#connectedlearning

Connecting ATL Skills | Enhancing Student Learning | MLSI

Throughout this paper, I’m going to talk about social media and how it is correlated with participatory culture. Before we even start, what is participatory culture? Participatory culture is defined by new learning online as “a culture where there are low barriers to artistic expression and civic occasions.”. Not only that Henry Jenkins defines participatory culture as a culture where we make media as well as consume it”. He continues to explain participatory culture as a strong support for sharing contact with others, informal, mentorship, members, believing their contributions matter, and care about others, opinions of self, and work.”. What does this mean? This means that participatory culture is a culture that allows people via social media to be them, true selves and create artistic expression through the form of whatever social media platform you choose to use. For example, say you’re on Instagram. Participatory culture would look like people that are participating in contributing value, diverse opinions, and comments on each other's posts, while embracing everyone’s perspective in everyone's fashion. The reason why I say this is an example is because being able to embrace everyone’s perspective and ways of contribution allows us to continue to grow as human beings and the ways of participatory culture.

Let’s talk about how Content is being made by people throughout the world, and why it’s important to create content that is not only artistic and passionate, and that expresses yourself as a person. “Creating content not only involves creativity, but also time, motion, and various forms of capital (social, cultural, and sometimes economic)” (Hinton & Hjorth, 2013). The reason for why I’m bringing this part of the text up is so that we can continue to understand that not everything in social media is a simple, personal blog or a selfie. A lot of things and the majority of the things in social media are planned out, strategized, researched, artistically expressed. Many of the things that we see in social media are things that are either educators or things that are therefore in entertainment mainly.

We are going to talk about different ways on how to practice participatory culture within your life. One way to practice it between cultures in your life is by building a community telling stories and producing media. And being able to do this, will allow you to be distinctive and create something that is very valuable in your life. Another way that you can practice participatory culture is by being informed. What being informed in the participatory culture looks like it is by spreading the word, and then learning about the issues that are taking place. You could also practice participatory culture by connecting with others, and branching out beyond your group by networking yourself. This is very important because being able to network yourself throughout your life, and throughout social media will allow you to explore and be more innovative than what you initially thought. Overall, practicing participatory culture will allow you to become more of the experts in the world and you to become truly adaptive and innovative to what the world has entailed.

Written for a class I am teaching called Teaching Writing Online at Johns Hopkins; posted originally in class Blackboard blog (which isn’t really a blog at all) in response to the prompt “Teaching writing in the time of COVID-19.”

Weeks before COVID officially hit the States, it was in the news in China. My partner had been to Beijing for work in late November/early December when things were still fairly normal. But a few weeks after his return, the city of Wuhan had shut down. He got in touch with his colleagues via WeChat to find out how they were and what was going on. Within a week or so they were also homebound, work and school closed down throughout Beijing and Shanghai.

“Millions of children are now going to school online” he said to me one morning. This is when I really started to take note. Millions of kids out of school, stuck at home, online learning. Wow. And uh oh.

It would be another few weeks before it was here.

I live in Philadelphia. In Philly, during the previous months, a few schools had actually already closed due to crumbling asbestos found in public areas of the school, including the gyms and cafeterias. Parents were protesting and some were already keeping kids home. It was just a handful of schools but, having gone to these schools myself as a kid and visiting them as an adult from time to time, I know that this is a much bigger problem than just a few schools, especially in buildings of a certain era. It was not clear what would happen, how the district would respond to the growing public knowledge and concern about this issue, what were plans for addressing it at speed or scale, and what funds could be accessed to repair these old buildings and crumbling facilities.

But COVID changed that, quickly. School closed down (still with active asbestos) and thousands of children were sent home. And the disparities of our city that we know about - the poverty and the underfunding of our public schools -- opened like crackling and veining crevasses throughout the streets and neighborhoods of our city.

What became clear immediately is that many Philadelphian children needed lunch since food insecurity is high and school was the one place where they could be guaranteed a meal each day; getting food to them and also providing a place for them to be if needed was the first priority. Then a second piece was to make sure that kids had access to technology they could use to stay connected to their teachers and peers and Chromebooks were distributed to families (sometimes at real risk to those who had to hand them out). Challenges continued and despite being the home of Comcast, the lack of Internet access and broadband in homes throughout the city is determined by income. The district website even, at one point, suggested finding “parking lot wifi” after failing to figure out how to get community-wide access. Long time educational reporters Dale Mezzacappa and Bill Hangley Jr. write in the Public School Notebook that “Wealthier districts have a "10-year head start" on devices, online access, and virtual curriculum.” compared to Philadelphia.

