From Digital divides to particpation gaps: ”In years past the great fear was that the digital divide would leave black and Latino youth disconnected from the social, educational, and civic opportunities the Internet affords. However, some of the most urgent questions today are less about access and more about the context and quality of engagement. Specifically, how do race, class, gender, and geography influence the digital media practices of young people? Even as a growing diversity of young people adopts digital media technologies, not all digital media ecologies are equal… Investigations of the digital lives of black and Latino youth must focus less on the access gap and more on the “participation gap.” Whereas the former defines the issues of technology and social inequality largely as a matter of access to computers and the Internet, the latter considers the different skills, competencies, knowledge, practices, and forms of capital that different populations bring to their engagement with networked media.”

The influence of hip hop in digital media culture: “The origins of hip-hop bear a striking resemblance to the participatory norms and practices of early 21stcentury digital media culture. Some of the most iconic creative practices associated with early hip-hop—aerosol art (graffiti) and turntablism—reflect a serious social and creative investment in technology for the expression of identity and community. Early hip how was interest based, peer driven, and propelled by a rich informal learning ecology…[T]he technological aspirations of black and Latino youth are long-standing.  Nowhere is this more evident than in the context of hip-hop culture… Hip-hop culture is the dominant medium through which black and Latino teens construct their digital identities, master unique online linguistic practices, assemble social ties, and navigate their interest in pop music, videos, fashion, sports, and civic life.”

Black males and digital media. “The digital media identities, performances, and self-creation practices of young black men–how they navigate the popular culture landscape to gain recognition and prestige–is based largely on the desire to gain respect from their male peers. This bid for respectability is visible across the many platforms that converge in the use of sites like MySpace and Facebook, including music, video, photos, animation, wall posts, and status updates…The digital media practices and identities of young black men reflect the extent to which they covet the fantasies of fame, wealth, and status that color the most popular expressions of black masculinity in the production of corporate hip-hop. In this context content creation and authorship with digital media develop culturally specific notions of authenticity, social currency, and cultural capital within a distinct peer community.”

Creating and critiquing with digital media.  “In addition to observing them creating with digital media, my research has also observed black and Latino youth critiquing with digital media…These are not necessarily explicitly organized acts of civic engagement but rather casual reflections, content, and modes of expression that broaden the scope of youth digital media practices.  Whereas friendship-driven genres reflect how digital media are used to negotiate the inward-looking world of peer cultures, the civic-oriented genres illuminate some of the distinct ways in which digital media are used to look outward and critically at the world… By bringing distinct cultural sensibilities, social critiques, and lived experiences to their engagement with digital media, black and Latino youth are not only remaking the digital divide; they are also expanding the genres of participation that marks young people’s engagement with digital media.”

The mobile phone. ”For Latino and African American youth the mobile phone has become an alternative gateway to the kinds of digital media activities they prefer—social networking, status updates, sharing photos, and consuming media like games, music, and video. But is this path to the online world limited?  While mobile phones can be a tool for creativity, learning, and civic engagement, credible concerns have been raised that teens who are restricted to mobile phones for home internet use may also be restricted to media ecologies and social networks that rarely, if ever, afford access to these kinds of experiences…The issue is not whether rich or meaningful mobile learning ecologies will develop…they already exist.  Rather, the real question is, will these mobile leaning ecologies be distributed in ways that close or maintain America’s learning divide?”

Digital Media, Literacy and the Achievement Gap.  ”Even as black and Latino youth have built a robust informal media ecology, a debate has emerged: To what extent does their participation in digital media culture enhance learning outcomes such as motivation, grit, and academic success while also encouraging the development of hybrid learner identities such as writers, designers, journalists, scientists, researchers, and teachers? And what evidence exists that Latino and African-American engagement with media technology produces behaviors and learning outcomes that might impact the academic achievement gap?… Even as digital and mobile media platforms are available in a greater diversity of households, the different cultural environments in which young people use technology leads to different intensities of engagement and, ultimately, to different learning outcomes.”

You can read Digital Divides: Navigating the Digital Edge, here.

Education administrators block social media because they believe it threatens the personal and emotional safety of their students. Or they believe that social media is a distraction that diminishes student engagement and the quality of the learning experience.

