Participatory Culture--The New Literacy

The participatory culture article brought up a very interesting point that I did not consider until I read about it: the participation gap. The participation gap is the represents the unequal access to these online media skills that will "prepare youth for" for the days of tomorrow. The networked student video discussed that students or everyone actually must become skilled in media in order to succeed in the world, just as the article discussed but the video definitely left out the gap between those who have a means of access and those who do not. After both reading the article and watching the video I feel that this new form of media allows for more in-dependency to be placed on students. Their creatively is measured instead of their facts and students are trusted more to allow their brains to work on their own and form a new idea or at least a path to a new idea by their own means of collaboration. Even though a student acts independently, on these social networks one interacts with hundreds of thousands of people (or at least has the opportunity to). Which leads to what I believe will be an on-going debate for the upcoming years... Is the "New Media Culture" helpful or harmful to Americas youth? The article discusses that new media will allow for individuals to multitask and be able to collaborate better with people from diverse backgrounds(something that the video doesn't discuss). I don't know if I agree or disagree. I don't know if new media is helping society become united through these networks or creating barriers among people on a personal face-to-face level. I may have gone off on my own tangent about new media.. but I think I at least answered the question somewhat? I hope "/

I feel like the only student experience that I can see that would be similar are those from this class. It is really the only class that allows for students to be hands on with technology and to really give them the freedom to almost teach themselves by allowing for them to learn the ends and outs of the online websites. I don't remember if it was the article or the video but one talked about a project with other students working all online and it reminded me of the Art Show that will be put on at the end of the semester. The other experience that I can relate these two sources to is my writing for mass media class. This class literally teaches students about all the forms of mass media.. and why does it do that? Well obviously because it is what is needed to get by in the business world of today's society.