Derek E. Baird :: Barking Robot

Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century

According to a study from the Pew Internet & American Life project (Lenhardt & Madden, 2005), more than one-half of all teens have created media content, and roughly one-third of teens who use the Internet have shared content they produced.

In many cases, these teens are actively involved in what we are calling participatory cultures.

A participatory culture is a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices.

A participatory culture is also one in which members believe their contributions matter, and feel some degree of social connection with one another (at the least they care what other people think about what they have created). Henry Jenkins: Participatory Culture & Media Education

A growing body of scholarship suggests potential benefits of these forms of participatory culture, including opportunities for peer-to-peer learning, a changed attitude toward intellectual property, the diversification of cultural expression, the development of skills valued in the modern workplace, and a more empowered conception of citizenship.

Access to this participatory culture functions as a new form of the hidden curriculum, shaping which youth will succeed and which will be left behind as they enter school and the workplace.

Houle: Your Kids Are Different and It's Okay!

Futurist David Houle has an interesting series of articles over on Oprah.com that explore the world of Millennials and the challenges of raising kids in the digital age.

The thing that I really like about Houle's column is that he takes a rational and, unlike so many other guru's, non-alarmist approach to the subject.

There are so many fear based stories out there about kids, digital technology and social media, so it's refreshing to see such a balanced approach on the subject.

The one area where I disagree slightly with Houle is his use of the term "digital natives." I'm sure from his perspective and based on his conversations with CEO's and other corporate types, that Millennials in the workplace, compared to their older colleagues, appear to be super digital, technology gifted whiz kids.

Coined by author Marc Prensky in 2001, the phrase has its usefulness in helping us adults grasp the major media shift we're experiencing and embrace young people's openness to it.

But two leading new-media thinkers – Sonia Livingstone of the London School of Economics and Henry Jenkins at the University of Southern California – both have concerns about the phrase becoming too definitive.

Sure kids can work an iPod or update their status on Facebook, but what about using technology in an authentic, useful context? But when it comes to using technology in a situated context to complete a task, navigating privacy settings and all around digital literacy, or using technology at school kids still come up a bit short. 

Over the last decade there has been lots of talk, in both the press and educational circles, about the technological prowess of digital natives. We've heard a lot about what's exciting in educational technology, but the reality is that teachers still see a lot of kids struggling to use technology.

In the end, what's important here, and I'm sure Mr. Houle would agree, is to take a balanced position when it comes to kids and technology. As a parent or teacher, don't be afraid to jump into the technology and social media pool and get your feet wet. Use this as an opportunity to spend time with your kids and  learn more about how they are using technology, mobile phones and social media in their lives.

Most importantly, don't panic! As a wise man once said, 'your kids are different...and it's okay!'

Image Credit: www.oprah.com

Infographic: How Apple Conquered the Music Industry

New Mac Online via ypulse.com

Pew Research: Teens, the Internet and the Future of Digital Diversity

Teens and the Internet: The Future of Digital Diversity

View more presentations from Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.

This presentation, compiled by Kristen Purcell, from the Pew Internet Project provides a really great breakdown of the findings from their series of reports that explored the behaviors, values and opinions of the teens and twenty-somethings that make up the Millennial Generation.

This slideshare presentation focuses on how teens connect to the Internet, how they share content and also looks at the rate of mobile web access and usage among teens and young adults.

Learn more about the findings and take the 'How Millennial Are You?' quiz.

Pew Research: The Millennials | Confident. Connected. Open to Change.

This is part of a Pew Research Center series of reports exploring the behaviors, values and opinions of the teens and twenty-somethings that make up the Millennial Generation.

Pew Research: The Millennials | Confident. Connected. Open to Change.

Generations, like people, have personalities, and Millennials – the teens and twenty-somethings currently making the passage into adulthood – have begun to forge theirs: confident, self-expressive, liberal, upbeat and receptive to new ideas and ways of living.

Learn more about the findings and take the 'How Millennial Are You?' quiz.

Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media

Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out was written as a collaborative effort by members of the Digital Youth Project, a three-year research effort funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and conducted at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Southern California.

Conventional wisdom about young people’s use of digital technology often equates generational identity with technology identity: today’s teens seem constantly plugged in to video games, social networks sites, and text messaging. Yet there is little actual research that investigates the intricate dynamics of youth’s social and recreational use of digital media.

Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media

Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out fills this gap, reporting on an ambitious three-year ethnographic investigation into how young people are living and learning with new media in varied settings-at home, in after school programs, and in online spaces.

This project was one of many funded by the MacArthur Foundation to explore digital media and learning. New projects in this area are being aggregated through the Digital Media and Learning Hub.

Kaiser Family Foundation: Daily Entertainment Media Use Among Teens Up Dramatically From 5 Years Ago

Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds is the third in a series of large-scale, nationally representative surveys by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) about young people's media use.

It includes data from all three waves of the study (1999, 2004, and 2009), and is among the largest and most comprehensive publicly available sources of information about media use among American youth.

“The amount of time young people spend with media has grown to where it’s even more than a full-time work week,” said Drew Altman, Ph.D., President and CEO of the Kaiser Family Foundation. “When children are spending this much time doing anything, we need to understand how it’s affecting them – for good and bad.”

The Kaiser Family Foundation found that with technology allowing nearly 24-hour media access as children and teens go about their daily lives, the amount of time young people spend with entertainment media has risen dramatically, especially among minority youth.

Mobile media driving increased consumption.  

• The increase in media use is driven in large part by ready access to mobile devices like cell phones and iPods.

• Over the past five years, there has been a huge increase in ownership among 8- to 18-year-olds: from 39% to 66% for cell phones, and from 18% to 76% for iPods and other MP3 players.

• During this period, cell phones and iPods have become true multi-media devices: in fact, young people now spend more time listening to music, playing games, and watching TV on their cell phones (a total of :49 daily) than they spend talking on them (:33).

Parents and media rules.  

• Only about three in ten young people say they have rules about how much time they can spend watching TV (28%) or playing video games (30%), and 36% say the same about using the computer.

• But when parents do set limits, children spend less time with media: those with any media rules consume nearly 3 hours less media per day (2:52) than those with no rules.

Heavy media users report getting lower grades. 

• While the study cannot establish a cause and effect relationship between media use and grades, there are differences between heavy and light media users in this regard.

• About half (47%) of heavy media users say they usually get fair or poor grades (mostly Cs or lower), compared to about a quarter (23%) of light users.  These differences may or may not be influenced by their media use patterns.
  

• Heavy users are the 21% of young people who consume more than 16 hours of media a day, and light users are the 17% of young people who consume less than 3 hours of media a day.

Black and Hispanic children spend far more time with media than White children do.

• There are substantial differences in children’s media use between members of various ethnic and racial groups.  Black and Hispanic children consume nearly 4½ hours more media daily (13:00 of total media exposure for Hispanics, 12:59 for Blacks, and 8:36 for Whites). 
  

• Some of the largest differences are in TV viewing: Black children spend nearly 6 hours and Hispanics just under 5½ hours, compared to roughly 3½ hours a day for White youth.  The only medium where there is no significant difference between these three groups is print.
  

• Differences by race/ethnicity remain even after controlling for other factors such as age, parents’ education, and single vs. two-parent homes. 
  

• The racial disparity in media use has grown substantially over the past five years: for example, the gap between White and Black youth was just over two hours (2:12) in 2004, and has grown to more than four hours today (4:23).

Big changes in TV. 

• For the first time over the course of the study, the amount of time spent watching regularly-scheduled TV declined, by 25 minutes a day (from 2004 to 2009).
  

• The many new ways to watch TV–on the Internet, cell phones, and iPods–actually led to an increase in total TV consumption from 3:51 to 4:29 per day, including :24 of online viewing, :16 on iPods and other MP3 players, and :15 on cell phones.  
  

• All told, 59% (2:39) of young people’s TV-viewing consists of live TV on a TV set, and 41% (1:50) is time-shifted, DVDs, online, or mobile.

• TV remains the dominant type of media content consumed, at 4:29 a day, followed by music/audio at 2:31, computers at 1:29, video games at 1:13, print at :38, and movies at :25 a day.

• About two-thirds (64%) of young people say the TV is usually on during meals, and just under half (45%) say the TV is left on “most of the time” in their home, even if no one is watching. 

• Seven in ten (71%) have a TV in their bedroom, and half (50%) have a console video game player in their room.  Again, children in these TV-centric homes spend far more time watching: 1:30 more a day in homes where the TV is left on most of the time, and an hour more among those with a TV in their room.