Schools also block social media to prevent students from accessing inappropriate content.  I have often wondered what are schools really blocking when they block social media. Working in a high school this year has given me added perspective.

In one class my graduate assistant and I are working with a teacher in a Technology Applications class.  Our goal is to reinvent the classroom and, more important, the learning that takes place. We structured the learning to be autonomous, self-directed, creative, collaborative, and networked.   We decided to let the student teams pick which digital media project they wanted to pursue.  Some students elected to team together to produce a series of Public Service Announcements (PSAs) that target teens. These students liked the idea of using digital media to tell compelling stories about the challenges of teen life.  Other students wanted to produce short narratives.  They were excited about creating worlds, characters, and narrative dilemmas that allowed their artistic identities to flourish.

In one of our first activities we selected a sample of teen produced PSAs and narrative shorts for the students to study.  We asked them to view and critique the different styles, aesthetics, narrative strategies, and technical approaches to digital media storytelling.  The teacher posted the links to the videos online and provided the instructions.  Suddenly one student raised her hand.  She could not access some of the videos.  Another student raised her hand.  She was having the same problem.  At least two of the videos that we asked them to critique were posted to YouTube.  The teacher and I had overlooked the fact that YouTube was blocked. A few students used proxy servers to access the videos, a typical workaround in this school.  As we struggled to figure out a way to proceed with the learning activity it was clear that we needed to recalibrate the design of the class.

We faced a similar challenge in a game design class that we are working with. Some of the students were intrigued by the prospects of using a Facebook poll to conduct research to build ‘user personas’ of their peers.  We thought that the poll would be useful in teaching them some of the principles of human-centered design and also expand their social media repertoire. But because Facebook is blocked the poll could only be conducted outside of school.  This prevented us from working with them in the classroom.  It also posed a problem for some of the students who either lacked access to the internet at home or have to share computers with parents and siblings.

We are learning a lot about how young people from this community, which has been hit especially hard by the recession and the growing wealth gap in the United States, are managing their participation in the digital world.  The old theories about the digital divide—the access narrative—only explain a small part of what is happening in edge communities.

The real issue, of course, is not social media but learning.  Specifically, the fact that our schools are disconnected from young learners and how their learning practices are evolving.  The decision to block social media is inconsistent with how students use social media as a powerful node in their learning network.  Can social media be a distraction in the classroom?  Absolutely.  Will some students access questionable content if given the opportunity?  Yes.  But many students use social media to enhance their learning, expand the reach of the classroom, find the things that they ‘need to know,’ and fashion their own personal learning networks.  We have met students who have used YouTube to learn how to play a musical instrument—a not so insignificant fact for students whose  families can not afford private music lessons.   We have seen students use YouTube to help them pursue an interest in building their own gaming computer or share a multi-media project that they developed.   Last summer I wrote about students from this same school and how they created a dynamic learning community to support their interest in creating games.  Many of them shared YouTube videos with each other in order to learn how to use the game authoring software, GameSalad.  (Because it was a summer program, the students and their teacher successfully lobbied to have YouTube unblocked).

A key part of the work that we are doing with students reaches beyond the typical new media competencies such as computer, information, and digital literacy.   The teacher believes that network literacy is also crucial.  That is, teaching students what Henry Jenkins explains is, “the ability to effectively tap social networks to disperse ones’ own ideas and media products.”  Cathy Davidson’s students at Duke made a case for network literacy, that is, “using online sources to network, knowledge-outreach, publicize content, collaborate and innovate.”  A number of these students are creators and makers.  They design blogs, websites, games, and graphic art. By blocking social media schools are also blocking the opportunity:

1)    to teach students about the inventive and powerful ways that communities around the world are using social media

2) for students and teachers to experience the educational potential of social media together

3)    for students to distribute their work with the larger world

4)    for students to reimagine their creative and civic identities in the age of networked media

In the not so distant future the notion that schools should block social media will become difficult to defend.  Before that happens schools will have to reimagine their mission in the lives of young learners, the communities that they serve, and the extraordinary possibilities of networked media and networked literacy.

