Literacy for Engaging in a Participatory Culture

By Erin Reilly, Henry Jenkins, Laurel J. Felt and Vanessa Vartabedian

Fall 2012

p. 3 Literacy for Engaging in a Participatory Culture

p. 5 Pedagogy: Participatory Learning

p. 6 Play

p. 7 Progress in Participatory Cultures

p. 11 Balancing the Conversation Between Technology and Media

p. 13 Applying New Media Literacies in Learning

p. 18 4 C’s of Participation

p. 25 Access for All – Preparing Educators

p. 27 References

The past two decades have marked a period of profound and prolonged media
change, one that has placed more communicative power in the hands of everyday
people than ever before. The result has altered the ways major institutions interface
with their publics and moved society towards a more participatory culture, a phrase we
use to signal the work that still must be done to ensure everyone has the skills, access,
and resources needed to participate– meaningfully– in the core operations of the cul-
ture. Often today, people equate participatory culture with a networked, technological
society.

Students using iPods for How-To Activity

But with regards to learning in a participatory culture, a mere technology-based solu-
tion will simply result in an arms race where each school spends more and more of its
budget on tools while stripping bare the human resources (e.g., teachers, librarians)
who might help students learn how to use those tools in ethical, safe, and creative
ways. Harvard’s GoodPlay project has found, for example, that most young people
do not have adult mentors who can provide them with meaningful advice about their
online lives (James, with Davis, Flores, Francis, Pettingill, Rundle, & Gardner, 2009).
In practice, many of the core skills needed to join a networked society can be taught
now, even if schools have grossly uneven access to technologies. In fact, for practic-
ing certain skills, low-tech or no-tech contexts often prove just as effective, if not more
effective, than high-tech counterparts.

Developing curriculum that acknowledges the opportunities and challenges of partici-
patory culture requires first understanding the nature of our relationships with media.
We have sought to facilitate these understandings by developing a variety of resources
to explore and practice the new media literacies (NMLs), a set of core cultural compe-
tencies and social skills that young people need in our new media landscape (Jenkins,

Shall We PLAY? : Literacy for Engaging in a Participatory Culture p. 3

Purushotma, Clinton, Weigel & Robison, 2006). The NMLs are technology-neutral – that
is, they are uncommitted to any particular technology. The NMLs can be embraced by
schools that do not have access to state-of-the-art technologies for their students, and
can be applied continuously, regardless of future shifts in technological resources. We
call the NMLs “literacies,” but they actually are skills that collectively constitute a lit-
eracy – the ability to “read” and “write,” broadly defined, in a participatory culture.

Shall We PLAY? : Literacy for Engaging in a Participatory Culture p. 4

With these and other educational considerations in mind, our team evaluated the na-
tion’s educational landscape and made the following observations: 1) To foster in
students the skills needed to engage in a participatory culture, teachers must be com-
fortable with new media literacies themselves; and 2) The Common Core Standards
define what all students are expected to know and be able to do, but not how teach-
ers should teach.

Accordingly, we constructed and led professional development programs to both
support teachers’ comfort with the NMLs and introduce participatory learning as
an approach to instruction. Participatory learning seeks to engage the whole student
in the learning process, and understands the student as a citizen of a rich learning
ecosystem. School, after-school, home, and online are organic parts of students’ and
teachers’ worlds, and learning that occurs in any one location should be integrated and
extended across every location.

To begin exploring participatory learning, it is crucial to identify the presence and na-
ture of participation opportunities in your learning context; then, take action around
them. Keeping in mind the following questions can help to initiate the 4 C’s of Partici-
pation in the learning process:
• How do we provide mechanisms to CREATE?
• How do we support opportunities for media to CIRCULATE across platforms,
disciplines and ages?
• How do we help learners to COLLABORATE and build upon others’ knowledge?
• How do we encourage learners to CONNECT with counterparts and establish
productive networks?

4 C’s of Participation

Shall We PLAY? : Pedagogy: Participatory Learning p. 5

During our professional development programs, we found that participating teachers
gravitated more towards the new media literacy play than any of the other 11 skills.

Play is “the capacity to experiment with one’s surroundings
as a form of problem solving.”

As a result, we have embraced play as a key focus of our continuing outreach and
scholarship. We also refer to our project as PLAY!, an acronym for Participatory
Learning and You!

We are pushing beyond thinking of play as merely a skill. Play, we believe, is also an
outlook on life and learning – it is a way of seeing oneself and the world through a
new, creative lens. Play is not a solitary occupation but a collective ethos, a shared set
of experiences that encourage us to think beyond our disciplines and “see with new
eyes.” Play supports constant learning and innovative responses to our surroundings.
Through an iterative, playful process, we support each other to try new things and en-
courage a process of innovation and creativity.

Play gives educators permission to engage their passions, to experiment collectively
on problems, and to produce projects that bring pleasure back into the classroom.