Popular new activities like social networking also contribute to increased media use.  

• Top online activities include social networking (:22 a day), playing games (:17), and visiting video sites such as YouTube (:15).  

• Three-quarters (74%) of all 7^th-12^th graders say they have a profile on a social networking site.

High levels of media & multitasking.

• High levels of media multitasking also contribute to the large amount of media young people consume each day.  

• About 4 in 10 7^th-12^th graders say they use another medium “most” of the time they’re listening to music (43%), using a computer (40%), or watching TV (39%).

• Time spent with every medium other than movies and print increased over the past five years: :47 a day increase for music/audio, :38 for TV content, :27 for computers, and :24 for video games.

Related: Video > Teens Share How They Consume Entertainment Media

Video: Teens Share How They Consume Digital Media & TV

Generation M²: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds is the third in a series of large-scale, nationally representative surveys by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) about young people's media use.

It includes data from all three waves of the study (1999, 2004, and 2009), and is among the largest and most comprehensive publicly available sources of information about media use among American youth.

This video explores the powerful force that media can be in the lives of teens and tweens. The three young people who are profiled explain what types of media they use—such as smart phones, computers, TV, video games—how much time they spend with media and what impact it has on their lives.

Related: Daily Entertainment Media Use Among Teens Up Dramatically From 5 Years Ago 

Trend Watch: Young Listeners Tune Out Radio

via www.boston.com

While its viability hasn’t yet reached endangered species status, music radio does face many of the same challenges other mass media - including newspapers, magazines, and network television - are up against.

New technologies and delivery options, more choices tailored to individual consumers, fragmented audiences that can find music they enjoy while bypassing glib-talking DJs and annoying commercials - all are factors driving programmers and station owners to retool themselves for the digital media age.

Related: For Gen Y, Music is Oxygen

Razorfish FEED Report: Meet the 'Connected Consumer'

How do consumers engage with brands in an increasingly digital world? That's the fundamental question Razorfish set out to answer with this year's Digital Brand Experience FEED report.

Sorta Related: PBS > Frontline > The Persuaders > Interview: Douglas Atkin

Disney's 'Prep & Landing' Transmedia Strategy

Prep & Landing is ABC's first television special produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios. The half-hour holiday special reveals the never-before-told tale of an elite unit of Elves known as Prep & Landing.

Every Christmas Eve, this high-tech organization ensures that homes around the world are properly prepared for a visit from the Big Guy (aka "Santa").

ABC/Disney have rolled out an impressive multiplatform campaign featuring Prep & Landing themed content, holiday crafts and activities on both Disney.com and DisneyFamily.com. In addition, they have a new Prep & Landing mobile gaming app available exclusively for iPhone and iPod Touch. 

Disney.com is the online command center for exclusive digital content including:

• The full-length Disney Prep & Landing special can be streamed online at Disney.com;

• Exclusive Disney.com original short video “Tiny’s Adventure”;

• Kringle Academy online game, where players can train to become part of the Prep & Landing team;

• Digital toys and downloadable artwork;

• North Pole web cam;

• Prep & Landing Photo Mashup.

DisneyFamily.com is offering exclusive Disney Prep & Landing activities, including:

• Do-It-Yourself Prep & Landing booklet, offering kids a guide to prep their house for Santa’s arrival;

• A printable village play set so kids can dream up their own adventures for Wayne and Lanny;

• Printable 3-D versions of  the Disney Prep & Landing elves;

• Dozens of different holiday crafts and printable activities, including a Gingerbread man decoder, ornaments, and even an elf-size door craft so kids without a fireplace can make sure Wayne and Lanny inspect their home.

Prep & Landing Mobile App

• iPhone and iPod Touch users can download a new Disney Prep & Landing game featuring three mini-games and other content based on the television special;

• Players take on the role of Lanny, an elf in training, who takes on the various challenges and obstacles experienced at Kringle Academy;

• With the help of fellow rookie Wayne, Lanny’s goal is to finish the last three exams, graduate from the Academy and become part of the elite group of elves who prepare houses for Santa’s arrival. Cost: $.99

Prep & Landing Facebook Page

Disney has also launched an official Prep & Landing Facebook page featuring:

• An online hub for fans to connect with other Prep & Landing fans;

• A behind the scenes video featuring with the cast as they introduce Disney's first animated television special made exclusively for ABC;

• Discussion message board, photos, events & online community features.