Part of our research is designed to explore the opportunities for and influence of “connected learning” in the lives of teens.  What is connected learning?  It is a concept that the Connected Learning Research Network, a group of researchers supported by the MacArthur Foundation, will be working to develop and refine. Broadly speaking, connected learning refers to the increasingly complex ways in which young people’s learning ecologies are evolving.  It is the notion that in addition to happening anytime and anywhere learning happens across the many different networks that teens’ navigate.  School is an obvious node in a young learner’s network.  But school represents only one node among many others which includes after school sites, extracurricular activities, online communities, libraries, family, and peer communities just to name a few.  When the lines that distinguish each of these is blurred and learning happens fluidly across the different nodes we believe that connected learning–learning that is social, mobile, engaged, efficacious, student-driven, adult supported, or civic-oriented—is happening.   One obvious example of connected learning involves students who are able to connect their out of school or informal learning with the learning activities that are situated in formal learning spaces, namely schools.

A number of questions frame our examination of these learning practices: What are the factors that lead to connected learning?  Are some youth more likely than others to experience connected learning?’  How do various social indicators like race, ethnicity, class, gender, and academic orientation influence the likelihood of connected learning occurring?  How can schools encourage connected learning? What is the value of creating opportunities for a greater diversity of young people to experience connected learning?

The Site

The high school that we are working with is an incredibly diverse environment. The school is a majority-minority site with whites making up about twelve percent of the overall student population.  More than twelve percent of students are designated as English Language Learners.  There is some degree of economic diversity though more than half, 55%, of the students are designated as low-income.  In many respects the school’s demographics reflect the population shifts that are transforming the eighteen year old and younger population in the United States; specifically, the degree to which U.S. children are more racially and ethnically diverse than ever before.

What are we learning about connected learning in this community?

Evidence of Connected Learning 

There will be more extensive data collection, analysis, and formal reporting to come but we are beginning to see evidence that connected learning is happening among our students and in a school that is struggling to keep students academically engaged and prepared for meaningful participation in a 21^st century information-oriented economy. Some of the early evidence suggest that young people in the social and economic margins are actively building pathways for connected learning for a variety of reasons: to supplement what they view as poorly stimulating classroom experiences; to create rich and rewarding peer and social networks; to move into interest-driven offline and online communities; to develop their digital media production skills in areas such as graphic arts, game design, video, and music production; to foster the development of the civic self; and to develop the skills and competencies that they believe hold the key to greater social and economic mobility.  Not all of the students that we have met fit this description but those distinctions make this community especially fascinating.  Why is that some are developing an orientation toward connected learning and others are not?

In just a short period of time we have discovered that young people who are grappling with the hidden and not so hidden injuries of race, ethnicity, class, and language barriers are practicing very distinct notions of connected learning for reasons and in contexts that researchers currently have not explored with much rigor.  Doing so will help provide data and insight to those concerned about the learning divides that are contributing to historic social, educational, and economic inequalities.  We believe the answers to these and other questions can help address the inequities that continue to shape the lives of the young and the digital.

During my visit I had the opportunity to tour a school in Ituzaingo, a Buenos Aires municipality.  As we entered the school I was struck by how education or at least the model of what a school looks and feels like in Argentina was strikingly similar to the United States.  For example, students:  are organized by age, attend class for a fixed period of time during the week, and sit in classrooms that are arranged in orderly rows facing an instructor located at the head of the classroom.

The school is populated by students from low-income households. In Argentina many students from poor communities drop out before completing secondary school.  The Director of the school explained that about thirty percent of the students entering the 10^th grade in her school will drop out.  If a student makes it past 10^th grade the odds of continuing through the twelfth grade improve. Many of the students in this school will not complete all of the requirements to earn their secondary degree.  In some cases they will abandon school because of a loss of interest. Others will cut their education short in order to enter the workforce to help support their families.  Only about five percent of the students will finish college.

When I asked the Director how she hoped Conectar Igualdad would impact her school she did not hesitate.  Speaking through a translator she explained that the availability of the netbooks and the chance to gain a least some basic computer literacy—the use of spreadsheets, word processing—would convince some students to continue their education.  In fact, many of the students persuaded their parents to attend this school precisely because the netbooks would be available.  Conectar Igualdad has promised to give each student who finishes school a netbook.  The opportunity to connect learning to young people’s digital lives is often regarded as a source of motivation to further develop a learner identity. Like many other parts of the world some of the most economically disadvantaged communities in Argentina view technology as essential to getting a quality education.

