these dangers--like the potentials--can only really be understood when we study not individuals alone, but the contexts and systems of which they are a part.
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FRONTLINE: digital nation: watch the full program | PBS - 0 views
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these dangers--like the potentials--can only really be understood when we study not individuals alone, but the contexts and systems of which they are a part.
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these dangers--like the potentials--can only really be understood when we study not individuals alone, but the contexts and systems of which they are a part.
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these dangers--like the potentials--can only really be understood when we study not individuals alone, but the contexts and systems of which they are a part.
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these dangers--like the potentials--can only really be understood when we study not individuals alone, but the contexts and systems of which they are a part.
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these dangers--like the potentials--can only really be understood when we study not individuals alone, but the contexts and systems of which they are a part.
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these dangers--like the potentials--can only really be understood when we study not individuals alone, but the contexts and systems of which they are a part.
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these dangers--like the potentials--can only really be understood when we study not individuals alone, but the contexts and systems of which they are a part.
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these dangers--like the potentials--can only really be understood when we study not individuals alone, but the contexts and systems of which they are a part.
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these dangers--like the potentials--can only really be understood when we study not individuals alone, but the contexts and systems of which they are a part.
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these dangers--like the potentials--can only really be understood when we study not individuals alone, but the contexts and systems of which they are a part.
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these dangers--like the potentials--can only really be understood when we study not individuals alone, but the contexts and systems of which they are a part.
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these dangers--like the potentials--can only really be understood when we study not individuals alone, but the contexts and systems of which they are a part.
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Being told that a bunch of people are addicted is not all that helpful. Even worse is equating lots of time in and of itself to addiction. Why are they addicted? All for the same reasons? What else is going in their lives and cultures? What skills are they picking up if any? Is their massive time-on-task leading to anything or not? What percentage of players are addicted in any harmful sense?
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There is also an important issue missed by the show and that is the question of how people from different social and economic groups use and benefit (or not) from digital media. I guess it is not surprising that American TV does not much deal with class issues, but there is little doubt that digital media are leveraged by some families to great benefit for their children in school as part of a larger learning and literacy ecology that includes digital media and print. Other families use digital media in quite different ways. Indeed, there are many different uses with many different outcomes--my simple dichotomy really will not do, but it raises the issue of equity and outcomes for diverse people in our society (and, indeed, world).
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Books can make people smarter or dumber--they can expose them to the world or hide reality from them. So any real understanding of them would have to be nuanced and contextual. For books we have long learned to ignore their power for bad. For digital media we are predisposed--at least if we are Baby Boomers--to look for the dangers.
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The film is indeed thought provoking. Its power is in being by and large an "etic" (outside) view of other people's new cultures. It is less good at giving a real feel for what those new cultures and their concomitant practices mean to young people today from the inside.
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What works for me about the website is that it is multi-vocal, allowing many points of view to be expressed on more or less equal footing, encouraging reflection as people make their own decisions about what to watch and how to juxtapose the pieces. I doubt any two readers took the same path through this material or any two teachers used the resources the website provides in precisely the same ways.
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I frankly found the documentary itself mind-numbing and relentless. It rarely trusts the viewer to draw their own conclusions about what they are seeing and it deploys much of the material in ways which point towards a much less nuanced conclusion than any of the participants in the conversation might have advocated.
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FRONTLINE: digital nation: reactions to digital nation: henry jenkins | PBS - 0 views
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I have found the Digital Nation website to be an extraordinary resource which I used repeatedly in my teaching last semester, drawing in many different segments to stimulate discussion, to allow students to hear more directly the point of view and see the personalities of writers we were engaging with through our readings. What works for me about the website is that it is multi-vocal, allowing many points of view to be expressed on more or less equal footing, encouraging reflection as people make their own decisions about what to watch and how to juxtapose the pieces. I doubt any two readers took the same path through this material or any two teachers used the resources the website provides in precisely the same ways. Y
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For example, I might use the documentary to talk about the primacy effect -- the degree to which what comes first in a linear media experience sets the horizon of expectations and frames how we understand the material which follows. It strikes me that we go more than 20 minutes into the film before we hear what might be considered an authoritative voice offering a sympathetic comment about the value of digital media and that initial critical framing of media as a social problem gets reasserted multiple times in the course of the documentary. This surely encourages greater skepticism when alternative viewpoints get expressed later.