We need to return play to the heart of learning.

Participatory Learning and You!

Shall We PLAY? : Play p. 6

Current understandings of participatory culture emerged from work in cultural stud-
ies, which initially focused on fan communities and other subcultures that were striving
to assert their voices on the fringes of a society dominated by mass media. Over the
past decade, practices that once might have felt marginal – the production and sharing
of amateur videos, for example – have become increasingly commonplace. More and
more, the general public is exerting greater control over the production and circulation
of media, often appropriating and remixing content created for entertainment purposes
into resources that can be deployed for diverse purposes, for example, participation in
politics, education, or religion. Digital media constitutes the arena in which debates of
significant social and political importance are being conducted, and skills in creating
and circulating media are now tied to a much broader range of economic opportunities
(Jenkins, Ford & Green, 2013). Therefore, contemporary educational practices need to
embrace participatory culture if our students are to be prepared for their future lives as
citizens, workers, community members, and creative individuals.

Isabel reflects on her teaching practice

The white paper, “Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education
for the 21st Century,” (Jenkins, Purushotma, Clinton, Weigel, & Robison, 2006) identi-
fied several opportunities and challenges resulting from the introduction of participa-
tory practices through learning. The publication also outlined a series of new media
literacies (NMLs), which are core skills and cultural competencies necessary for full and

Shall We PLAY? : Progress in Participatory Cultures p. 7

meaningful cultural participation. Finally, it established a core definition of a participa-
tory culture:

A participatory culture is a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression
and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations,
and some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most ex-
perienced is passed along to novices. A participatory culture is also one in which
members believe their contributions matter, and feel some degree of social con-
nection with one another (p. 3).

Three years later, the Digital Youth Project (Ito, Baumer, Bittanti, boyd, Cody, Herr-Ste-
phenson, Horst, & Yardi, 2009) published an extensive study detailing how youth par-
ticipate through digital media. The project suggests three modes of engagement that
shape young people’s participation in online communities:
1. First, many young people go online to “hang out” with friends they already
know from their schools and neighborhoods.
2. Second, they may “mess around” with programs, tools, and platforms just to
see what they can do.
3. And third, they may “geek out” as fans, bloggers, creators and designers dig-
ging deeply into an area of intense interest to them, and moving beyond their
local community to connect with others who share their passions through new
media.

These reports from the teams of Jenkins and Ito, respectively, strongly endorse the
value of informal learning, which often occurs through friendship-based or interest-
driven networks and is pursued beyond the school hours. Both reports also acknowl-
edge that opportunities for rich informal learning are unevenly distributed across the
population – not simply in terms of who has access to networked and mobile technolo-
gies, but also in terms of who has access to the social scaffolding needed to identify,
join and engage with diverse communities of interest. Thus, schools have a vital role to
play in helping young people both develop skills and find and access relevant informal
learning spaces.


Several leading foundations have funded a range of educational initiatives aimed at
helping students to tap into the rich learning networks that have emerged from partici-
patory culture. Many of these initiatives have embraced notions of peer-to-peer and
connected learning, as seen in the following examples:
• Reinvention of library spaces (e.g., Chicago Public Library’s YouMedia Centers),
• Redesign of schools (e.g., Quest to Learn),
• Reconceptualization of the museum and other public institutions (e.g. Makers
Workshop at Pittsburgh Children’s Museum),
• Development of new forms of children’s media with a strong focus on games-
based learning (e.g., The Joan Ganz Cooney STEM Video Game Challenge),
• Emergence of new platforms deploying collaborative storytelling (such as Social
Samba) and transmedia creation (e.g., Flotsam Transmedia Play Experience, I <3
Robot Stories, Inanimate Alice), and
• Creation of afterschool programs designed to foster a deeper sense of digital
citizenship (e.g., Global Kids, Digital Youth Network).

Simultaneously, however, frictions between school policies designed to ensure “inter-
net safety” (often through blocking or filtering key sites of online participation) and edu-
cational efforts to promote new media literacies have become clearer. In many cases,
we’ve wired the classroom and hobbled the computer.

New Media Literacies defined in your own words


The initial research conducted through the NML and Digital Youth projects did not sim-
ply identify mechanisms for learning through participatory culture; as previously men-
tioned, they also outlined some core social skills and cultural competencies that might
be applied in a wide range of educational and applied contexts. These new media
literacies include: play, performance, simulation, appropriation, multitasking, distributed
cognition, collective intelligence, judgment, transmedia navigation, networking, and ne-
gotiation (Jenkins et al., 2006). Since the publication in 2006, the NML team has added
visualization to the list of new media literacies (Reilly, 2013). The new media literacies
offer ways of both thinking and doing that recruit the traditional literacies of reading
and writing into new kinds of communicative practices. These skills build on the foun-
dation of traditional literacy, research practices, technical proficiencies, and critical
analysis competencies taught in the classroom. They also are skills that emphasize
cultural practices and mental dispositions that adapt easily to changes in resources
and opportunities.


