Donna-Exposition+Paper+1-Affinity+Spaces

In this digital age, technology is everywhere around us. Parents cannot keep up, Gen X cannot keep up, and certainly our schools cannot keep up. In contrast, today’s youth can and do keep up; in fact, they flourish. It is this fact that has begun to lead some researchers and educators such as Gee to question how and why they flourish in this digital world. Furthermore, Gee and others have begun to reflect upon the manner in which these technologies facilitate learning that fosters 21st century skills necessary for students to thrive in the workplace and beyond. Social networking, for example, has become the place for adolescents to “hang out” (Ito, et. al., 2010). As physical spaces in neighborhoods and malls become less accessible to our youth due to a vast array of elements such as crime or social attitude, adolescents need to find a place to “hang out” (Ibid). Online practices, therefore, have increasingly evolved and attracted adolescents to such domains as Facebook and MySpace. Online practices allow for involvement in a vast array of spaces that run the gamut from social networking sites, to blogs and wikis, photosharing, video games, podcasts, and beyond. These spaces stimulate interaction among people that is based around common interests, opinions, activities, projects, and so forth. Gee identifies these gathering places, organized around shared affiliations, as affinity spaces. In this paper, I will discuss the defining aspects of what Gee identifies as affinity spaces and how these particular spaces are important to learning and the development of 21st century skills in our schools, and in the workplace. As Gee analyzes learning within our schools, he identifies pedagogical practices, for the most part, as promoting learning in isolation. For example, expecting students to memorize scientific facts or spelling words for a test without linking the information to real world experiences does nothing to cultivate learning. Memorizing is not learning, does not result in retention, and certainly does not develop into any useful skill, although it can be argued that memorization strengthens memory recall skills when linked to specific strategies such as mnemonics. Gee’s work embraces the view that learning must be developed through the use of tools, environments, and cultural practices that are familiar and meaningful to the participants. He professes, “Human learning is not just a matter of what goes on inside people’s heads but is fully embedded in (situated within) a material, social, and cultural world” (2007, p. 9). In terms of this material, social, and cultural world, Jenkins postulates, our world has shifted from one of a spectator culture to that of a participatory culture. Through online practices and the easy access of web 2.0 tools, the public now has the forum at their disposal to reach large groups of people, thus enlightening and affecting change. We live in a world, more to the point, our youth live in a world where they are globally connected 24/7, and where the public has the ability to take media into their own hands by experimenting, responding, and collaborating. “The internet has [also] fostered a new culture of sharing, one in which content is freely contributed and distributed with few restrictions or costs” (Brown & Adler, 2008). Hurricane Katrina and the current BP oil crisis provide excellent examples of occurrences whereby media, as a publically controlled domain, has been able to portray aspects of these events in real time and in thousands of contexts, making it possible for others to form opinions, submit commentaries and updates and heed the call to action. Our participatory culture clearly results in a collective intelligence that stimulates participants to become proactive. “We are moving away from a world in which some produce and many consume media, toward one in which everyone has a more active stake in the culture that is produced” (Jenkins, 2006, p. 11). It is within this participatory culture, that gathering places, affinity spaces, exist and are situated around specific interests, social affiliations, viewpoints and so forth. For example, anime, flickr, video gaming, and fanfiction each constitute an affinity space where common identities emerge. Affinity spaces can exist long-term based on their point of affiliation but they can also be short-term as they arise based around an issue or affiliation that has a finite life. The Kerry presidential election or parents with children in the same class might form a short-term affinity group. As the election finishes or the children move on to another grade, the affinity group no longer has relevance, thus participants move on to interact within new affinity spaces. A key component of an affinity space is the aspect of identity. Within an affinity space, a person assumes an identity that is intrinsic to that particular space. For example, an individual who posts stories to fanfiction.net assumes the identity of an author. The individual who blogs in a space centered within the genre of heavy metal music assumes the identity of a music “insider” within this particular genre. In the latter, the identity of a blogger is also assumed, signifying that the participant understands and is in some way involved in heavy metal. I would be remiss at this juncture, however, if I did not reemphasize Gee’s point that an affinity space is defined by a group of people, thus the blogs of an individual that stand alone do not constitute an affinity space. The affinity space exists when it is comprised of a collective group sharing interest, opinions, and affiliations. In both of the aforementioned examples, the participants take on a persona that elicits a perceived identity from other members of that particular affinity group. With that said, again I make mention that identities are rooted in the commonality of affiliation. They are not overtly defined with qualifiers such as education, ability, sexual orientation, gender or race.