What is the future of one-to-one computing in Argentina’s schools? What the architects of Conectar Igualdad are beginning to realize is that as difficult as it has been to get computers into the hands of students the most daunting challenge lies ahead: developing a culture and a curriculum that promotes digital literacy that is authentic and empowering.  Here are three challenges that Argentina and many other nations, including the United States, face in the drive to build a more equitable digital future.

1. Teacher Support and Development. In the school that I visited there is still resistance among some teachers to embrace the newly distributed netbooks.  Many teachers are simply not convinced that the integration of networked media into the classroom is necessary.  Similar to other countries Argentina has to deal with the generational divide—the gap between adult engagement with digital media and student participation in digital media culture.  In some respects this represent a genuine cultural and behavioral disconnect between teachers and students.  In other cases it illustrates a skills gap that limits the ability of teachers to fully exploit the learning opportunities that digital media affords. Successful implementation of a one-to-one computing model certainly requires teacher investment and involvement but it also requires teacher training and development.  Building 21^st century school also demands that we develop 21^st century teachers, that is, teachers who integrate technology into the classroom in ways that are purposeful and capable of scaffolding powerful learning experiences.

2. Education, Cultural Capital, and Social Inequality.  School is only one node in a young person’s learning network.  Research consistently shows that students who live in homes and communities that provide educational resources such as books, libraries, museums, and opportunities for civic engagement accrue important learning advantages.  The literacy environment for many of the students that I met in Argentina does not easily support the opportunities to engage networked media as makers rather than consumers of information.  According to the Director, eighty percent of the students in the school had never owned a computer.  The students did not take their netbooks home, in part, because they do not have internet access at home.  Conditions like these further diminish their opportunity to cultivate digital literacies informally and in the peer-to-peer learning ecologies that encourage exploration and experimentation.  Transforming schools and the learning that happens there is not simply about what happens in between the four walls of the school building.  It is also about what happens in the larger social ecology that kids navigate and the extent to which other nodes in their network support learning across multiple sites, both formally and informally.

3.  Transforming schooling and literacy in edge communities.  The ultimate challenge is building a curriculum that develops and realizes a broader vision and mission for literacy in edge communities.  The school I toured focuses on lower-order computing skills, that is, teaching students to use some of the most basic applications available on their notebooks.  But beyond this basic literacy is the need to support a vision that defines digital literacy as a life skill that is connected to the everyday lives and situations of students and their families and communities.  Call it ‘design literacy,’ that is, the capacity to engage in higher-order thinking, critical thinking, and real-world problem solving.  Whereas ‘tools literacy’ is foundational, ‘design literacy’ is transformational.

Argentina is one country among many in South America that is mobilizing a renewed commitment to educating young people.  While their notion of digital literacy must certainly evolve it is refreshing to see countries that are investing in the future by funding new educational initiatives today.

At one point we began to talk about how the current economic crisis is impacting public education.  At a time when schools, especially low-performing schools, need to be embracing the opportunities that new technologies afford we see historic budget cuts happening all across the nation.  There are genuine fears that an already struggling public school system will be degraded even further by dramatic cuts that include massive teacher layoffs, higher student to teacher ratios in the classroom, and  a retreat from innovative learning opportunities.

When you think about the future of students who live in poor and working class households the retreat from public education raises a number of serious questions about their preparation for a world that will demand higher-order thinking skills, technological fluency, and, quite simply, the ability to (re)learn. What is at stake?  Just as the importance of providing learning activities that enrich digital media literacies is increasing the ability of public schools to deliver those learning opportunities is decreasing.

In my conversation with Tina, I explained the dilemma  this way.  ”My concern is that as schools are now struggling with budget cuts, digital media and digital literacy is looked as a luxury as opposed to a necessity.”  I added, “I understand the enormous pressure that teachers and administrators are under, especially in the public school system. But we need to build a more compelling narrative that digital literacy is no longer a luxury but a necessity.”

Here is the full post, “For At-Risk Youth, is Learning Digital Media a Luxury?”

*  Mind/Shift re-posted my piece that considers the potential for mobile media to close the learning divides that exist between low and middle income students, “Ignore the Potential of Mobile Learning, Risk Widening the Digital Divide.“

Earlier this week National Public Radio’s “Tell Me More” aired a conversation that I shared with Tony Cox about the digital divide. We talked about the ways in which the digital divide is evolving and how the shifting digital media terrain, especially the steady adoption of technology by a growing diversity of young people, is redefining how we think about issues related to technology, diversity, and equity.