What if, when referring to learning, we made a concerted effort to
replace the term technology with media?

Often, when people are asked to describe learning in the current media landscape,
they respond by making an inventory of platforms, tools and applications that they use.
Instead, the first wave of work on digital media and learning stressed the social and
cultural dimensions that emerge from expanding the communicative and collaborative
capacities of grassroots communities. The first wave of work on new media and the
classroom was indeed technology-focused, as schools sought to ensure that every
American child had access to networked computing in the face of a persistent digital
divide (Norris, 2001; Mossberger, 2003). We have been largely successful in this task,
with recent research suggesting that as many as 95 percent of American school-aged
children now have digital access (Roberts & Foehr, 2011). Indeed, we have fronted the
education system with technology – from addressing the digital divide by wiring class-
rooms with the appropriate hardware, to defining digital literacy by offering workshops
on specific applications to use in the classroom. However, networked technologies
need to be coupled with intangible proficiencies, such as social or cultural skills. Tech-
nology needs to be integrated into generative relationships, such as trusting mentor-
ships or collaborative partnerships. In order to bridge the distance between digital
have’s and have-not’s, we cannot limit ourselves to exclusively technological respons-
es. This unequal access to the opportunities, experiences, skills, and knowledge need-
ed for full participation is known as the “participation gap” (Jenkins et al., 2009) and is
best addressed at the local level when educators and mentors help students become
critical thinkers, proactive citizens, and creative contributors.

The distinction between the digital divide (having to
do with access to technologies) and the participation
gap (having to do with access to social and cultural
practices and the skills they embody) emerges from
a definition of media developed by historian Lisa
Gitelman. Gitelman (2008) argues that media might
be understood to refer to the core tools or technolo-
gies that support communication and the social and
cultural protocols that grow up around them. She
describes, for example, the emergence of the pho-
nograph, first conceived as technology for business
use (along the lines of the dictophone) or record-
Equal access for all
ing personal memories (one’s dying words) but later

Shall We PLAY? : Balancing the Conversation Between Technology and Media p. 11

primarily deployed as technology for listening to pre-recorded performances (resulting
in the emergence of commercial music). Her account of the record player might extend
into the late 20th and early 21st century, when DJ artists transformed the turn-table
into a musical instrument for public performance, scratching records to produce inno-
vative sounds, sampling and remixing music, and developing new systems for sharing
their output with larger communities. All of these represent innovative new protocols
that have emerged around a century-old medium. This development suggests oppor-
tunities for continuous innovation as diverse communities reshape the tools to fit their
own social identities and collective needs.

If the past few decades have seen the emergence of many new tools and infrastruc-
tures supporting alternative forms of communication, it has also seen rapid experimen-
tation and innovation with the social and cultural practices that have grown up around
these technologies. Few of us would have foreseen, even a few years ago, many of the
most pervasive current uses of these technologies, such as mobile devices, 3D print-
ers, YouTube or Twitter. Few of these technologies were designed with educational use
in mind and many were designed with goals radically at odds with our current models
of education. In many cases, we use these emerging technologies to annotate our en-
vironment – giving us access to information when we need it, and thus to heighten our
awareness of the world around us. We use them to pool information and collaboratively
produce and circulate new knowledge.

We have made progress by continuing to ask, “What else can we use this for?” and
“Who else may be empowered to use these tools?” According to anthropologist
Mizuko Ito, we can use these technologies to maintain ongoing contact with the people
in our lives who matter to us the most. Social media expert Howard Rheingold (2003)
suggests we can use these technologies to mobilize quickly in response to urgent de-
mands on our attention.

Harvard Law School professor Yochai Benkler (2007) believes that those who under-
stand the web’s participatory nature are constantly looking for new ways and resources
for learning and sharing knowledge. For teachers to harness these new modes of
learning, they must first and foremost become participants. That is, they need to join
these new networks, experiment with these new practices, and thus come to see the
world through different eyes. Teachers, librarians, and other educators need to become
tinkerers and experimenters in their deployment of these technologies, rather than sim-
ply consumers of ready-made tools and programs. Educators need to learn the social
and cultural logics that are shaping the new communication systems.

Shall We PLAY? : Balancing the Conversation Between Technology and Media p. 12

Assessing new media literacies in practice

Our new media literacies (NMLs) represent core principles that may help educators
to better understand the new media landscape and design curricula to help prepare
young people for more meaningful participation with and through media. The NMLs are
not simply capacities for deploying digital technologies, nor are they simply critical un-
derstandings of the effect of media on our students’ lives, though they may incorporate
both. NMLs are neither “new” nor exclusively about “media.” In many cases, they build
upon time-honored practices that support learners’ critical thinking, problem-solving,
and collective efficacy. The NMLs represent the basic understandings and capacities
required to participate in a networked culture. Some of them involve using old and
familiar skills in new and unexpected ways. Some emerge from the shift in the scale of
our communication practices as we connect with people online who we might never
encounter face-to-face. Some of the NMLs take advantage of new ways of represent-
ing and manipulating information, while others have to do with our capacity to experi-
ment with new identities and social relations.

