Relationship Building and Determining Worth

Happy Halloween!

Like the Introduction, Chapter One of Spreadable Media contains many opportunities for discussion in the world of online and blended learning. The title, "Where Web 2.0 Went Wrong," shows the focus on a tension existing and intensifying between commercial media and fan culture. Fans desire to remix and appropriate media, often not for profit, but some commercial media believe this infringes on their creation and seek to shut things down. Here are places I want to explore more:


Moral Economy
The book discusses the idea of a moral economy, a term from E.P. Thompson from 1971. A moral economy illustrates a "perceived moral and social value" of transactions whether those interactions are explicitly stated or not (52). A shift in the structure of the interactions can result in "diminishing the level of trust among participating parties" (52). To me, what does this mean? We're back to SCARF. The book does not mention SCARF, but it should right here. This is all about SCARF.

Online and blended learning dramatically shifts the structure of education. The learning changes, and so do the interactions. Trust diminishes, especially when teachers do not work to build relationships with students and take the time for community building. Trust in others in the class can also diminish without those community building opportunities, since students rarely "see" the other students can be alone. Other trust diminishes, too. Trust in the integrity of the work exists between traditional models and blended / online models. Time and communication can rebuild the network of trust, but ignoring this will not make it go away.

Other aspects of the moral economy also need discussion. What is the perceived expectation of how an online class works, or how one should participate in an online / blended class? What if the structure and delivery of the class does not meet those perceived expectations? How do we discuss these things in a way to move into the authentic work? One way is to take the time to build norms together. I've collected some resources on norm buildingat this livebinder site (code: communicate2learn). Sites like Tricider can also get the discussion started. For example, I'd love feedback on this one: 





Community building and dealing with SCARF absolutely takes time away from content, but I believe the benefits outweigh this. 

Engagement and Branding
The previous post discussed what spreads versus what sticks. Chapter One delves into this more with this idea about motivation behind spreadable content, "Users generating online content are often interested in expanding their own audience and reputation. They may measure their success by how many followers they attract on Twitter, just as television executives value the number of eyeballs their programs attract" (60). The chapter continues, "When audience members spread this content from one community to another, they do so because they have a stake in the circulation of these messages. They are embracing material meaningful to them because it has currency within their social networks and because it facilitates conversations they want to have with their friends and families" (60). This means that students will spread not only what is meaningful to them, but also what they feel helps identify them to the world and to the people they care about. Authenticity. They need to have a stake in the work. For example, my son, a sophomore, thinks about how he wants to be perceived often. He devotes a lot of time and energy putting up videos of him doing Parlour or freerunning because he is a part of that community and wants to spark conversation and receive feedback. Here's an example of one: 

Engagement for him, like for all his peers, depends on providing something to him that he can make meaning from, have a stake in, and care about. The chapter argues that being engaged also "recognizes that these communities are pursuing their own interests, connected to and informed by those decisions made by others within their social networks" (60).  For him, the videos are a way to "give back" and contribute to the community in some way, including tutorials he has made for difficult flips and such (they are longer so I didn't post them here). His videos reflect someone engaged in a community, someone who can "feel an obligation to 'give back' to their 'community' and/or in the hope that their actions will direct greater attention and interest to the media they love" (62). He communicates his love for the mindset of Parkour and for the community with each video he makes, each comment he posts. Every entry strengthens his ties to Parkour and the community.  How can we find ways to tap into the areas of life where students already feel they have a stake in something? How can we also be attentive to the fact that they are trying to create an identity for themselves that may not include our subject?  How can we design learning experiences that would allow the students to "give back" to their communities? Choice. In skill-based learning objectives, such as in ELA and other subject areas, providing choice can be easy and an instant way to engage students in creating learning objects that mean something to them - makes them want to spread and transfer what they learn beyond the boundaries of the school. That means I'm back at UDL: 

  Sometimes the learning objectives just don't match their passions as directly as we would like. I think one way stems from the discussion of an academic identity. We communicate via academic emails, and then maybe we should create academic accounts. I've had students tell me that they didn't want to tweet because the classroom tweets would show on their feed to their followers, and that wasn't the image they were crafting. I get that. For those instances, then, an academic account would serve their purposes. If my son doesn't want the people who follow his channel for Parkour to see him creating a video of a catapult in Physics, an academic account would ensure that would not happen. Their identity / brand remains intact and they can participate more freely. A class account for some things would work equally well.   
The Notion of Reciprocity and Exchange (Value vs. Worth)
The chapter ends with a discussion of commodity view versus an exchange / gifting view. This is a topic I've done a lot of research about. I've looked at two different series with a gifting mindset in two different anthologies: 

The Body in Tolkien's Legendarium

 and

Hunger Games and Philosophy

 In this regard, the gifting mindset works "as an analogy for the informal and socially based exchanges which characterize some aspects of the digital ethos" from Howard Rheingold's The Virtual Community (65). 