I am exploring these issues in a series of new projects that I will be reporting on over the next year.  The projects are designed to examine the digital media lives of diverse young people and how, among other things, their adoption of media technologies are redefining what it means to be a young learner or citizen.

After I explained that the emerging challenges around digital media are more about quality of engagement, particpation, and expanding the pathways to digital media literacy among a greater diversity of young people, Tony asked me, “What can be done to get more people involved in myriad ways of using the Internet and digital media?”  Here is my response:

WATKINS: It seems to me that the richest and most promising attempts to do this are really kind of happening in the informal learning spaces. So they’re happening in after-school programs, they’re happening in the summer camps, summer workshops, which is interesting and raises a whole other set of questions about why schools aren’t able to provide these kinds of opportunities.

But I think it’s happening right through community, technology leaders. I think it’s happening through social entrepreneurs who have decided, right, that these issues are so important that the digital divide today is really about digital literacy, right, and how do we begin to create environments, create spaces that encourage and support kids’ ability to develop the kinds of digital media skills that they will need in the 21st century in what I call kind of islands of kind of innovation, right?

It’s happening, you know, maybe in a couple places, you know, here or there. I’m seeing it in Washington, D.C. I’m seeing it in Oakland, here in Austin, in Chicago. I mean it’s happening in a variety of places, but it doesn’t seem to be, right, a kind of cohesive or kind of coherent effort. But one that’s kind of scattered across different communities driven primarily by visionaries, driven primarily by social entrepreneurs who have decided that it is a space that they want to step into, a space that, again, schools have been inadequate in servicing.

You can read or listen to our entire conversation here.

During the conference Justice O’Connor expressed concerns about the poor state of civic education today and the implications for our democratic future.   At one point the  Justice joked, “when you ask students what is the Declaration of Independence, they do not know the answer…and the answer is in the title of the document!”

Like many other challenges that our society will face educating for democracy will have to grapple with the social and technological transitions that are remaking the very fabric of American life.  Notions of civic literacy, that is, what students should know about the American democratic experiment have evolved as a result of various social, political, cultural, and economic pressures.  David Tyack and Larry Cuban write that throughout much of the early 20^th century educators, “tried to transform immigrant newcomers and other “outsiders” into individuals who matched their idealized image of what an ‘American’ should be.” Historically, civic education targeted toward immigrant, non-English speaking, or racially and ethnically diverse students has been designed to construct loyal, obedient, and patriotic citizens.  In the wake of the 1960s and 1970s uprisings around racial and sexual equality civic education—especially issues like who and what topics should be included in civic and history textbooks—began to reflect the push for greater inclusion and diversity in our civic imagination.

While teaching students about the structure and distinct functions of our three branches of government is important the scope of civic education must grapple with the historic shifts that are remaking our nation’s student body.

Some of the most striking trends documented by the 2010 U.S. census are the profound population transitions happening among young Americans.  Since 2000 Latinos, Asians, and immigrants drove nearly all of the population growth in U.S., according to the census.  In California roughly half of the age eighteen and under population is Latino.  Enrollment data from the Texas Education Agency reports that for the first time ever half of the state’s public school population is Latino.  Two of every three public school children in Texas are non-white. Another stunning census finding: for the first time in America’s history fewer than half of three-year-olds are white.  These and other social transitions illuminate how the nation’s student body is changing and why civic education, in order to remain relevant, must evolve too.  As William Frey of The Brookings Institution notes, “these shifts in the racial and ethnic profiles of our child population…present both opportunities and challenges.” This is certainly true in education and raises the questions, what should civic education in U.S. schools look like in an age of social and technological change?

Traditional civic education has required students to memorize basic facts about American government, call it the what, who, and when model for civic literacy.  The primary source of information has been textbooks, a source of literacy that has not always been the most accurate or inclusive.  And while books (in various forms) will certainly continue to play a role in civic education emerging digital media platforms will be key in the effort to engage, invigorate, and create an informed citizenry. The rise of digital media offers a unique opportunity to add a more experiential dimension to civic education.  Digital technologies can, of course, be used to teach kids basic civic facts but they can also serve as an entry point into “doing” civics. This happened in a Minneapolis third grade class that I visited earlier this year.

