Our group had an inspiring discussion this week about participatory culture. We discussed the benefits of this unique approach to learning and producing at school and work, and shared our hopes and concerns about providing all learners with access.
@Randy (https://sites.psu.edu/randyoung/) observed that participatory culture through collaboration and networking offers a great opportunity for schools to expand on their already existing educational framework.
He also observed instances of partipatory culture working well in his own organization. He shared two real-life examples of his organization using partipatory culture:
Randy observes, “I see examples of participatory culture already happening in certain areas of our organization. The first that comes to mind is with our manufactured foods alliance. Through this alliance, we created an index of shared documents.” The index functions to help other food safety groups to meet FDA’s manufactured food regulatory program standards by building upon past work instead of “starting from scratch.” Randy also tells us, “The second example is through our retail food committee. They set up a Flickr account to share photos from the field. These pictures are tagged by program areas or critical violations, then other programs can use the images in their training materials. It can be very useful to have images when trying to introduce a special processing technique or identify a common critical violation found at the retail level. However, these images are more likely to be obtained during inspections and cannot usually be found in stock image libraries (e.g., iStock, Getty Images).”
Randy’s two examples highlight the tangible, practical benefits of participatory culture in a real world, professional context. Not “starting over from zero” or “reinventing the wheel” saves money and time (and time is also money). The second example was particularly interesting to me: visual aids are important, but just turning to Google Images isn’t going to yield useful results, especially when the visual needed is specific or obscure. Since some employers may wonder what the ROI is on learning and training that incorporates participatory culture, this seems to show clear, down-to-earth benefits.
@Kyle Bowen (https://sites.psu.edu/ldt467kdb23/) shared his own professional experience with Penn State Maker Commons with us. Kyle explained that one benefit of Penn State Maker Commons is that, “tools like 3d printing are offered [by Penn State Maker Commons] in a networked manner so that they can be accessed by any Penn State student regardless of physical location. By removing geographic and technical barriers, students are more easily able to play with different tools and explore their own ideas.” Kyle observes that “Making is Sharing” and that, “While we often think of creative people as mad scientist types that work alone in their lab, the reality is that creativity is fueled through interacting with others.” Removing barriers to access and entry with tools like 3d printing (which can send prototypes quickly over long distances) is, personally, fascinating to me!
Kyle mentions that “makers in residence” are employed by Maker Commons to provide essential mentorship/guidance to neophyte creators in fields that range from engineering to the arts. More experienced participants are essential to partipatory culture learning, as is emphasis on networking and coordination to arrive at a collective intelligence to generate new creations and ideas.
@Kim Crossman (https://sites.psu.edu/crossman/2019/03/16/youth-and-participatory-cultures/) observed that participatory learning offered a chance for learners to feel part of a community where they and their ideas mattered. Being a part of something bigger, where each member and their contribution is valued, is important to the success and cohesion of such communities. Since this experience helps learners to more easily attain job and social skills needed for today’s society, providing access to these opportunities to all students and learners is key.
Kim also observes that not all experiences using tools like Scratch are positive, since some students may find it intimidating or be anxious about negative feedback. Keeping this in mind, it is still, perhaps, a benefit to sometimes allow projects such as Scratch in lieu of the traditional “3-page paper” where appropriate.
Kim also shared, from her point of view:
the most important aspects of participatory culture, as it relates to learning and teaching, are that they:
- promote engagement and social connection by bringing people with common interests together;
- provide a source of motivation as a result of feedback and encouragement from peers; and
- develop creative skills and self-confidence through practice and feedback
- develop a variety of other skills that will be useful in this new world of digital media
– Kim Crossman
I @Erin Creuz (https://sites.psu.edu/erincreuz/2019/03/16/week-9-blog-what-you-post-online-follows-you-forever/) enjoyed playing around with Scratch. I observed that early participatory culture online often ostensibly centered around art pieces, such as fiction, art, and multimedia. However, the “hard” skills (such as coding, markup, and software) that partipants acquired to facilitate sharing such art was generally more likely to lead to desirable skills on the job market than these traditional “artistic” skills. While academics tend to focus on participatory culture creating art and the relatively rare cases of famous artists emerging from the Web, “hard skills” gained online, with creativity as a carrot to get learners to use them for projects, may be more germane to most of the working population.