GLLS2007: What Librarians Need To Know About Games, Media Literacy and Participatory Culture

Henry Jenkins

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• let's take a break from reading Harry Potter - why do people want to ruin the ending of the book? people afraid to go to HP parties fri night cuz they might find out how it ends
• iCue - news archives to connect kids to american history {cool new learning project}
• mcarthur study: 83% kids listen to music/ read/ play games 2 hours per day each
• pew study: more than half american teens are media creators, 33% share beyond friends/ family - mostly urban kids doing this, not much race gap, girls more likely than boys to do by hi school (not suburban white boys mainly like stereotype)
• participatory culture: strong support for sharing, more experienced help less experienced (informal mentorship - cross generational) {interesting breaking down of lines}
  
• not just culture created by kids, adults and kids learn from each other
• members feel their connections matter
  
• participation gap: not just digital divide - most kids have network access either at home or thru school or library, what new cultural skills are needed in this environment? kids w/ broadband at home ALWAYS online, kids getting access thru school/ library may be limited in time and what they are "allowed" to access (filtering etc), kids w/ constant access have better skills and comfort level than kids who don't - kids who don't need different kinds of guidance from librarians
• have to open up generation to thinking about how media shapes lives
• ethics problem: more kids involved in live journaling than hi school newspapers - but no adult "oversight" to guide them in how to use ethically/ safely
• students need to know: traditional print literacy (readin n writin, son has tons of online girlfriends because he is good writer)/ research skills (collect and process info, more info in unknown spaces now, need to teach how to read)/ technical skills (code/ compute - beyond keyboarding skills)/ media literacy (how is media created and circulated)
• play: capacity to experiment w/ surroundings are form of problem solving - jump right in and figure out how world of game works, trial and error
• simulation: interpret and construct dynamic models of real world processes
• performance: adopt alternative identities for improv and discovery - role play as way to develop skills through character, game as provocation to bring in info from other sources (like school etc)
  
• appropriation: ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content - remixing has gone on for all time (homer, sistine chapel, shakespeare, melville - took content from other sources and made better thru abilities) {blues artists too} - kids can learn by taking elements of culture and remixing (someplace is using melville in classes a example of remix culture)
• multitasking: scan environment and shift focus on salient details on ad hoc basis - ability to make quick decisions v important, shift in skills that is valuable and impt to understand
• distributed cognition: ability to interact w/ tools that expand mental capacity (MIT well drilling game) {saw that one at ELI2007 i think, was neat example}
• collective intelligence: ability to pool knowledge and compare notes w/ other toward common goal, real world GPS based games {i'm fascinated by real world live games}
• judgment: evaluate reliability and credibility of info sources
• transmedia navigation: ability to deal with flow of stories and info across muiltiple modalities - pokomon etc, complex systems in games
• networking: ability to search for, synthesize and disseminate info - proposed gvt limits to social networking at libraries bad, is it better for kids to do myspace alone or have guidance from teachers and librarians? {amen!}{much clapping}
• negotiation: ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning multiple perspectives and grapsing and following alternate sets of norms - not just minority/ racial, have to value all kinds of diversity in communities
• project nml: whitepaper talk is based on and online documentaries for helping think about learning issues {cool video about big gaming}
• librarians need to think of roles in new ways to help kids not just navigate library, but network too
• facilitate learning thru games, dont shut games out, help and play with them - showcase work that kids have created {Maybe feature lib users' youtube videos on website if appropriate}
• libraries are part of social network, help kids develop collaborative proejcts with others around country, speakers in second life etc

{wow, i took lots of notes! very interesting talk. bad font color choice on contact slide tho!}