Participatory Culture

This past week the focus for the classes I've taught has been on the concept of 'participatory culture' with resources from Henry Jenkins.
"Further to this, Jenkins, Purushotma, Weigel & Clinton (2009), in their book Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century, outline the features of a participatory culture." MDL4000 - Winter Term 2.1 along with this image adapted from this work.

This now connects to some reading I'm doing from Catherine Cronin - Opening up Open Pedagogy, where she's defining open learning, open pedagogies. She mentions participatory culture which caught my attention. How do these defining characteristics connect to open pedagogies and assessments.

1. low barriers to artistic expression - educators can create and prepare creative lesson designs in a variety of contexts using video, audio, text and iconographic media. 
2. strong support for creating and sharing with others - in the open educational movement there are many others to reach out to when creating or conceptualizing teaching and learning. The most recognizable forum is in the OER textbook production area. The less active group creating and sharing areas are in syllabus creating and assessment designs, but my experience reaching out to Laura Gibbs for her open assessment design is one such example.
3. informal membership - Virtually Connecting is an example of how this works in the open
4. what is known is passed from experienced to novice - within the open educational communities, those who are working in open pedagogies are sharing their expertise with those who are shifting their teaching practice. Digital Pedagogy Lab is one such space where experienced and novice work together for a 3-5 day immersive learning experience.
5. members believe their contributions matter - for those who engage and support the VC community, they feel that their contributions provide opportunities for access to conference knowledge building conversations.
6. members feel socially connected - through the use of social media, members feel they know each other. When they do get to meet in physical contexts, the conversations pick up from those in digital spaces
7. not every member must contribute - within open educational communities, there is no pressure to participate, with invitations and opportunities provided where and when individuals are interested or ready to join. The OEORangers is one example of the invitational call which led to the OER Fellows to support and engage those who responded to the invitation to participate at a deeper level.

Are all open pedagogical advocates aware of participatory culture characteristics?

References
Cronin, C. (2017, April 24). Opening up open pedagogies. Retrieved from https://catherinecronin.net/research/opening-up-open-pedagogy/

Cronin comes into focus

I'm reading (meaning making) and deconstructing (analyzing) Catherine Cronin's article Open Education, Open Questions in order to better understand the layers and levels she describes for open "individuals seek to balance privacy and openness in their use of social and participatory technologies at four levels (see figure 3): macro (global level), meso (community/network level), micro (individual level), and nano (interaction level)."

C. Cronin, CC SA

The graphic clarifies the negotiations that individuals (me, my students) continually make when teaching and learning with/about digital literacies. This is compounded by the pressures all educators face as they venture into the public eye of the profession. Teachers candidates who are new to the profession are negotiating through even tougher decisions as their persona as a student shifts to one of being a public teacher. Their decisions are based on multiple levels of emotional responses beyond the course requirements I may establish for them to shift into public, digital spaces. For example, I don't require my students to sign up and use Twitter but I do require them to sign up and use a blog as part of the course assignments. In creating their blog space, I do not require the students to make their blog public so many keep their settings on private or turn of search optimizations. I invite the students at two points in the course to allow me to link their blog sites to the course site - once at mid point and again at the end of the course. I don't assign specific topics for their blog responses but do require four submissions over the duration of the course. Many will post extensively and build the blog as a learning repository, while others may only do the required posts. For me, blogging allows the students to model and experience identity building, reputation management and digital participation, all elements of the critical digital literacy of persona.

Maybe I should include this graphic into my teaching - it may help students understand that everyone is in the practice of negotiating many layers within digital spaces. Something to consider.

NOTES:

Cronin, C. (2017, October 17). Open education, open questions. Educause Review. Retrieved from https://er.educause.edu/articles/2017/10/open-education-open-questions  

The graphic is licensed under Creative Commons and openly available at https://www.slideshare.net/cicronin/open-culture-open-education-open-questions/24 

Let it Begin

Here I go... my first journal style blog. I'll try to quick write to capture my actions, thinking, events and readings as I begin my research journey.

Purpose: Beginning my action research into open educational practices with a focus on critical digital literacies.

Today: toughest part of starting is picking the mechanism for doing this. I've chosen Blogger, connected to my personal gmail account since this will connect to other Google tools I am familiar using and have come to rely on in my digital toolkit. So, integration of tools and apps is the deciding factor. So, this connects to CODE BREAKING as a critical digital literacy - knowing affordances of each tool and how these affordances can support what I need to do, how I want them to work.

Next steps:

1. re-read and highlight the article by Catherine Cronin (catherinecronin.net) Openness and Praxis: Exploring the Use of Open Educational Practices in Higher Education. 
2. review the graphics I've done for Hinrichsen & Coombs article on Critical Digital Literacy (PDF file found here)
3. begin re-building my domain website to streamline and focus (frame) my teaching and learning