As the school year winds down, planning continues and CDC guidelines (the full one not the White House one) are being used to plan what to do come the Fall. Hangley writes that nothing is clear except that “the coronavirus hits low-income and minority communities hardest, and students like Philadelphia’s are at the greatest risk.”

The disparities that we have know for years now are on full display again after the murder of George Floyd and the unequal impact of COVID on black and brown communities throughout the United States. And, as challenging as it is, I also believe that much of what has been deemed “impossible” has proved to actually be possible. We can rethink the way we function and close down if we need to to keep safe. We can uprise if we need to to protest systemic inequities. So in these possibilities I also see opportunities for us as teachers and learners. It is an opportunity to really look squarely at what is unjust and inequitable. It is also an opportunity to re-think, re-imagine, re-prioritize what is most important in education and schooling (and many are; will work to put a list together).

State testing was dropped for this school year, for example. What could school be if it were less focused on testing and competition of children to show “merit” for higher education and instead asked kids to do real work in the world, supported by teachers and mentors and communities? What if kids were asked to participate meaningfully in their communities at school and at home and did research on topics of deep interests and importance to them, like food insecurity, and were asked to use their voice to share what they learned and advocate for what is needed? What if they had an opportunity to do work that contributed -- how much would we all gain? How fast could we come up with solutions and better understandings of pandemics like COVID if we had all these young minds considering the possibilities alongside us adults? What if kids were engaged in learning by doing - and writing - in ways that build democracy and dismantle racist systems instead of teaching kids how to follow rules and act in compliance to a set of demands created by adults without their consultation?

When we think of citizenship we often think of being citizens of a place, country, community, etc. However, when it comes to citizenship in the digital space it can often be a mysterious and perplexing concept to consider. We can define digital as “involving or relating to the use of computer technology.” Pretty simple and straightforward for all of us in the digital world, right? But when we tie in citizenship, which can be defined as “the position or status of being a citizen of a particular country,” the understanding changes. Now, when we consider the two together, we can define digital citizenship as the “ability to practice and advocate online behavior that demonstrates legal, ethical, safe, and responsible uses of information and communication technologies (Greenhow & Ribble, 2009, p. 125). With this in mind, we can see that digital citizenship is a key facet in our growing digital age and is an essential skill that needs to be taught to the youth and understood/followed by those who currently interact with digital platforms. Respectful and knowledgeable online environments are always a good idea!

When this definition of digital citizenship is considered, the relation to digital literacy is strong. They both work to improve online environments and teach users to take note of what is safe and what is not. Users that are both digitally literate and have digital citizenship are more inclined to safeguard their private information, respect themselves and others, carefully manage their digital footprint, and stay safe online. However, the key difference between the two is the fact that digital literacy focuses more on the user's ability to read and analyze situations and act on them as they see fit. On the other hand, digital citizenship focuses more on the quality of these interactions and habits that impact the content output and the communities they are associated with.

While digital citizenship is important for all digital users and communities, it is most important to consider implementing and teaching these concepts in the classroom to younger children. With technology being used more and more in the classroom, it is important to teach students to be knowledgeable, respectful, and aware of their actions and interactions with others. Due to this digital shift, educators are realizing the importance of teaching these programs to their students and are implementing programs such as Common Sense media’s K-12 Digital Citizenship Curriculum. According to an article by Edscoop, research from Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education shows that educators’ top concerns regarding digital citizenship are cyberbullying, sexting, fake news, and digital well-being.

In fall 2019 I will be officially enrolled in the UConn Puppetry Arts Online Certificate program. Having already completed one of the four classes, I had to make it official to keep going; here’s my personal statement on why in case you are wondering. 

Personal Statement

Throughout my 20s I really thought—in fact I believed—that we could change the world with puppetry. I was an enthusiastic volunteer with the Spiral Q puppet theater (spiralq.org)—I participated in an annual community-built parade and pageant called Peoplehood, co-designed a workshop at a local high school to engage African-American youth in a reading and reinterpretation of Dubois’s The Star of Ethiopia, organized friendraising house parties as a freshling board member, etc. My theory of action was this: we come together in community to creatively build the world we want to see and then, through participatory performance, we manifest that world into literal (albeit cardboard) being.

