"We grew up with the Internet and on the Internet. This is what makes us different; this is what makes the crucial, although surprising from your point of view, difference: we do not ‘surf’ and the internet to us is not a ‘place’ or ‘virtual space’. The Internet to us is not something external to reality but a part of it: an invisible yet constantly present layer intertwined with the physical environment. We do not use the Internet, we live on the Internet and along it. If we were to tell our bildnungsroman to you, the analog, we could say there was a natural Internet aspect to every single experience that has shaped us. We made friends and enemies online, we prepared cribs for tests online, we planned parties and studying sessions online, we fell in love and broke up online. The Web to us is not a technology which we had to learn and which we managed to get a grip of. The Web is a process, happening continuously and continuously transforming before our eyes; with us and through us…"

[Update: Response by Alan Jacobs: http://ayjay.tumblr.com/post/18029873515/participating-in-cultural-life-is-not-something ]

[Update 2: Lengthy response, take-down: http://www.lileks.com/bleats/archive/12/0212/022212.html ]

[Chaser: http://metalab.harvard.edu/2012/02/twitter-nprs-morning-edition-and-dreams-of-flatland/ ]

[Cross-posted by Alexis Madrigal: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/02/we-the-web-kids/253382/ ]

Just reencountered Vanessa Bertozzi's 2006 thesis through a post by Sandra Dodd, commented by David Friedman: http://unschooling.blogspot.com/2011/06/unschooling-media-participatory.html

"On the flipside of the technology debate, I experienced a moment of great academic pleasure when I received an email from Rob, an unschooling dad in California. He explained that he’d come across my links tagged “unschooling” in del.icio.us and he was curious about my research. We then went on to have a very fruitful interview."

"As things stand right now, unless participatory media takes a deliberate step into classrooms & into testing data, long-term sustainable funding & adoption seem unlikely."<br />
<br />
"As someone who regularly works with kids outside of schools in after-school & summer programs as well as spending the majority of my days waking up early & scrawling on a whiteboard, there is a significant mode of participation to which young people have become unnecessarily acculturated. With literally tens of thousands of hours spent being conditioned to facing forward & remaining in seats, we have created factory-minded young people who need to be gently provoked. This work takes time & trust; once those two things are present, a classroom of enthused minds is limited only by imagination.<br />
<br />
Years after its implementation, I still get messages from former students about how the seven weeks they spent learning through and playing the Black Cloud game made an impact on their day-to-day lives."

"Just as print technologies & literacies shaped Enlightenment, the social media technologies & literacies will shape the cognitive, social, & cultural environments of 21st century. As Jenkins & colleagues have emphasized, education that acknowledges the full impact of networked publics & digital media must recognize a whole new way of looking at learning & teaching. This is not just another set of skills to be added to curriculum. Assuming a world in which welfare of young people & economic health of society & political health of democracy are the true goals of education, I believe modern societies need to assess & evaluate what works & doesn't in terms of engaging students in learning.<br />
<br />
If we want to do this, if we want to discover how we can engage students as well as ourselves in 21st century, we must move beyond skills & technologies. We must explore also interconnected social media literacies of attention, participation, cooperation, network awareness, & critical consumption."

"The polder model is a term with uncertain origin that was first used to describe the internationally acclaimed Dutch version of consensus policy in economics, specifically in the 1980s and 1990s. However, the term was quickly adopted for a much wider meaning, for similar cases of consensus decision-making, which are supposedly typically Dutch. It is described with phrases like 'a pragmatic recognition of pluriformity' and 'cooperation despite differences'."

"Today's young people are growing up in a radically different media environment from the one that we grew up in. It's a media environment that keeps them connected 24/7 to their peers, information, and entertainment. It's a media environment that captures kids attentions through visual media, participation and interaction, challenging educators to reconsider traditional models of instruction. It's a media environment that captures kids attentions through visual media, participation and interaction, challenging educators to reconsider traditional models of instruction."

"I love participatory media, collective knowledge systems, user-generated content and the like, and spent much of my life and career participating in them and making them. As I say in this post from 2005, the internet is built on a culture of generosity -- the first web page I built was when I noticed there was no page on Nabokov and realized I could just make one. Amazing! And it dawned on me that every other page on the web -- this was 1994 -- had come about for the same reason. Then the dotcom thing happened. And then Web 2.0 brought us back to the web's roots -- communication and contribution. That is why I love participatory media and must defend it."

"Zittrain focuses on the potential alienation and opportunities for abuse that can arise with the growth of distributed online production. He also contemplates the thin line that separates exploitation from volunteering in the context of online communities and collaboration."

"Increas­ingly, I’m con­vinced that no media is suc­cess­ful or even com­plete until it’s been trans­formed or extended. I know this is not super-controversial—it’s sort of the Cre­ative Com­mons party line—but it turns out things don’t trans­form them­selves! A lot of media gets CC-licensed and then just sits there.

"Many video games let you create (your own levels in a first-person shooter, your own creatures in an adventure, for example) and upload these creations so you can share them with other players. It's called participatory culture, where consumers are not couch potatoes but rather active participants and creators themselves. But some argue we're merely being tricked into thinking we're being creative."