Online Content Construction-Participatory Culture

Participatory culture has many different meanings.  I feel participatory culture associates to those who have an active role in their civic and social responsibilities in the community.  I feel this week’s videos seemed to have a common theme.  Mimi states, with some guidance, technology can play an active and significant role in student’s behavior both in school and the community.  Mimi also stated whether it is “interest driven” or ‘friendship driven” the students are learning.  Ultimately isn’t that our overall goal?

I remember our first day in the technology program at University of New Haven.  The first words I heard were welcome and you need to play with the technology in order to grasp the ideas. At first, it seemed a little unorthodox from all the other lesson plans, essays and research papers; however, I started to “play” and now that is how I teach.  For example, our school has developed communities for each teacher to be on.  I am on the blended learning community.  My community is in charge of our professional development day this coming Tuesday.  We are talking about digital assessments, blended learning, flipped classrooms and much more.  After introducing a skill, I feel it is important for all the teachers to then create their own lessons based on what we talked about.  Playing, creating, and discovering are ways in which we learn.  When we were younger this stemmed from outside games and discovering pathways.  Now, the trail is slightly different but the meanings are the same.

Students now are capable of creating, socializing and developing creations on the internet.  Technology has been in these students lives for a lengthy amount of time.  They already know how to blog, tweet, friend, and share items with their peers.  As teachers, we need to teach the students how to harsh their knowledge and direct them to reach out to the community.  Henry Jenkins discusses the internet as a source to create positive situations to create students who are “passionate about the future of society.”  So how can we guide students to expand on the online skills and interests that they have developed in their personal lives in order to create individuals who become productive, contributing members of a larger “participatory culture?”  I think the answer lies in the word “create”.  I am both a physical education and health teacher.  One way I can help incorporate participatory culture in my classroom is through engagements with the community.  My physical education classes can help promote wellness in the community.  One example my students could do is, set up a blog.  It would be a place where both students and community members can communicate and share inspirational workouts.  This could not only benefit the students but the community as well.

My health classes could do a similar activity.  Another way my health class could become involved in a participatory culture is through developing health quizzes using quizzlet or socrative.  These quizzes can be posted to the community in hopes to create a thoughtful questions and raise awareness about health education.

In conclusion, our students can use technology to play an active role in the community.  There are various ways our students can become connected with the community.  Technology lays a safe and easy way to reach out to the community and connect with a large number of people.  With technology, not only will the students be able to research topics they can also create educational programs to help make the community a healthier place.