The NMLs are designed to be technology agnostic so that they can be embraced by
schools that do not have access to state-of-the-art technologies for their students, and
so that they can continue to be applied despite future shifts in technological resources.
We certainly value the resources represented by these emerging technologies, but we
cannot afford to wait until every school and every classroom has one laptop per child.
We need to start introducing these NMLs into our teaching now, through any means
at our disposal, because our students are not going to wait for us to catch up. Both
students and teachers need to be competent in each NML, whether encountered and
practiced in contexts of high-tech (digitally networked technologies that require large
bandwidth), low-tech (non-networked digital technologies), or no-tech (analog, also
known as non-digital formats).

Shall We PLAY? : Applying New Media Literacies in Learning p. 13

Table 1 defines each NML and provides examples of what proficiency in each NML
competence might look like in high-tech, low-tech and no-tech environments.

Table 1. The New Media Literacies definitions with examples
NEW MEDIA HIGH-TECH LOW-TECH NO-TECH
DEFINITION
LITERACY EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE
Capacity to experiment Modeling a virtual Pushing all of the Experimenting with
with one’s surroundings environment in Second buttons on a new cell ingredients to discover
as a form of problem- Life, such as this video phone to learn about how they impact the
solving of Starry Night: the device’s features flavor of a dish

Or setting up a series
of dominoes in this
PLAY video to represent Van
Gogh’s painting: Starry
Night

Ability to adopt alterna- Varying profile informa- Adjusting tone, accent, Role-playing in
tive identities for the tion depending on the and vernacular during theatre exercises
purpose of improvisa- social networking site a phone call in order
tion and discovery to make a certain
impression.
PERFORMANCE
Or writing a piece of
fanfic from the point
of view of a favorite
character

Ability to interpret and Participating in net- Playing a mission- Engaging in scenario
construct dynamic worked imaginings, based game, like flying planning, emergency
models of real-world such as the massive an aircraft drills, mock trial, or
SIMULATION processes multiplayer “what if?” Model UN
exercise, such as World
Without Oil

Ability to meaning- Creating real-time Using software to make Incorporating famous
fully sample and remix slideshows from mash-ups of music or catchphrases into one’s
APPROPRIATION media content public Flickr albums video speech

Ability to scan one’s Live Tweeting sound Toggling between win- Chatting about family
environment and shift bites and backchannel dows on the computer life while performing
focus as needed to instant messaging dur- manual labor, like
MULTITASKING salient details ing a presentation doing the dishes


DEFINITION
Ability to interact Scanning RSS feeds Using knowledge of Making lists to aid later
meaningfully with tools to monitor community grammar and consult recall of information
that expand mental events online resources to
DISTRIBUTED capacities verify spelling/
COGNITION grammar check
suggestions

Ability to pool knowl- Contributing to Adding ideas to a word Participating in team
edge and compare Wikipedia or Yelp processing document games and group
COLLECTIVE notes with others with the Track Changes discussions
INTELLIGENCE toward a common goal tool

Ability to evaluate Deciding which “Reading” a reality TV Identifying prejudice
the reliability and results from an online show critically to iden- or bias in a speaker’s
credibility of different search will be the most tify both commercial message
JUDGMENT information sources useful sponsors and ideologi-
cal agendas

Ability to follow the flow Hearing a news report, Listening to breaking Examining and repre-
of stories and informa- then visiting Twitter news on the radio, then senting a single idea
tion across multiple to get a sense of “the switching to TV for im- through drama, music,
TRANSMEDIA modalities people’s perspective” ages of the event and studio art
NAVIGATION on the same cultural
phenomenon

Ability to search for, Entering various key Soliciting advice from Updating friends
synthesize, and dis- terms in an online fans of a call-in radio on mutual
seminate information search to find the com- show acquaintances’
bination that delivers latest news
the desired information.
NETWORKING
Or posting links on
Facebook and
LinkedIn


DEFINITION
Ability to travel across Observing how people Discovering how to Attending a different
diverse communities, interact in World of converse productively culture’s ceremony and
discerning and respect- Warcraft and joining in during a conference watching their behavior
ing multiple perspec- smoothly call with unfamiliar col- to learn how to engage
NEGOTIATION tives, and grasping and
following alternative
leagues and
outside vendors
appropriately

norms

Ability to translate Using GoogleMaps and Converting spread- Manipulating body
information into visual GoogleEarth to better sheet data into a digital parts to better
models and understand understand distances graph or chart to better represent spatial
the information com- and topographical convey products’ dif- relationships, such as
municated by visual diversity ferences using one’s hand to
VISUALIZATION models show where one lives in
the state of Michigan

