Web 2.0 - Participatory Culture

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My 14 year old daughter has been nagging me for the past year to have her own YouTube channel.  I have constantly been saying 'no'.  Why have I said 'no' you may ask?  The answer is simply that I did not know anything about YouTube channels, despite watching the odd cat video from time to time!

My reading of Jenkins (2006) made me aware that I could be letting my teenager down, and has made me question whether I am creating a participation gap for her, after all, ALL her friends have YouTube channels, so she tells me!  Jenkins (2006) is right in suggesting that young people acquire the skills they need to interact with popular culture all by themselves.  I am witness to that.  My daughter is totally self taught in all things computer savvy.  She talks the talk and leaves me feeling bewildered sometimes.  I have tried to keep up, but she aces me every time.  She has mixed emotions about my new found knowledge in this wonderful world of teens and popular culture, and I hope to nurture her into a responsible cyberspace citizen.

So what is Jenkins (2006) telling us about participatory culture?  Based on an American study "more than one half of all teens have created media content, and roughly one third of teens who use the Internet have shared content they produced" (Jenkins, 2006, p.2).  Kids have stuff they want to say; kids have things they want to create and share and they want to share it via Web 2.0., whether their mums like it or not!

There are ethical concerns, of course.  We cannot expect teenagers to understand the intricacies of copyright; plagiarism; privacy act; but we can educate them about respecting others and using good old-fashioned common sense, like: "If you haven't got anything good to say, then don't say anything at all".  Humans are flawed and no matter what measures we put in place to protect our children, someone will come along who breaches those measures and causes the hurt we so want to protect them from.  I realise that sometimes these situations can be frightening or even life-threatening, but they are in the minority.

Crook (2011) discusses the desire of today's youth to have full access to Web 2.0 literacies in their classroom, however Crook (2011) points out that for legal reasons this is just not happening and that this can build up resentment in the students because they perceive it as a punishment.  He also reminds readers that students are very capable of finding ways to avoid any blocks that teachers may put in place to prevent them from accessing sites, which then leads to bans and restrictions that fuel the gap between teacher and student.  Due to the fact that digital devices prevent my daughters from getting much done outside of social networking or gaming, I recently installed a blocking device, however it has been a waste of money as my eldest quickly found a way around it.

Web 2.0 literacies are an excellent tool for communication and distance education, but need to be introduced to the classroom after careful thought and consideration of the pitfalls.  Web 2.0 is definitely the way of the future and as time marches on, young people will move into positions of responsibility and we will see the natural progression of change and see Web 2.0 become an integral part of learning and communicating at school and at home.

References: 

Jenkins, H. et al. (2006). Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: media education for the 21st century. MacArthur Foundation. http://digitallearning.macfound.org/site/c.enJLKQNlFiG/b.2108773/apps/nl/content2.asp?content_id={CD911571-0240-4714-A93B-1D0C07C7B6C1}¬oc=1

Crook, C. (2011).  The 'digital native' in context: tensions associated with importing Web 2.0 practices into the school setting, Oxford Review of Education, 38(1), 63-80.  Doi: 10.1080/03054985.2011.577946