Within the Jacobsen article, Teaching in a Participatory Digital World, and the Jenkins video, The Influence of Participatory Culture on Education, focus was placed on utilizing participatory learning environments within the classroom.
Though many educators fear bringing these environments into the classroom, due to the issues that can arise, allowing students to explore safe digital practice provides them with lifelong skills they will integrate into their futures. Digital learning in the classroom allows students to expand their critical thinking and digital literacy, both essential skills in the modern workforce. Please watch my Powtoon below for a more in depth summary of the video and article, as well as more on how the topic of exploratory learning relates to my life!
As I mentioned in the video, as a student I always feared exploratory learning environments. I excelled in math and science courses, so preferred work where there was a clear end goal that I could achieve. Due to my logical tendencies, prior to this course and article, I did not participate in participatory learning environments because it was not integrated into my classes and I did not seek out these resources because I thought I was a stronger analog learner. This course has already helped me adapt to participatory learning environments, but as I stated in the video, this is an ongoing journey that I will never view as complete because I hope to constantly improve based on the knowledge I gain throughout the process.
Within my future classroom, I hope to introduce my students to participatory learning environments to allow them to escape from the mastery learning mindset. By making students aware of the questions they need to ask while exploring online resources, I will aim to help their digital literacy and assist them in gaining critical thinking skills that will last them a lifetime. Within the text, I learned about Galileo as a teaching resource, and I look forward to exploring this resource in the future!
As I concluded in the video, I would love to hear about more participatory learning environments you have explored or plan to explore in the future! Also, how do you plan to incorporate these learning environments into your classrooms?
Happy Halloween!
Kate