seventy-two part one

"...first and last of every paragraph" is what my grad school housemate recommended. She writes five page papers in a one hour sitting without pee brakes.

I tried that. But ended up reading mostly half of the 72 pages. Yeah it's interesting. Yeah great points but I maxed out my intake and had to put it down... 

I think I have an understanding of what they're yelling about "participatory culture".  First thing that I thought of was the electronica music scene where DJ's will play, remix and rework tracks by other producers and DJ's.

Some other key points I scouted out and dumbed down:
Computers are not automated. They need an operator.
I guess this is in defense of computers in the classroom and fearing that students have it too easy.

•It matters more what is done with the tools than what tools are available. 

•"affinity spaces"
peer-to-peer learning, give & receive feedback, one can come and go as needed, the evolve

•Participation Gap
  -Unequal access: public computers slow down research, the elite students with computers and help at home excell.
  -Assumptions that kids are reflecting & articulating: students can't distinguish between professional and amateur information online.
  -Assumptions that ethics are formed in online societies: dangerous, asking ethics questions to students is key.

• Literacy
understanding sight & sound, use their power to produce. 

•Communicating through digital means won't replace reading & writing
They say they "fundamentally disagree", but I can write in script, i hate capitalizing and i heard of some people who use TXT lingo instead of the real word! Writing is changing i guess...? 

•Collaboration is good

•Skills taught in schools do not fit with job tasks.
Schools are training individual problem solvers but work wants collaboration and teamwork

•Play is important.
play engages, games engage, games are work with a payoff, payoffs keep us engaged.


•Games are problems that require: takings risks, failing, trial & error and solving the problem.


•"Projective Identity": fusion between actual user and their avatars

•"appropriation": students take apart culture and put back together. (which I think is key for understanding anything, which is why I'm dumbing this all down)

• Multi-tasking: students can do it better than adults think they can. they make split second assessments, they monitor and respond.

•Collective intelligence: sharing to get to a common goal.  

At that point in my reading I could no longer feel my legs or skull, too many serif letters jammed in. So i stopped.