Now, much closer to my 50s and watching as the world creeps closer and closer to tyranny, I am a bit less ... sure. But I remain committed to the idea that change—both big and small—does happen in creative community and that puppetry can be a powerful tool in that work. What I’ve learned over time, both at the Q as well as an educator, is that the creation and manipulation of physically engaged objects in creative play —whether analog or digital—can surface that which is otherwise hard to reach and access. It is through embodiment that we start to process our experiences in larger systems and gain a sense of agency and critical civic empathy (Mirra, 2018). Therefore I believe that puppetry offers a unique mode for the sharing of stories across diversity and difference that is so essential for our world today.

Beyond my work with Spiral Q, puppetry specifically has popped up in my work at the National Writing Project—an educator network focus on the teaching of writing (nwp.org)—in ways that initially surprised me. First in the context of working on Connected Learning (Ito et al, 2013) and a systems-thinking curriculum project (Peppler, et al. 2014), it has more recently surfaced again in the context of consulting on the development of a modular robotic toy and a related project engaging teachers in using AR tools to support youth imagination and career pathways. In 2017 I presented some of my thoughts about puppetry and Connected Learning as an Ignite Talk at the Connected Learning Summit at the University of California Irvine (Cantrill, 2017). Because of this work, and my fundamental belief in the power of the puppet, I have started to think more deeply about the implications of this kind of object-based manipulation and performance on learning and teaching.

My interest in studying at UConn was solidified at the The Living Objects: African American Puppetry symposium hosted by the Ballard Institute this past February. Decolonizing the stories we tell, how and why we tell them, is key to healing what is so damaged. I feel that my work at the Q as well as the NWP are key parts of those decolonization efforts and I wish to continue that work through the Puppet Arts Online Graduate Certificate Program.

I would be greatly honored to have the opportunity to learn alongside the artists, scholars and philosophers associated with the Ballard Institute and the UConn School of Puppetry Arts.

Thank you for your consideration.

Cantrill, C. (2017). Desa, Kala, Patra. Ignite Talk: Digital Media and Learning, October 2017. Accessed June 2019: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXnqSBOsoC8

Mirra, N. (2018). Educating for empathy: Literacy learning and civic engagement. Teachers College Press.

Ito, M., Gutiérrez, K., Livingstone, S., Penuel, B., Rhodes, J., Salen, K., ... & Watkins, S. C. (2013). Connected learning: An agenda for research and design. Digital Media and Learning.

We arrived late in the evening to Beirut and pulled into the driveway of the Smallville Hotel on Damascus road. “The road to Damascus” I thought to myself; two hours away by car I was told when I asked. Syria, the neighboring country embroiled now in devastating civil war. Yes, here I am. In the Middle East.

I immediately flashback to July 4th, 1987, the summer when I first went overseas to Germany. Because it was the US holiday, we went by car to a branch office of the US Embassy near Bonn where they were planning to host a barbecue and fireworks. Upon arriving at the gate, security guards with automatic rifles approached the car and asked for our IDs. Large concrete blocks and metal barricades surrounded the guard stand, and now the car, and extended all the way over to and around the buildings beyond. At 17 I hadn’t quite seen anything like this before (although I would soon see more very soon in Berlin). I remember asking what was happening and I was told that a US embassy had been bombed in Beirut, Lebanon.

It is now 30 years later and I have just returned from a trip -- a vacation of sorts -- to Beirut, the place that so captured my imagination that summer. Traveling there with my partner Jack who was invited to be a guest of International Refugee Assistance Program (IRAP), an organization his company supports, I ended up spending a remarkable week becoming familiar with IRAPs work while getting a bit of a feel for the city and its history and learning more about the war now raging less than two hours away.

Beirut today is a bustling vibrant city of neighborhoods and many Lebanese told us they were happy to be at peace and felt safe; they wanted the highlights of their city to be appreciated and shared. Despite struggling with the struggles around them, the neighborhoods were filled with young men and women spending time together often with drinks and also shisha pipes. Political murals adorned many walls throughout the city, and modern buildings sat next to pocketed shells of buildings; several in fact still face each other across intersections, making very vivid current politics and the reality of a 15-year civil war.