Kids having fun in Improv Workshop


Clearly, the new media literacies can be adapted to classroom environments with vary-
ing levels of technological sophistication. The table examples above demonstrate that
many students routinely apply the literacies in their everyday lives and more than likely
some of the NMLs are already a part of the average classroom. We are asking that edu-
cators take ownership over teaching these skills. Often, the new media literacies are a
logical extension of traditional disciplines and are entry points to reinforce participatory
learning. We believe that explicitly defining NMLs in your instruction puts a name to the
social skills that are becoming more important every day. Creating awareness to this
knowledge helps both students and teachers forge connections between what hap-
pens in their informal learning experiences and what happens in the classroom.


Besides introducing the new media literacies, the 2006 white paper “Confronting the
Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century” identified
four basic forms of participatory culture:
1. Affiliations (e.g., belonging to a community, such as Classroom 2.0),
2. Expressions (e.g., producing new creative forms, such as Sylvia’s Super Awe-
some Maker Show, a video channel created by an 8-year-old to introduce
Arduino activities to her peers1)
3. Circulations (e.g., engaging in activities that shape the flow of media, through,
for example, passing along links to the Kony 2012 video)
4. Collaborative problem solving (e.g., working together to develop new knowl-
edge, such as contributing to fan forums for World of Warcraft)

These four forms of participatory culture were briefly outlined in this white paper’s
Executive Summary without further elaboration or clarification. As we’ve worked to
develop a more participatory approach to learning, we’ve developed a deeper ap-
preciation of the value of this framework. Within our research group, we use this list of
participatory culture forms to identify the presence and nature of participatory opportu-
nities in learning contexts. They have become a general reference to assess what kinds
of participation were or were not supported by the resources we were developing for
teachers and students.

Questions we asked ourselves were:
• How do we provide mechanisms for learners to CREATE?
• How do we support opportunities for media to CIRCULATE across platforms,
disciplines and ages?
• How do we help learners to COLLABORATE and build upon others’ knowl-
edge?
• How do we encourage learners to CONNECT with counterparts and establish
productive networks?

1
Episode1: http://boingboing.net/2010/05/24/8-year-old-sylvias-s.html

Shall We PLAY? : 4 C’s of Participation p. 18

After six years of research, we refined these practices, which we now identify as the 4
C’s of Participation. In the table below, we define each “C” and provide examples to
support pedagogical interventions.

Table 2. The 4 C’s of Participation definitions with examples
HIGH-TECH LOW-TECH NO-TECH
THE 4 CS DEFINITION
EXAMPLE EXAMPLE EXAMPLE
Developing original Digitally sampling, Designing graph- Choreographing a
work or adding writing fan fiction ics with analog dance
CREATE value to existing instruments
work

Participating in Podcasting or Advertising on Spreading a rumor
knowledge ex- blogging radio or in the in the cafeteria or
change by dissem- newspaper at the water cooler
CIRCULATE inating products
across networks

Joining a collec- Maintaining Guiding a friend Contributing to a
tive effort to foster Wikipedia, over the phone neighborhood
problem-solving, spoiling reality TV through a real-time committee
knowledge- procedure, such
COLLABORATE building, and / as
or community- trouble-shooting a
expression computer issue

Locating individu- Linking on sites Adding your initials Establishing
als and entities such as Facebook to the top-scorers membership in a
in order to af- list on an arcade geographic
filiate formally or video game community, such
CONNECT informally around as joining a book
shared interests club

Create and Circulate


Creating and circulating media in contemporary American schools has often had lim-
ited meaning; school and governmental policies make it hard for students to commu-
nicate beyond the individual classroom despite the networked capacities at students’
disposal. Beyond the classroom, the most connected youth have discovered their
voice as writers, speakers, and media-makers and are expressing their insights about
themselves and the world within diverse networks and publics. Outside of school,
they are drawing inspiration, information, and insights from a wide (often online) com-
munity of other creators and circulating their products for feedback broadly and easily
with digital tools. Yet, many are also abusing new communicative capacities, engaging
in malicious and antisocial practices or consuming and passing along misinformation
because they have never received any formal training in their rights and obligations as
digital citizens. There is no guarantee young people will find communities, networks,
and organizations which support their learning; many find themselves “killing time” on-
line in activities they do not take very seriously. Young people, especially at early ages,
need adult help in preparing themselves for more robust opportunities to create and
share their creations in the future.