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We might talk about the ways that voice-over narrators carry much greater weight in our response to documentaries than the subjects they are drawing upon
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We might talk about conversion narratives such as the way Rushkoff deploys his own shifts in thinking to add greater credibility to his current position in the classic "once was lost but now am found" tradition of religious witnessing.
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We might talk about notions of juxtaposition -- the ways that each positive claim is followed by a critical perspective, while for the most part, people who are more sympathetic to new media practices are not allowed to interject or challenge claims made in the more critical segments.
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As someone who taught at MIT for 20 years, I scarcely recognized the place depicted on the documentary -- I certainly would have no trouble creating a documentary which arrived at the exact opposite conclusion about what was going on when those students used their computers in the classroom.
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Critics of new media are allowed to make unqualified statements, while advocates are shown to be more equivocating. The result of such practices over time has served to polarize the conversation -- so we are either for or against digital media, it is either good or bad, rather than allowing a meaningful discussion of its potentials and risks, its benefits and problems, which might allow for us over time to find common ground and act meaningfully in response to a situation none of us fully understand.
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I am struck by how consistently the documentary connects new media practices to hot button issues within the demographic which is most apt to watch PBS -- framing digital media in opposition to books, say, or linking it to the military or to corporations.
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You had a chance to do so much more than this -- creating a context where serious thinkers with a range of different perspectives can talk through their differences and try to arrive at a more nuanced understanding of a complex situation. I believe the website did this. I believe an online conversation may do this. I don't think the documentary does. What does this tell us about television as a vehicle for serious reflection? What does this suggest about the value of the kinds of social spaces for open ended inquiry and discussion digital media at its best can provide? For example, what does it suggest about the need of television to compress for time and the potential of the web to offer unlimited material?
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It is nonsensical to make a judgement about whether the web is good or bad. The web is. How do we use it in a way which maximizes the benefits and lowers the risks?
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FRONTLINE: digital nation: henry jenkins response to mark bauerlein | PBS - 0 views
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let me say another word or two about our friend, the student who thinks he can read Romeo and Juliet in 10 minutes. It seems to me that he has a lot in common with educational policy makers who think that the experience of reading the book can be reduced to a small number of items on a standardized test. Both have an instrumental understanding of reading and learning which sees learning as a product and has not respect for the process of really engaging deeply with the literary experience. In many ways, the student's attitude is a byproduct of the current structure of education as much as it is a byproduct of the instant gratification promised by digital culture. As someone who has been involved in the last year with a project which seeks to model ways we can teach Moby-Dick in contemporary schools, I can tell you the resistance we've gotten from some teachers comes at both levels. Yes, some teachers don't think their students have the attention span to deal with a novel of this length and complexity but many more simply say that they don't think they have time to teach a novel of such richness if they are going to stay on track and review all of the content they are supposed to cover under the new national standards. Both push back against a depth of experience and the student may simply trying to act efficiently to give the teachers what they want on the test. As someone who loves literature, both sides of this equation break my heart.
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what the gamers are doing in the Korean Bong is better described as intense concentration, entering a state of flow, rather than multitasking per se. A growing body of work has stressed the kinds of active problem solving which surrounds the play of certain kinds of games, the collaboration which occurs through certain forms of participatory culture, etc. as other ways of engaging with the online world. To me, there's something reductive about continuing to return to issues of multitasking when depicting Katie Salen's game school for example. Katie's approach is not about turning students lose on the computer; it is about teaching them to look at the world as a complex system and developing skills as designers. In my White Paper for MacArthur, I identify multitasking as a skill -- but I don't mean by this what young people think they are doing when they talk about multitasking. I mean the ability to manage attention -- sometimes concentrating on a single text or problem, sometimes scanning the environment to form a hazier understanding of the bigger picture, much as a driver needs to keep their eyes on the road in front of them but also needs to scan the rear view mirror. I think schools have a role to play in helping young people sharpen their understanding of which mode of engagement is appropriate for different tasks and contexts.
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The goal shouldn't be to decide if computers are good or bad. Our goal should be to identify what a more constructive relationship to this technology might look like and to insure that those skills and practices get transmitted to a broader segment of the population.
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I also think that they should report the diverse range of cultural practices which emerged from the Digital Youth team's large scale ethnography of teen's on-line lives and the kinds of practices which seem to support robust informal learning outside the classroom. Unfortunately, this research ended up on the cutting room floor. Some of it is on the web. None of it is in the program.