During my visit I noticed that a student was using iCivics. When I asked her what she was doing it took her a while to respond.  She was too busy playing the game.  In this particular case iCivics was providing a game-based lesson about the rights of individuals to challenge laws or practices that they believed were unfair.  It was an especially appropriate module for the class considering what had happened the previous year.

When I asked the young girl’s teacher, Mr. Sinha*, why he used iCivics to teach his third graders civic education he told me that it was an engaging way to connect kids to the key participatory principles of democracy in a way that was culturally relevant—games—and likely to have impact—experiential learning.  He knew from personal experience that some of his students were weaving some of the lessons they learned from iCivics about democracy, citizenship, and rights into their lives.  One episode that he shared with me was a powerful example of how civic education through digital media can register real and discernible impact in young people’s learning.

While teaching a unit in social studies about Rights and Responsibilities Mr. Sinha was struck by a student claim.  “We have a right to technology in the classroom,” said the third grade student.  When Mr. Sinha challenged the student’s expectation to technology in the classroom he explained that the various tools that they used—laptops, Nintendo DS, voice recorders, digital storytelling programs, online games, etc.—were not legally mandated. In fact, he used his own resources to acquire many of the devices that the students were using in class.  Mr. Sinha saw a teaching moment. “Realizing that such a right was not in the actual law, and knowing that historically, no rights were ever actually acquired or appreciated until they were lost or acquired through a struggle, I proceeded to remove all of the technology in the room soon after he said that,” the third grade teacher told me.  What ensued was a real life lesson about civics.

The students, Mr. Sinha noted, were absolutely incensed with his decision and argued that it interfered with their learning and the goal that he had set for them to end the year at the fifth grade level.  The next day one student introduced a petition against Mr. Sinha.  Where did the idea for this kind of civic engagement come from?  Mr. Sinha believes that it was based on her knowledge from playing iCivics games and other readings they had done in class.  That evening the young girl shared her concerns with her parents and with their help crafted a petition to win back the “right” to have technology in the classroom.

The next day in class other students helped to edit the draft before submitting it to Mr. Sinha.  Confident that he had made his point, the teacher relented and brought back the tools his students had come to expect as part of their learning.  Since integrating social, mobile, and digital media in the classroom he had personally witnessed how technology engaged students and made learning relevant, immersive, and impactful.

Through interactive play, games, and simulation a group of third grade students began to develop a much richer, personal, and communal understanding of civic education and engagement.  Since that experience the students have posted the petition on the class website to make their case that access to technology in the classroom should be a right for all students.  Local reporters and state officials have visited the class and now a local debate about technology and learning is gaining a bit of momentum.

And just think; it all started with a group of third graders playing a game that helped them to reimagine what learning and doing civic education could be.

* All names in this piece are pseudonyms.

In fact, the story of the most successful social media platforms is how they evolve far beyond what their creators initially intended. Facebook, once a place to connect with collegiate friends, is also used to connect to social causes, organizations, and pop culture interests.  In places like Tunisia and Egypt the political elite are blocking access to social media because it has become an alternative media tool for sharing with the world the unrest in those respective countries.  Updating the design features of these platforms so that they remain relevant and flexible enough to matter in people’s lives is a constant challenge not because the creators define the social uses of social media but precisely for the opposite reason–how everyday users adopt and innovate with social media continually redefines their meaning.

What is Social Changes as We Change

The data in our survey offers compelling evidence that Facebook is evolving into a multi-facted platform connecting with nearly every aspect of our social selves.  And while that makes some traditionalists uncomfortable it is a fact of life in the digital age.  What remains to be seen is how users of Facebook will innovate in the face of “network convergence “a reference to what happens when the varied social connections that reflect our varied selves are connected to each other through online social networks. It is a mistake to assume that active engagement with social media means disengagement with offline friends and acquaintances.  In fact, all of the data that we have been collecting over the last six years strongly suggest otherwise.