 * Affinity Spaces**
 * Affinity Spaces: Learning, The Workforce, And 21st Century Skills**

In order to better understand Gee’s concept of affinity spaces, I will present characteristics and skills as they are developed within the context of learning and the workforce environments. According to Gee, "It is instructive to compare affinity spaces to the sorts of spaces that are typical in schools, which usually do not have the features of affinity spaces. This comparison is particularly important because many young people today have lots of experience with affinity spaces, and thus have the opportunity to compare and contrast their experiences with these to their experiences in classrooms" (2004, p. 83). In affinity spaces, different people discover different information in a different order (Gee, 2007). As Gee posits in his Active Critical Learning Principle: “All aspects of the learning environment (including the ways in which the semiotic domain is designed and presented) are set up to encourage active and critical, not passive, learning (2007, p. 221). Working in collaboration is a learned skill; one that schools must incorporate if they are going to lead students to a more meaningful experience through deeper learning. That is to say, we have an obligation and a duty to identify and guide our students to the 21st century skills necessary to go on to successful participation in life and more specifically, the workforce. Some of these skills, presented and analyzed throughout this paper, include risk taking, rethinking of the concepts and issues as situations warrant, interpersonal skills, and ethics that have dramatically changed with technology. Brown and Adler (2008) are very profound in their observation, "We now need a new approach to learning-one characterized by a demand-pull rather than the traditional supply-push mode of building up an inventory of knowledge in students' heads.” I feel that this statement on it's own gives such a clear message defining what we are looking to do as educators who support new literacies and embrace web 2.0 tools. Demand-pull learning as defined by Brown and Adler, “shifts the focus to enabling participation in flows of action, where the focus is both on ‘learning to be’ through enculturation into a practice as well as on collateral learning.” In this way, both teachers and students have a voice and an approach that is engaging. Learning exists within a realm that students can relate to and become fully immersed in. Learning situated in social practice is a critical issue formal educational systems need to address. An example of demand-pull for students of all ages might be the world of Legos. On a worldwide basis, Legos already share connections to //Star Wars// and //Harry Potter//, they offer hands on experience to construction, and motivate students through online sites and Lego competitions. The connections between digital technologies, hands on experience, and learning are easy and enable teachers to show students what they are learning rather than simply telling them and expecting them to grasp the concepts on their own. The supply-push approach to learning is characterized, on the other hand, by formally orchestrated activities and learning blocks that do not bridge the gap for students between what they already know, what they need to know for success in their out of school environment, and what is being taught. The in school versus out of school separation is very clear. The Childrens Literacy Initiative program, implemented in numerous urban school districts, in my opinion, does little to connect to familiar experiences for the students. The teacher reads a story, followed by a “message” as he/she models writing at the front of the class. The children sit passively and read aloud as the teacher is writing the message on the board. Students are not truly engaged in the reading and writing. They are, on the contrary, responding upon command to a message that may have no familiar connection to their real life experiences. Reading and writing literacy is presented in a vacuum. As Chris Shamburg mentioned in a recent conversation with me, “It is hard to get kids to be creative on demand and that’s what they are expected to do every day in school.” When considering what we strive to teach our children and how we facilitate learning, Gee suggests that we need to promote new theories of learning both in and out of the school community through heightened peer interaction, mentorship, and parental help. He cites the practices within online cultures, more specifically affinity groups, as the paradigm for fostering this new approach to learning. Furthermore, Gee emphasizes that this new ethos must erase the line between formal and informal learning by bringing real world experiences into the classroom therefore enabling students to make connections to concepts. As they interact among members of their affinity spaces, students use language, make decisions, and engage literacy skills of reading, writing, and comprehension as a part of their social practice. However, “In school, words and meanings usually float free of material conditions and embodied actions” (Gee, 2007). Formal learning most often requires unfamiliar academic language and places consequences on taking risks by