Saturday, March 8th 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm
Henry Jenkins Co-Dir of CMS, MITDir of CMS, MIT
Steven Johnson CEO, outside.in
Dumbing down of pop culture of youth are the kids really “dumbing down”? Never underestimate the ability of parents to see their kids as dumb. They simply don’t understand what they are doing and are threatened. Young people are always (and always have been) early adopters of technology and will always look for ways to hide the things they do from their parents. Parental reaction to this (things they don’t know) is usually bad. They see the things they know becoming less and in turn the new “scary” things are bad.
There are many new literacys coming out of this that aren’t looked at. Is there evidence these new skills are there – how do you test for these skills. Maybe traditional skills are down, but there are quite a few new skills that quickly replace them and they aren’t being looked at or tested.
Knowledge of the crowd: There is more knowledge in 30 students in the classroom than there is in the one teacher in front of the class. It is the Encyclopedia Britannica model vs. Wikipedia. But how do we test this collective knowledge or bring it to the surface?
There are many new things coming out all the time. Even though you don’t think they are interesting that doesn’t mean they are bad or uninteresting or meaningful to others. People in general aren’t idiots, they do things for a reason. It is a matter of looking into that reason or why all these people are into something.
Which is better reality TV or Lost? Or The Wire vs. Lost. The Wire is more traditional tv where Lost has a huge community figuring things out online on their own and surround and push the show. What is wrong with America when someone spends 3 days creating a Lost map based on screen grabs and they aren’t stretched mentally in their job? There is a lot of potential there to go above and beyond or get people interested in the workplace if they’re willing to go to that extent for just a TV show community.
In a hunting society, kids play with bows and arrows. In an information society, kids play with information. What is the new information kids like? Kids today are more entrepreneurial and more political and less violent than ever before. They are much more engaged at many more levels. Looking at “we” vs. “I” in language used by kids vs. adults.
In this information society where people don’t stay in one place as long do we be part of community or be civically engaged. Games are taking that place. We take our friends with us on our back (facebook/myspace).