Even before conducting our study we understood that the use of social media is constantly evolving in relation to several factors including age, education, gender, geography, race and ethnicity. In our earlier work we noticed that teens used social network sites primarily as a destination and opportunity to get away from the controlling gaze of parents, teachers, and other authority figures.  My colleagues Mimi Ito and Heather Horst were part of a MacArthur Foundation funded study a few years ago that found that teens’ use of social media is actually quite layered, complex, and, yes, social.  For most teens social networks are primarily about two things–crafting a social identity and connecting to a peer community.  Despite popular opinion how teenagers use social media is not a predictor of how they will use social media in later years.  In our early research we came across evidence that marked some important transitions in the use of social media after high school.

In our research young adults’ rejection of online social networks as a place to hang out illuminates the social and behavioral changes that accompany the transition from teen to young adulthood.  First, whereas teens, due primarily to age and the school week, face a number of restrictions on their personal mobility, young adults enjoy more personal freedoms and mobility.  Second, young adults also exercise more control over their free time.   Third, unlike teens young adults do not suffer from what sociologist Ray Oldenburg refers to as “the problem of place,” a reference to the steady erosion of informal public life and places for friends to gather socially.  Young adults gather together in all kinds of places including parties, dorm rooms, coffee shops, fitness classes, and bars.

Facebook Photos Define Social Outward Rather Than Downward

At its core our study explores one question: what is social about social media?  Social behavior, as it always does, continues to evolve.  Social media expands our opportunities to engage friends, family, acquaintances, and the world around us.  Several indicators of sociability emerge from our work but I will focus on one–the posting and browsing of pictures.  When we talk with young people (and this increasingly applies to the millions of 35+ users of Facebook) browsing photos consistently emerges as a major part of the Facebook experience. According to Facebook its more than 500 million users worldwide share about 30 billion pieces of content–pictures, web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, etc.–a month.

Turkle observes that, “you can be pro-photo sharing without being convinced that it expands our social lives,” adding, “It’s a way of defining downwards what it means to be social.” Rather than dismiss photo sharing as defining social behavior downward I prefer to think of it as defining social behavior outward.

Not only is the sharing of pictures social– I call it “lifesharing”– but many of the pictures that people post on Facebook often capture activities that are social in nature–friends hanging out together at parties, athletic events, and sharing meals and drinks together. Seventy-six percent of those surveyed in our study say that the photos that they post are of social gatherings with friends.  More than half, 55%, say that the photos that they post are of family-based events.  It’s true, a growing percentage of the pictures shared on Facebook are of family related activities including weddings, vacations, and reunions.

The pictures that users post and what they elect to share tell intriguing stories about who they are and also who they aspire to be.  As I think about our research the posting and browsing of pictures via Facebook is a complex social activity that intersects with many of the current debates about social media in general and Facebook in particular– issues like privacy, publicity, identity, performance, personal expression, narcissism, and prosumption (i.e., people producing and consuming cultural content) just to name a few.

We also have a bit of data on when people are most likely to be on Facebook and our preliminary analysis suggest that it’s usually during the periods they are unlikely to physically be with friends–early in the morning or late during a weekday evening.  (We will need to think more carefully about this as Facebook mobile now means Facebook anytime and anywhere). Pictures spark conversations and fond feelings that can pull a close social circle of friends even closer together or help distant friends and family feel connected even though they may be far away.

I don’t see evidence that Facebook is making us anti-social or that its use is defining social behavior downward.  I do see evidence that users are adopting the platforms features to expand how we express our social selves.

Click this link, “Got Facebook?,” to see our study.

After the event I had a chance to talk with a writer from PC World.  You can read her description of my talk in an article for PC World titled, If You’re Not Networking, You’re Not Social.

When the social and digital media revolution gained momentum at the dawn of the new millennium no one would have predicted that less than a decade later black and Latino youth would be just as engaged as their white, Asian, and more affluent counterparts. Across a number of measures—use of mobile phones and gaming devices, social network sites, and the mobile web—young blacks and Latinos are beginning to outpace their white counterparts.  For years the dominant narrative related to race and technology in the U.S. pivoted around the question of access.  Today, the most urgent questions pivot around participation and more specifically, the quality of digital media engagement among youth in diverse social and economic contexts.