AnimAction video created during PLAY! PD

Collaborate and Connect
We strongly believe that collaboration should be encouraged in schools. Collaboration
is not a skill that comes naturally to very young children, who tend to be egocentric
and struggle to understand others’ thinking and points of view; as such, strategies for
collaboration should be taught, beginning in early childhood. Collaboration can occur
in virtual contexts, such as within social networking sites and face-to-face. But, being a
collaborator requires the ability to respect others’ expertise and trust that everyone will


contribute towards shared goals. In practice, collaboration must include perspective-
taking, empathy, and acceptance of one’s own and others’ responsibilities within the
group. Young children struggle to understand and adopt the often unspoken norms
that shape their participation in these new kinds of knowledge communities.
Research shows that knowledge is better gained when learning is relevant and when

Students reflect on Occupy LA

interests and passions are shared socially (Ito et al., 2009). In the classroom, teachers
help students acknowledge and appreciate differences among the people, beliefs, and
practices in their community. They want students to be competent connectors within
and between their cultures. Connection is also about moving beyond our personalized
learning spaces to making connections in areas with which we might not be familiar.
Tagging media content is an example of building connections across content. Often
through tagging your media, connections that are not so obvious (such as media con-
tent that moves across different communities of interest) are becoming more transpar-
ent in our networked culture.

Collaboration and connection represent types of co-learning. Russian psychologist Lev
Vygotsky (1978) noted that shared participation among children of different ages, as
well as among children and adults, is a powerful support for co-learning. Such connec-
tions are vital for integrating developmentally appropriate practices and learning within
and across content areas and grade levels. Recent research by Learning Scientists,
Takeuchi and Stevens (2011) has taken this concept into the 21st century by exploring
co-learning through media and identifying joint media engagement as a key element in
participatory learning.


By applying the 4 C’s of Participation in the classroom, students will learn to:
• Create artifacts for self-expression and learning;
• Circulate content to engender shared knowledge networks;
• Collaborate on activities to foster co-learning and collective intelligence; and
• Connect with other learners of shared interests and make transparent relation-
ships across domains.

We urge teachers to consider and implement the 4 C’s of Participation as they plan,
develop, and deploy learning activities in their classes. These practices will reinforce
the development of the core NMLs and they may also foster the kind of participatory
climate in the classroom where those skills can be most meaningfully practiced.

An example of Learning through the 4 C’s of Participation
Collaboration with others often leads to greater insights. If the teacher already knew
everything the group was going to contribute, then the exercise would be an empty
one. Unfortunately, unexpected occurrences are not celebrated in most classrooms
and certain surprises upset the regulatory structures within traditional institutions. Con-
sequently, schools often seek to contain this disruptive potential by creating “safer”
alternatives – for example, trying to replicate Wikipedia through pbwiki, or some other
wiki software. This approach might be termed a “walled garden” : students are al-
lowed to tinker with wiki software while they are “protected” from the more controver-
sial aspects of Wikipedia itself. However, choosing a walled garden approach also has
many costs. Students who already use the Internet know very well what is actually “out
there,” and the walled garden runs the risk of losing their interest - because, after all,
a walled garden isn’t the “real world.” Even if students are unfamiliar with the Internet,
using a walled garden approach does not fully prepare them for the challenges and op-
portunities embedded within the actual site.

Being able to take part in Wikipedia (or any community of practice) outside of the
classroom allows students to pursue the project in their own lives. A walled garden
approach to learning is often abandoned after the class is over and effectively ends the
student’s relationship to their work. Simply by choosing to move across learning ecolo-
gies available to us, we open up possibilities for participatory learning. We can now
take our media with us wherever we go which encourages learning to happen anytime,
anywhere.


If a teacher develops a project in a walled garden, that is where it stays. The creation
cannot circulate and become part of the information ecology of the web, and students
cannot thereby learn about community participation. Nor can they be convinced that
their work has any greater significance than “something I had to do to get a grade.”

However, as we have seen, student excitement builds when they are given the chance
to participate in ways that are personally and culturally relevant, and when they are
invited to contribute to a larger pool of knowledge. Students put more into their work
when they are putting it out into the world and when they have a chance to engage
with a larger public. Most importantly, participating in an authentic community, such
as Wikipedia, allows for students to understand the process of how a Wikipedia article
gets produced and vetted. More broadly, it deepens their understanding that research
is a process – one that involves debate and discussion amongst multiple contribu-
tors, rather than a product that simply can be taken off the shelf and read. The most
engaged students may be drawn into the community to make future contributions and
thus extend their learning outside of school and on their own terms. They may develop
an appreciation of learning as an anytime, anywhere pursuit, not as something that
stops when the school bell rings.

The Wikipedia community has a distinctive set of norms that govern their conversa-
tions and determine which contributions are accepted more permanently (Bryant,
Forte, & Bruckman, 2005; Lih, 2009). The best way to learn these norms (and by exten-
sion, to understand the diversity of norms shaping online participation) is through direct
engagement with the community and its processes. The Wikipedia community may
push back, may demand that students defend and justify their claims, and may encour-
age further revision and reflection; none of this is likely to occur within the safety of a
walled garden.


