Participatory Learning

Rereading the report that Jenkins et. al. (2008) put out Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture:Media Education for the 21st Century I was struck by the fact that they choose to focus on

Participation as a part of culture
instead of
Interactivity as an attribute of technology

Although all the learning and experiences they discussed relied heavily on new media and new literacies enabled by technology, they choose to focus on the fact that these new forms of learning have to do with participating in learning in a new way, and therefore there are cultural implications and contexts for these new learnings.

In addition the team adds to the New London group's work on new media by stressing that while these are new literacies, they are social in nature. The social realm of learning, be in real or virtual time or space fundamentally shift how we need to educate students to be part of this new landscape.

In reading this article I am excited to see the shift again away from the tools (technologies) that enable the new ways to interacting, participating and exploring education to a focus on creating more meaningful learning experiences. I believe this is similar to the reason I am interested in the TPCK model since it is about the effective integration of elements to produce more meaningful learning experiences. The shift away from the tools to the learning is a positive one, and i am curious how this concept will emerge in the interviews that I am conducting.