Teen Panel: Lady Gaga, Jamie Foxx Songs 'Unhealthy'

An initiative to encourage healthy teen relationships says songs by Jamie Foxx and Lady Gaga are the musical equivalent of junk food.

A teen panel working with the Boston Public Health Commission has determined that their songs are among the top 10 with "unhealthy relationship ingredients."

On average, American youth listen to music from 1.5 to 2.5 hours per day, according to the American Academy of Pediatricians (AAP).

The AAP found that listening to explicit music lyrics – with references to drugs, sex, or violence - can affect schoolwork, social interactions, and produce significant changes in mood and behavior.

The commission released its list based on a "nutrition label" rating popular songs on healthy relationship themes.

The "Sound Relationships Nutrition Label" (pdf) was developed by 14 teens after they attended a seven-week commission-sponsored institute on healthy relationship promotion and teen dating violence prevention.

During the seven-week program, teens were also taught to evaluate music based on themes of power, control, equality and gender roles. The teens then developed their list after analyzing songs from Billboard's "Hot 100" chart.

via www.usatoday.com

Teens, TV & TV 2.0

If you believe everything you read, you’ll know that teens aren’t watching TV anymore. They are all watching online videos, downloading movies and file sharing the newest episode of Gossip Girl. Broadcast TV is dead to them.

The Battle For Teens Attention - TV vs. Online

View more presentations from threebillion.

The reality is probably a little less palatable. Teens are watching more TV than they ever have. They are also spending more and more of their daily lives online. We are all aware of teens ability to multi-task, but here we are talking about Media-Meshing.

Teens are able to consume more than two media at any one time. The best bit for us is that they cross-reference one with another. TV will deliver the scale, online delivers the immersion. It’s a beautiful thing. The point is simple, neither TV or the Internet are silos, they are intimately woven together. (via ThreeBillion)

Weekly Wrap: Bing Rocket Contest, School Bake Sale Ban, iPhone & Teens, Brands, Content & Youth, Mobile Augmented Reality, Tween Summit Wrap Up, South African Youth Trends & More!

Interest in iPhone High as iPod & iTunes Dominate Teen Market: The of the 18th bi-annual Piper Jaffray teen survey shows that Apple's share among teen consumers continues to grow. Apple's smallest market among teens -- the iPhone -- is poised to greatly expand. While 15 percent of those surveyed currently own an iPhone, 22 percent intend to purchase one in the next six months. [Apple Insider]

Brands Must Accept Young People Expect Control Over Online Content: A lot of marketers are really just wrapping up the old-fashioned method of control and broadcast and making it look young. What teens want is to be given something and allowed to do anything with it, which is particularly hard for corporate marketers to grasp. [New Media Age]

Mobile Augmented Reality Booming in Australia: There’s some momentum building in the mobile-based augmented reality space in Oz. [TechNation Australia]

2009 Tween National Summit Wrap Up: Amy Jussel and Debra Moffitt (aka @pinklockermom) have put together a great round up of the first ever National Tween Summit to see what’s on the minds of preteen girls. Lot's of great info and insight here folks! [ShapingYouth]

Do Good!: Nominate Mr. Youth for Best Social Media Agency in Mashable's 2009 Open Web Awards!

Pepsi, Stay The Hell Away From My Daughter (and my niece too!): Any sweet-talking kid who thinks he will outsmart this girl with a stupid iPhone app could find himself on the mean end of a double-sided axe. [Mobile Insider]

Social Media as Content Gateway: In a nutshell, there is a segment of the online population that uses social media as a core navigation and information discovery tool — roughly 18 percent of users see it as core to finding new information. While still a smaller percentage than those who use search engines or portals like Yahoo! or MSN, it is a significant figure. [Nielsen Wire]

Laptop for Every Student in Uruguay: This is not simply the handing out of laptops or an education programme. It is a programme which seeks to reduce the gap between the digital world and the world of knowledge. Hat tip @SarahNewton [BBC] [Gen Y Guide]

Schools 'Ban' Bake Sales: Say What?!: The New York City Board of Education has implemented a new policy banning bake sales in all of their schools. Well, mostly. [MomLogic]