We know educators play a monumental role in facilitating opportunities for students
to become critical thinkers, proactive citizens, and creative contributors to the world.
Unequal access to experiences that help build the skills and knowledge necessary to
contribute in these evolving environments can prevent youth from meaningful participa-
tion. The “digital divide” has historically blocked many underserved youth from having
access to the core technologies of the digital era. Similarly, the “participation gap” has
cut them off from access to core skills, knowledge, and learning experiences required
to more fully engage with this emerging landscape. This “participation gap,” we be-
lieve, cannot be fully addressed when teachers themselves are not afforded these
same opportunities to grow and learn.

A 2009 survey from the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that more than
one-half of all teens had created media content, and roughly one-third of teens were
actively involved in participatory cultures. And the percentage of youth participation
steadily increased in 2007 moving from 54% to 67%. But more recently, youth’s con-
tent creation is staying constant whereas adults (over the age of 30) have shown an
increase in content creation (Lenhart, Purcell, Smith & Zichuhr, 2010). Adults seem to
be realizing the importance of being a part of the conversation rather than being left
behind.

Our commitment to address the participation gap, therefore, means providing op-
portunities for people of all ages, especially those who mentor youth, to learn how to
harness the new media literacies and to understand the social and cultural practices
required to fully participate in the online world.

Being a part of a digital culture not only requires having access to
a networked computer (or a comparable mobile device), but also
involves gaining a familiarity with habits of mind and skills required
for meaningful participation.

The desire and willingness to participate is not a single acquired disposition; the par-
ticipatory skills we’ve identified across this report cannot be taught in a single class or,
even, over the course of a school year. There are many routes to—and diverse forms
of— participation. Creating a more participatory culture is a long-term endeavor. It de-
mands a commitment – at each grade level and in all subject areas, in the school and
across the larger community – to help everyone – adult and child – to be embrace op-
portunities for creative and ethical participation, to learn to make meaningful contribu-
tions to their culture, and to become more fully realized and empowered civic beings.


EXTENDING THE NEW MEDIA LITERACY, PLAY
In our research over the past six years, we have provided a variety of resources and
examples on how to be competent in the new media literacies, many of which you can
find at our project’s website http://www.newmedialiteracies.org/. These literacies often
develop when enacting the 4 C’s of Participation. During our professional development
programs, we found that participating teachers gravitated more towards the new media
literacy play than any of the other skills.

Jesse leading Norms Discussion with Group

Play is “the capacity to experiment with one’s surroundings as a
form of problem solving.”

We often describe the most playful students as “class clowns,” implying that they are
disrupting the normal learning activities, but what if play became the normal way where
learning occurred within our classes. Legendary developmental psychologist Jean
Piaget (1954) respects the value of play when he tells us that “play is the work of child-
hood.” He rejects any simple opposition between play and work, suggesting that play
is the most important work children perform because it is through play that they both
acquire basic knowledge and master skills fundamental to their culture. In a hunting
society, parents encouraged their children to play with bows and arrows. In an informa-
tion society, people play with information and interfaces ...or at least they would so if
fear wasn’t an issue.

Shall We PLAY? : Access for All -- Preparing Educators p. 25

Educators are sometimes drawn to play for the wrong reasons – because they merely
seek to entertain their students. Play is not stealth learning, or the equivalent to nutri-
tion proponents’ solution of “chocolate-covered broccoli.” Play is not about repackag-
ing what you would teach anyway in a more entertaining format. Kids see right through
this.

To child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim (1987), play
is the “royal road” to understanding the inner world
of children. Through play, Bettelheim maintains,
children express their views of the world, their hopes
and ambitions, and their innermost anxieties. Play
also helps children develop the cognitive, social,
and emotional tools they will need to be successful
adults. And quite often, through play, children are
able to confront issues they are unable to articulate
and learn to cope with them. We hope the same phi-
losophy also can be applied to adults and thus return
play to the heart of learning anytime, anywhere.
Joe and Ed improvising together

Shall We PLAY? : Access for All -- Preparing Educators p. 26

Benkler, Y. (2007). The Work of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets
and Freedom. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Bettelheim, B. (1987). The Importance of Play. The Atlantic Monthly, 35-46.

Gitelman, L. (2008). Always already new: Media, History and the data of culture. Cam-
bridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Bryant, S. L., Forte, A. & Bruckman, A. (2005). “Becoming Wikipedian: Transforma-
tion of participation in a collaborative online encyclopedia. In M. Pendergast, K.
Schmidt, G. Mark, & M. Ackerman (Eds.). Proceedings from GROUP ‘05 ACM
2005: International Conference on Supporting Group Work (pp. 1-10). New York:
ACM Press.