One complaint about online/flipped/blended experiences is the belief that the burden on teaching falls on the student. To me, this complaint hits on many areas of Chapter One. The expectations of being "taught" do not seem to be met, which diminishes trust. A non-personalized click-through experience does not engage, which means the student may make no meaningful relationships. The reciprocity cannot be there if the students perceive they are doing all the participating in the course. The facilitator has to dig in, build the relationships, provide the feedback and teach. Otherwise, there is no balance. We step in when we design for choice, provide meaningful, timely feedback, and protect students from adverse consequences.

 To me, the facilitator's role parallels the role of the marketer in the fan/commercial relationship described in Chapter One, where the authors say that Gould claims the marketer (here the designer/facilitator), "build relationships through listening and interacting, deepening relationships with audience members when it's contextually relevant" and intentionally trying to "pay attention to the audience's agency" (80).

In Chapter One, the idea of a "gift" in digital environments "depend on altruistic motivations; they circulate through acts of generosity and reciprocity, and their exchange is governed by social norms rather than contractual relations. The circulation of gifts is socially rather than economically motivated and is not simply symbolic of the social relations between participants; it helps to constitute them" (67). Using Lewis Hyde's distinction between value, a commodity, and worth, a gift, the question then becomes one of worth. 

We are right back to meaningful experiences. Worth comes from a sense of personal meaning and relevance. Something worth creating should be something worth spreading and sharing, be it through an e-portfolio or a video.
   

What Needs to Spread and What Needs to Stick

For the next couple of weeks, I'm focusing my posts on reflections from the book Spreadable Media by Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford, and Joshua Green. I chose this book because of the relevance to our desire to create engaging and meaning learning experiences.

In his introduction, Jenkins defines spreadability as "the potential - both technical and cultural - for audiences to share content for their own purposes" (2). If you've created or shared a funny meme like this one I made:

then you have spread media. Sites like memegenerator make spreading media easy and fun. My question as I read this is, what should be spread? When is the right time to get maximum benefit?

To add a further wrinkle, Jenkins moves into the distinction between "stickiness" and "spreadability." Stickiness, a concept mentioned by Gladwell, refers to content that attracts attention and engagement, a term focusing on numbers of hits on a page or mentions. Spreadability differs from stickiness because spreadability focuses on making connections. One could not track all the uses of the meme above because so many generators offer this as an option. Even without generators, several users could create them on their own. Another difference lies in the fact that spreadability leads to participation in unanticipated ways. Stickiness, as a rule, provides only one kind of experience. For example, when I shared this link on Twitter taking people to a quiz identifying their medieval alter ego (I was a princess, which made me laugh out loud), I showed the quiz to be sticky. I did forwad the quiz, and many others can take the quiz and share, but the only experience we can have is taking the quiz. I can't change the quiz or remix the quiz immediately into a new quiz (even if I get a link the tool).

Here's more - watch to see what King Arthur, Kony 2012, and other texts have in common:



According to Jenkins, both should exist. In a "world where citizens count on each other to pass along compelling bits of news, information, and entertainment, often many times over the course of a given day," the tendency to forward what sticks and remake and circulate what spreads seems almost organic (12). This means, in the world of education, I need to think about what should stick with them and what I want them to spread. I also want to engage students in the metacognitive practice of thinking about sharing in either form. Jenkins writes, "people make active decisions when spreading media, whether simply passing content to their social network, making a word-of-mouth recommendation, or posting a mash-up video to YouTube."

