality?

    Convergence Culture declares, “Schools impose a fixed leadership hierarchy (including very different roles for adults and teens)” (p. 193). What are the assets and drawbacks of such a hierarchical configuration? Is it useful or obsolete in this “world of constant change” (Thomas & Seely Brown, 2011)? Should merit, passion, or some other trait dictate leadership? Should classrooms be staging grounds/practice arenas for students to prepare for leadership?

    Have you ever taught an adult how to do something? Has this ever occurred in the classroom? What happened and how did it feel?

    To what degree does the mix of expertise in Annenberg help to prepare students for a convergence culture?

    Have the trends we are discussing impacted the relationship between faculty and students? Have they impacted the ways researchers interface with the larger public?

    What roles should academics play in relation to the entertainment and news industries they study?

    What ideas from the book might help us have better classrooms? Better jobs after USC?

    What skills would you want to make sure every Annenberg student has mastered by graduation (perhaps drawing from the list on p. 176 as a starting point)?

    Students in the past were expected to master medium-specific skills and knowledge. Now, many of you will work across many media in the course of your careers and often will be working at the intersections between different media and industries. What should Annenberg be doing to give you the flexibility you need to navigate this unpredictable path and get access to jobs that may not even have names yet?