Learning Conversations

I recently revisited the term ‘bricoleur’ while reading Brown (2000). The metaphor seems most suitable for thinking about the type of new media activities some children are participating in. As well as reading, critiquing and listening to new media, these young people are typically creating, ‘mashing’, publishing and ‘talking around’ personally and culturally meaningful artefacts. In this sense, they become digital ‘bricoleurs’, developing an ability to find something and use it in a new way to build further unique artefacts they value. There are especially high levels of ownership with these media creations, and there is often a strong ‘re-mix’ culture, where young people re-use others’ artefacts and expressions (Hsi 2007). User-friendly and accessible collaboration tools, such as those found in Web2.0 spaces, enable young people to actively participate in tasks, giving them a ‘voice’ and a strong sense of audience as they explore, share and interact with others. Examples can be seen in the growing number of outlets for young people’s digital video creations. For example, their digital videos can be displayed to a wide audience using a variety of new tools (or see here ) or perhaps via local or more global contests.
Brown, J. (2000). Growing up digital: How the web changes work, education, and the ways people learn. Change, March/April, 11-20.
Hsi, S. (2007). Conceptualizing learning from the everyday activities of digital kids.
International Journal of Science Education, 29:12, 1509 – 1529
Image above made available under Creative Commons 2.0 Attribution Licence. Photo avaliable here.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 11:43 am and is filed under K-12 student samples, Video-based demo, e-Learning Literature. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.