So, what needs to stick? To me, the list would include:

• Learning targets - what do I want my students to leave my course knowing, understanding, doing? 
• Improved communication - I want my students to be able to share their knowledge and passions in an articulate and profound way
• Significance - I want my students to understand the "so what" of my course

What needs to spread? To me that list would include:

• Significance - I know it's in the list above as well. Things overlap, and that's okay. 
• Transfer - I want the students to know how to spread the learning targets of my course to their own lives, other courses, the world, etc. 
•  Reflection - Metacognitive thinking on their part about what they share and why

 How can I start? Here are some ideas:

• Discover the extent your group feels comfortable participating within culture. In my online learning course for teachers, I begin the participatory learning course with a survey to do that. Yours would fit your situation. Here is my survey: 

• Discover the comfort level of your group with spreadable tools. In your survey, you could add a few questions about spreadable tools such as meme generators, social media proficiency, etc. 
• Design with participatory experiences in mind. As the book discussion continues, I'm looking forward to more ideas about this. 

What do you think? What sticks? What spreads? Do students sometimes leave with topics sticking that you did not intend to stick? Why? Comment below - I'm looking forward to the conversation. 

It's Never as Simple as it Seems

Yesterday the weather was really bad, and it happened pretty quickly. My father offered to pick up my daughter because he was closer to her, and I remain grateful that he can be that flexible. When I texted my daughter, I thought I was pretty clear,"Stay put. Grandpa will be there to pick you up in 15 minutes." Somehow, things got lost in translation. Many text messages and a phone call later, she understood the simple instruction. Why was it so hard? I felt like this:

The thing is, my daughter normally not like this. She's usually fine with simple messages, and she's pretty reliable. So, why as she struggling?

One problem may have been that she was stressed. I texted her at the end of the day, the weather was bad, teachers were not letting students leave, and chaos surrounded her. When that happens, even simple directions seem hard. Here's why:

I made assumptions about her day, those assumptions were wrong, and the result was mutual frustration. When similar things occur in teaching, what other assumptions am I making? Looking at this further, here are some overall assumptions about our students that can cause frustration and impede progress. Don't get me wrong - I want my students to struggle, but I want them to struggle with ideas and questions and problems, not navigating the task.

1. Students Today Do Not Want to Read - In many situations, I hear that students do not like to read. I think the issues is more that some students do not want to read what we want them to read. Penny Kittle's work shows that given the opportunity, students can and will read extensively. A recent Pew study confirms that students read quite a bit, more than some adults. With this in mind, we need to find a way to bring that reading back to us. When can we provide them with opportunities to choose what to read? How can we use their own reading to work on the skills of a reader? What can I think about when choosing content that will be engaging for the reader and still convey what I need?

2. Students Do Not Need to be Taught Tools - Ever since the emergence of the term "Digital Native," the assumption has been that students already know all the aspects of technology. We could assign a product to be made on a specific tool, and focus on the product, not the tool. In reality, our students may or may not know the tools at hand. New terms, including "digital refugee" and "digital explorer," better define relationships to technology. Taking time to understand the comfort level and experience base regarding technology, as discussed in this article, helps us ease that frustration level on both ends. Providing choice in terms of representation of knowledge and interaction with content, like within the UDL guidelines, also helps students work with familiar tools and spend their time with content.

3. Students Do Not Socialize Enough - Students socialize differently, but they continue to socialize. Creating the equivalent of the water-cooler conversation, for example, does not resonate with them because, as stated in the Beloit list, the water cooler isn't a gathering place anymore. Each year when Beloit publishes their list, the insight into the mindset of that year fascinates me and reminds me that we have very different worldviews in some ways. Use of social media changes how, when, and why students want to connect and discuss. This site collects work we gathered for a couple of presentations that show not only how teens socialize but how some experiences leverage this to engage students in learning.

4. Students are Too Egocentric - I think it can be easy to see the students on a device as a retreat, even a retreat into themselves, but many times the students are reaching out. A recent millennial survey shows these students want to reach out more, feel as if they are doing good, and make a difference. The study continues that students seek personal fulfillment. The Decreasing World Suck foundation, and the study with the same name, shows similar results. Asking them questions and using that input to reshape our design will help with engagement. This research from the Schlechty Center contains questions for students and other helpful tools.

The next time, before I get frustrated, I'm going to try to figure out what assumption I have wrong about the situation. Sure, I can keep repeating myself, just as I did with Catharine, but that gets us all nowhere.