Looking forward to getting my hands on that book. In the meantime, as I read through the Jenkins syllabus I am seeing a more nuanced vision of the new media literacy landscape. In his post, Eight Traits of the New Media Landscape, Jenkins describes the new media landscape as more than just a collection of tools and emerging technologies. The new media landscape is a culture that is in transition. New media culture is a set of relationships that we need to understand before we attempt to develop a curriculum that might foster the skills and competencies needed to engage in this new paradigm.
The text is important because it builds a succint framework for talking about media literacy in the 21st century. It seems to be Jenkins response to Prensky. The rhetorical method he employs to call educators to action is much more effective than Prensky. First of all, it is written within the context of a new media itself, blogging. It also has benefited from a good 5 years of Web 2.0 research, Jenkins has a clearer, yet still nebulous vision of new media.
The question I have is: Why is all of our focus on changing education? Why not change other institutions? What about government or healthcare. Imagine the networked doctor or the networked bureacrat. Why is education at the bleeding edge of adopting the latest media shifts?
1 comment:
The first thought that comes to my mind about why education has to be the institution of change rather than government or health is that education has long been valued and seen as the factor that can make a difference in lives. Government and health care (and aren't we trying to change that!!) are important entities, but education is thought to be a factor in improving quality of life.
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