Engaged Learning Communities
In the age of social networks, wikis, podcasts, blogs, search engines - to name some - people, both young and old, have access to an ever-growing repository of data and information. The ability to make sense of this information through the development of the right skills and digital literacies is becoming ever more important through all phases of life, from schooling to corporate, and beyond. As Alan Moore says, we should start demanding an “Engaged Learning Community”.
Howard Rheingold, who I have had the pleasure of meeting and workshopping with, once wrote in a piece entitled Participatory Media to better enable Civic Engagement.
Teaching young people how to use digital media to convey their public voices could connect youthful interest in identity exploration and social interaction with direct experiences of civic engagement. Learning to use blogs (“web logs,” web pages that are regularly updated with links and opinion), wikis (web pages that non-programmers can edit easily), podcasts (digital radio productions distributed through the Internet), and digital video as media of self-expression, with an emphasis on “public voice,” should be considered a pillar—not just a component—of twenty-first-century civic curriculum.
Participatory media that enable young people to create as well as consume media are popular among high school and college students. Introducing the use of these media in the context of the public sphere is an appropriate intervention for educators because the rhetoric of democratic participation is not necessarily learnable by self-guided point-and-click experimentation.
Wise words indeed.
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