Bing Launches 10,000 Rockets: Bing is asking 10,000 students to submit the rocket design of the future. They’re assembling a pretty cool panel of scientists from across the nation to help them judge which of these designs best exemplifies how space travel might evolve. [Bing]

Twitter Adds 100 Million Potential New Users: Twitter, in an extensive announcement detailing its vision for making a global impact, announced that it had secured an SMS deal with India’s largest mobile operator, Bharti Airtel. This opens the service to 110 million new people can tweet via SMS, all from the second-most populous nation in the world. [Mashable]

Speed Round: Vodafone has a parents' guide to help you protect your family on mobile phones, Instant Grass has a new report on South African youth trends, Josh Shipp kicked off a new contest to win 1 of 5 FREE COPIES of "Josh in a box" and a $500 scholarship, UK-based Indie Screenings partners with film creators to allow anyone to buy a license to screen their films, several cult shows get a boost from recorded viewing and finally......Yo Television, Meet Twitter! [Vodafone] [Instant Grass] [Josh Shipp] [Indie Screenings] [The Wrap]

Weekly Wrap: Augmented Reality 101, Social Gaming Monetization, Gossip Girl vs. NYU, Facebook Bullies, Media Literacy Resources, DARE the Movie & More!

Explaining the Hype Around Augmented Reality: Tech circles are abuzz about augmented reality and the future of mobile utility and marketing. AR, as it's called, marries real-time video and digital information. On phones, it uses GPS coordinates and the mobile camera to activate additional text, photos or hyperlinks relevant to a location. [Ad Age]

Gossip Girl Makes NYU Look Like a State School: All in all, NYU officially owns Gossip Girl, and the show will now only drive up the rate of bratty midwestern teens lusting after an NYU degree because they think it means glitz and glamour instead of $200,000 of debt. [NYU Local]

How age impacts social-gaming monetization: New data released by Gambit, a micro-transaction platform provider, illustrates the complexity of both customer targeting and analyzing micro-transaction buying patterns. The major takeaway: older players seem like a good target market until you dig in to find out that they don't spend a whole lot. [CNET]

Social Sites & Video Games Can Raise IQ: After two months in the program, a group of "slow-learning" students aged 11-14 in the Durham area "saw 10 point improvements in IQ, literacy, and numeracy tests," and some who were at the bottom of their class at the beginning finished the program near the top, according to The Telegraph. [NetFamilyNews]

A Virtual Revolution is Brewing for Colleges: Undergraduate education is on the verge of a radical reordering. Colleges, like newspapers, will be torn apart by new ways of sharing information enabled by the Internet. The business model that sustained private U.S. colleges cannot survive. [Washington Post]

Tweet O' The Week: "Zombie community leader angrily denies Twitter reports of zombie attacks during the #SydneyDustStorm". via @darrylmason

Americans Serious About Casual Game Play: Solitaire may be as sticky as World of Warcraft. While users of casual electronic games (card games, puzzles, etc.) spend less time per session playing them than those playing non-casual games (role playing games, shooter games, etc.) they are just as likely to return to them months later. Read the Executive Summary. [Nielsen Wire]

Back to school with RIAA-funded copyright curriculum: With a new school year in full swing, Ars takes a look at the RIAA’s newly updated copyright curriculum. Your kids could be learning from it—so what does it say? (This is a total #FAIL) [ArsTechnia]

E-Reader Wars Heating Up: We believe that Apple will be in an excellent position to capture these younger customers due to its overwhelming success in capturing this market with their IPod and other products. Not only is Apple a Generation Y (and to some extent Gen. X) brand of choice, but many of these younger potential e-readers will be disdainful of Amazon’s proprietary, or “closed,” format (thanks Ypulse!). Also related: A Kindle in Every Backpack. [Seeking Alpha] [Barking Robot]

MySpace Beats Facebook with Twitter Sync: MySpace began rolling out new functionality today that allows users to sync their MySpace status updates with a Twitter feed. [HypeBot]

Speed Round: The DARE movie trailer debuts on Access Hollywood, BullyingUK offers tips for teens being bullied on Facebook, stats on mobile phone coupon usage in Japan, there's a new version of the Journalists Guide to to Multimedia Proficiency, media literacy tips for parents from Knowledge Essentials, parents & school leaders who are uneasy about youth and online spaces really need to listen to danah boyd (mp3) and finally....which augmented reality start-ups are most ready for market?