Picture this: in the very near future the population in many of the major metropolitan areas in the U.S. will be significantly shaped by young Latinos and African Americans.  A recent estimate from the 2010 U.S. Census data finds that U.S. Latinos make up nearly 25% of the U.S. population under age twenty.  The median ages for Latinos and African Americans is, respectively, twenty-six and thirty.  This is compared to a median age of thirty-nine among non-Latino whites. Forty-five percent of children younger than five in the U.S. belong to non-white groups. The population that public schools educate in America will reflect these seismic demographic shifts.

Virtually all of those Latino and African American teens will have access to more information and data in their pockets than any brick and mortar school or library currently provides.  Many already hold access to a rich array of information in their hands today.  However, most teens use mobile phones as social, recreational, and entertainment devices.  This is especially true among black and Latino youth who use their mobile phones to watch videos, play games, and listen to music at rates that dwarf their white counterparts.  But what if young people were encouraged to view their mobile phones, cameras, and iPods as learning devices and tools for critical citizenship and engagement in their communities?

This is actually happening in a surging number of community centers, after school programs, and media education initiatives.  These community leaders, technology educators, and social entrepreneurs view kids mobile lives as a starting point to engage, explore, and experiment with the world around them.  The work that Lissa Soep is doing with Youth Radio is a great example of an innovative learning ecology where student interest in media technologies is connected to local challenges.  Unfortunately, learning experiences like these are rare in the schools that most young people attend.

Everyday, a majority of black and Latino youth walk into schools that are not equipped to engage them in any meaningful way.  As one social studies teacher in a school populated by black and Latino students told me, “my colleagues have no idea of how tech savvy these kids are.” In many of the low-performing schools that I have visited mobile is viewed less a learning tool and more as a source of teacher-student conflict.

AP File Photo | ORLIN WAGNER

Mobile phones are treated as contraband to be controlled, policed, and ultimately, confiscated.  This battle around the phone reflects a broader problem in low performing schools: the creation of a classroom environment marked by distrust and hostility.

A consistent finding in ethnographic studies of poor urban schools is the high level of mistrust and misunderstanding between students and their teachers.  Students believe that teachers do not respect them.  Teachers believe that students are often incapable of meaningful learning. Students and teachers lose.  In the age of greater public accountability teachers are often penalized for low student performance.  And in a world where 21^st century skills are vital for meaningful employment the frosty disposition of black and Latino students toward their teachers contributes to a widening achievement gap and soaring drop out rate.

Technology alone will not change what is happening in low-performing schools.  But effective insertion of technology into the classroom might help break the ice that chills the relationship between students and teachers.  Rather than spending their time and energy policing mobile phones what if teachers asked their students to pull out their devices to execute a class assignment.  In a small experiment I conducted a few weeks ago we observed some interesting behaviors.  We were curious to see how a group of ninth and tenth grade boys would respond to a new mobile gaming app that offers information and education related to substance abuse.  Here is an excerpt of how I reported what we observed:

“The introduction of the gaming app via mobile devices transformed the classroom and learning environment that these students inhabit everyday.  Learning became social, communal, collaborative, competitive, engaging, and, in their words, fun.  Students voluntarily stated that a game like this should be incorporated into their health class.  Doing so, the young student noted, would make the class more interesting and more fun.”

My colleague, in a separate brief, also noted how the environment changed once we introduced the mobile devices:

“Immediately, the energy level in the room went up and the emotional intensity increased.   The boys were animated, smiling, laughing, and talking together.   Teams consulted on the best answer to each question, and then either celebrated their correct response or commiserated after their incorrect answers.”

These students had never met us and yet after playing the game sat through a de-briefing session and gave us rich feedback.  Their mood was cooperative and friendly.  Boys that may have generally been disinterested and detached were wide-eyed and vocal. We believe that the devices (and the pizza) helped create a very different environment, one in which learning, dialogue, and engagement occurred naturally.

The challenges facing low performing schools are complex and yet elements of the problem are easily identifiable.  Low performing schools are filled with students who are simply not engaged or interested in learning.  In their eyes school is a place where surveillance, harassment, and disrespect are daily occurrences.  Inserting technology into an environment like this is a multi-faceted experiment involving not only the reinvention of learning but also the transformation of students’ disposition toward their teachers and learning.

My point?  The initial impact of technology in low performing schools may be simply to break the ice between resistant students and reluctant teachers. Until that ice is broken meaningful engagement and learning will never happen.