Visions for a New Media Culture

Last week I was in Boston with my classmates from Pepperdine University were we had the opportunity to interact with a number of amazing people who shared their vision for the future of learning with us. They shared their visions of how emerging technologies such as digital media, gaming, and Web 2.0 technologies provide spaces and opportunities for us to engage with students in new ways.

One of the places we visited was an innovative digital media company called FableVision. Part of FableVision’s mission is to help off-the-path learners whose unique learning styles are not supported by a standardized approach. FableVision works on developing new products in support of their vision, such as a program designed to allow students to easily make their own animations to tell their own stories or a game which helps students learn math concepts.

Games have powerful implications for learning. We attended a panel discussion at MIT on Games & Civic Engagement. The two speakers were Mario Armstrong from NPR and Ian Bogost from Georgia Tech. Bogost sees games are a type of human expression. He explained how games are really models of somebody’s idea of how something works. They have opinions. We need to learn how to read these opinions. They allow people to construct an understanding of someone else’s perspective. This fits Henry Jenkins argument that educators need to help students acquire new media skills. In his white paper Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century (2006), he talks about how educators need to help students overcome the transparency problem or "the challenges young people face in learning to see clearly the ways that media shape perceptions of the world".

Our class had the opportunity to have a Q & A session with Henry Jenkins on the new media literacies described in his paper. He talked about the tension between emerging social networks on the web and the number of schools trying to block them from students to avoid the risks associated with them. He talked about the fact that adults have an obligation to “know about the world students are traveling through”. These spaces have the potential to offer rich transgenerational learning spaces where kids and adults can come together.

The vision for a new media culture also needs to consider equity, not only of resources, but also equity of experiences that allow students to fully participate in this new emerging media culture. "Educators must work together to ensure that every American young person has access to the skills and experiences needed to become a full participant, can articulate their understanding of how media shapes perceptions, and has been socialized into emerging ethical standards that should shape their practices as media makers and participants in online communities" (Jenkins, H., Clinton, K., Purushotma, R., Robison, A., & Weigel, M., 2006).

Jenkins heads Project NML which is funded through the MacArthur Foundation.
Project designers, Anna van Someren and Erin Reilly, shared with us how they are tagging the footage they have collected to align with the new digital media literacies outlined in Jenkin’s paper. The site includes video vignettes of what learning that includes media literacy skills could look like.

Integrating these new media literacy skills will require us to be engage with our students differently. Toward the end of our trip we had the opportunity to visit a class taught by Benjamin Zander music director of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra. Prior to our visit, I had never stopped to consider what a conductor actually does. Watching him coach his students to transform their music was a powerful metaphor of how we as instructional leaders can coach those around us. One of my favorite things I heard him say to a student during our time there was “I want to engage with you”. Isn’t that what every educator should want? I believe it is the core of why exploring the potential of new emerging technologies for learning is important. The goal should be to engage with our students in new ways.