Gee, J. P. (2004). Situated Language and Learning: A Critique of Traditional Schooling.
New York: Routledge.

Ito, M., Baumer, S., Bittanti, M., boyd, d., Cody, R., Herr-Stephenson, B., Horst, H.,
& S, Yardi. (2009). Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Living and
Learning With New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Jenkins, H., Purushotma, R., Clinton, K., Weigel, M. & A.J. Robison. (2006). Confronting
the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century.
Cambridge: MIT Press.

Jenkins, H. & Kelley, W. with Clinton, K., McWilliams, J., Reilly, E., & R. Pitts-Wiley.
(2013). Reading in a Participatory Culture. New York: Teacher’s College Press.

Jenkins, H., Ford, S. & Green, J. (2013) Spreadable Media: Creating Meaning and Value
in a Networked Society. New York: New York University Press.

Lih, A. (2009). The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World’s
Greatest Encyclopedia. New York: Hyperion.

James, C. with Davis, K., Flores, A., Francis, J. M., Pettingill, L., Rundle, M. and Gard-
ner, H. (2009). Young People, Ethics, and the New Digital Media: a synthesis from
the GoodPlay Project. The John D. and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation Re-
ports on Digital Media and learning. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Shall We PLAY? : References p. 27

Lenhart, A., Purcell, K., Smith, A., & Zickuhr, K. (2010). Social media and young adults.
Washington, DC: Pew Internet and American Life Project.

Mossberger, K. (2003). Virtual Inequality: Beyond the Digital Divide. Washington, DC:
Georgetown University Press.

Norris, P. (2001). Digital divide: Civic engagement, information poverty and the Internet
world-wide. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Piaget, J. (1954). The Construction of Reality in the Child. New York: Routledge and
Kegan Paul Ltd.

Reilly, E. (2013). Visualization as a New Media Literacy. In De Abreu, B. and Mihailidis, P.
(Eds.). Media Literacy in Action. New York: Routledge.

Rheingold, H. and Weeks, A. (2012). Net Smarts: How to Thrive Online. Cambridge: MIT
Press.

Rheingold, H. (2003). Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. New York: Basic Books.

Roberts, D. F. and Foehr, U.G. (Eds.). (2008) Children and Electronic Media [Special is-
sue]. The Future of Children, 18(1).

Takeuchi, L. & Stevens, R., with B. Barron, E. Branch-Ridley, H. Cooperman, A. Fen-
wick-Naditch, S. Fisch, R. Herr-Stephenson, C. Llorente, S. Mehus, S. Pasnik, W.
Penuel, & G. Revelle. (2011). The New Coviewing: Designing for Learning Through
Joint Media Engagement. The Joan Ganz Cooney and LIFE Center.

Vygotsky, L. (1978). Interaction between learning and development. From: Mind and
Society (pp 79-91). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Shall We PLAY? : References p. 28

Thank you to Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for their support on the PLAY! program and release of this publi-
cation, especially our program officer, Andrea Foggy-Paxton. We appreciate the thoughtful review of the publica-
tion drafts from Anthony Maddox, Kathi Inman Berens, Becky Herr-Stephenson, Ioana Literat and Meryl Alper.
Special thanks to our partner, Jane Kagon, Executive Director of RFK-Legacy in Action, Jacqueline Olvera-Rojas
and Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools where we hosted the PLAY! program and to our staff and volunteers
including Kirsten Carthew, Akifa Khan, Erickson Raif, Marina Micheli and Sophie Madej who helped to make the
PLAY! program a success. We want to especially thank our PLAYing Outside the Box partners (Clifford Cohen,
AnimAction, Inc; Rubi Fregoso, KCET; Ed Greenberg, Laughter for a Change; and Jojo Sanchez and Julie Mat-
sumoto, Operation Street Kidz) who volunteered their time to introduce teachers to community resources. We
offer special thanks to Explore Locally, Excel Digitally after-school program participants for inspiring this program,
especially Michel Diaz, Carmela Yalung, John Yalung, and Johny Marcial who attended part of the Summer Sand-
box with their teachers. And most of all, we thank the teachers who participated in the PLAY! program. The PLAY!
teachers were willing to take the time and energy to shift the conversation and practices in the classroom and we
are incredibly moved by their rich ideas and insights that helped shape our thinking with PLAY!. And last but not
least, we want to especially thank Henry Jenkins for his guiding wisdom and experience and Jonathan Taplin for
his unwavering support.

This digital document is optimized for Adobe Reader 5 and above.
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A full-text PDF of this report is available as a free download from www.annenberglab.org

Reilly, E., Jenkins, H., Felt, L.J. & Vartabedian, V. (2012). Shall We PLAY?.
Los Angeles, CA: Annenberg Innovation Lab at University of Southern California.

© USC Annenberg Innovation Lab 2012.

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