What is a participatory culture?

The idea of a participatory culture is not necessarily a new idea, but the it's expansion in the world of social media has made it a prominent topic in the world of education. In a participatory culture it is one in which, very simply, everyone participates. Students are encouraged to produce and share various forms of media and through so, learn from each other. There may be a media that another student isn't familiar with, or an idea another student hadn't previously thought of, and a participatory culture encourages this sharing.  It's a social mode of production. Communities can also produce media together and then share them among themselves, or even to a larger community outside of just their classroom.

I think there are a lot of ways that I could incorporate more of this into my classroom. My Sports Marketing class organizes charity events as part of their curriculum. The students could do a better job of getting on social media to get the word about the cause, what the foundation does and how they are supporting them in our classroom. This same class also does a marketing research project on an issue within our school. Right now their presentations are pretty much kept within the classroom, but they could incorporate a part where they have to develop social media posts about what they are doing or interview students using technology to add into their presentations.

In whatever way these participatory cultures are added into a classroom, the goal is to really take the richer life that students have outside of the classroom and let them bring that into their learning. While Federal policy can make this hard because teachers have such a tight guideline sometimes on what they are allowed to teach, creative teachers can find a way to implement more of this and the result, I believe, would be more students engaged in their learning.