Beirut is a diverse and multiethnic place, and is known to be one of the most open and free cities in the Middle East even though we were told that it can shift from block to block. The colonial heritage is alive with the French language, along with English and Arabic, being still taught in schools.  The older architecture -- and several buildings in their full glory still exist -- are a mix of Lebanese and French style, along with Turkish or Ottoman. The food was a similar mix along with Armenian. Zatar on flatbread with vegetables or Laban and Turkish coffee made for delicious morning meal, while hummus, pita, mezze were available everywhere throughout the day. Beaches sit along the eastern Mediterranean waterfront and, quite amazingly, west of the city rises rapidly into snow capped mountains.

As supporters of IRAP,  we were invited to participate in what was the real focus of this trip -- ie. training mostly US-based law students on the refugee situation in the region and having them do an initial intake interview with Syrian refugees. The goal in the Beirut office was to engage this group of students and, us as supporters, to help IRAP prioritize its resources around advocacy and resettlement efforts; efforts whose pipeline continues to get smaller and smaller as the need continues to expand. Although no longer officially counted by the Lebanese government, most people seem to believe that there over 1.5 million Syrians now in Lebanon not able to obtain legal residency or related social services.

We were told many times that Syrians and Lebanese have a long history, at war and also at peace. After the civil war and Syrian occupation, Syrians traveled freely to Lebanon and work there. When the Syrian war broke out, people either crossed the border or were already in Lebanon and simply did not go back. So although there are tented settlements of Syrian refugees in Lebanon (mostly outside the city and close to the Syrian border), there are also many living in crowded houses, apartments and with extended family doing underground work in the cities.

Jack has written about this trip and about how protected we were from the actual situation; it’s true. Throughout the trip we remained in the city, visited NGOs, and the families we were interviewing came to us at the IRAP office. This was intentional of course; not only were there real security concerns but also our job was not to be there to get involved at that level. Instead they needed us to do some work for them and that’s what we focused on doing -- by Thursday of that week I was sitting next to a law student, passing a computer back and forth, as we interviewed a Syrian family about their situation and worked to document the details of their lives and their related request for resettlement. This interview took approximately four hours, and we shared our notes with the IRAP staff lawyers who would determine the next steps for each situation.

IRAP both works directly in places like Beirut and Amman doing this kind of direct legal advocacy for refugees (mostly Syrians at this point) and it does it by engaging young law students, and a few supporters like us, from around the US and beyond. They also have a litigation office in New York City which spends their time suing the current U.S. Administration over its immigration bans and related xenophobic policies. As an educator, therefore, IRAP’s work struck me as as both creatively strategic and also pedagogically smart -- not only was the organization tapping into a well of often-underutilized human resources (ie. students) needed to do this work, it was also amassing, by working in real time on the ground, the very particular knowledge needed to fight for refugee and resettlement rights and develop the field of refugee law, in US Federal courts and beyond.

It’s been a few weeks now that we’ve been back in Philadelphia since this trip; last weekend Jack and I attended a panel discussion on the topic of displacement that is part of a larger event called Friends, Peace and Sanctuary out at Swarthmore. This project has been engaging artists and people newly arrived to the US, mostly from Syria, with the peace archive at the college. A local artist friend, Erik Ruin, was one of the artists on the project and a panelist talked about how the idea of “displacement” for him as not only being about the global movements of refugees of war, but also being about the displacement of people, mostly poor and working people of color, from his West Philly neighborhood. His comments reflect my own feelings after returning from the Middle East and thinking back to my early years of being in Europe; it was there that I started to realize how both the history and presence of war exists at the same time. And that a core capacity we need, on a local as well as the global front, is to see each other and the very real implications of our actions on other people’s lives.

You’ve probably run into IRAP yourself -- they were the ones who, through their clubs at US law schools, helped to mobilize national protests at the airports when the first Trump Administration Muslim Ban was announced and several clients that they had supported through a resettlement process were stuck in the air or at the borders unable to reach their destination. I remember being at the Philadelphia Airport that evening and feeling grateful for the community that had engaged this protest even though I didn’t know who they were.