giving the wrong answer or “failing” to get the idea within the allotted amount of time. We teach science as a set of formulas, signs, and symbols that have no connection to the lives of our students therefore they have no real meaning. Teachers, as Gee explains, must marry traditional literacy to digital literacy, bearing in mind, this marriage will not happen in the isolation of a computer class, nor will it happen through online textbooks and commercial reading programs that only serve to disguise the same formal teaching and learning practices in the form of a computer. As evidenced by the level of understanding in so many affinity spaces, collaboration, teamwork, and peer interaction are several social practices that occur naturally and would translate to deeper learning and more meaningful experiences in the classroom. Gee, along with Brown, Adler, Lankshear, Knobel and others, references the necessity for the teacher to take the role of mentor, thus allowing students to truly experience the learning. Just as web 2.0 tools have given power to the public enabling them to produce instead of merely consume media, web 2.0 tools can scaffold learning in the classroom. For example, digital storytelling engages students in critical thinking and decision making by providing students with a venue to delve into such issues as social justice or environmental concerns. The students are actively engaged in making decisions as to the message, structure, content and format of their story while the teacher plays an instrumental role in guiding the students through, among other things, the key aspect of the project; the story. Gee gives further credence to the practices within affinity spaces as he recognizes the level of innovation, creativity, and communication that simultaneously and seamlessly take place. He points to video gamers as they access prior knowledge and experience to make decisions about the game, use critical thinking skills to figure out how to advance their skill level, and offer advice to others in the affinity group seeking help. It is in this respect that he acknowledges another aspect of identity within the group. That is to say, at various points throughout participation, a member can function as either an expert or a novice, depending on the situation. Again using the example of digital storytelling, the teacher can be the expert, for example, in facilitating discussions that lead students to examine an issue and in this setting the student is the novice. Roles can be reversed whereby the student becomes the expert in the ways to collaborate with peers using web 2.0 tools to further the discussion and bring the story to life. Ito, et. al. (2010) take notice of this role reversal that is visible in many homes where the child is often the technology expert and the parent is the novice. The same can be said to apply within the school environment where the student is the technology expert and the teacher is the novice. Affinity spaces embrace an environment of reciprocal learning where members work hand in hand to learn, explore, practice, and communicate, therefore, it would seem that reciprocal experiences would assimilate nicely to an educational environment that embraces digital technology. Within affinity spaces, it is common practice for the participant to move from novice to expert an infinite number of times as situations and information change. This continual change of identity is familiar to students because it is a social practice that they are accustomed to in their out of school environment as they participate in online communities. As Eckert and Wenger (2005) point out, “Legitimacy in any community of practice involves not just having access to knowledge necessary for ‘getting it right’ but being at the table at which ‘what is right’ is continually negotiated. What counts as competence and by whom is something that the community negotiates over time; indeed it is this negotiation that defines the community.” Affinity spaces promote safe havens to make mistakes, learn from those mistakes, and experience success. With respect to the workplace it is important to take into account the talents and abilities intrinsic to success. Gee points to the many aspects of affinity groups that foster learning and nurture skills that directly correlate to productive, meaningful actions within the workforce. In order to meet the demands of a competitive global economic environment, our students must be equipped with an arsenal of skills that enable them to multi-task as they take on multiple responsibilities throughout their careers. As is already the practice of individuals within affinity spaces, in the workplace, individuals must be open to taking risks through proactive behavior and forward thinking. It is “old school” to work in competition with colleagues. The corporate world demands teamwork and healthy debate among members who take an avant-garde approach toward thinking through issues, problems, and solutions. The skills mentored in the classroom must translate to the ability to identify business trends, set goals, meet the demands of industry, as well as an attitude of openness to rethinking decisions and taking new approaches as situations change. In conclusion, although more research is necessary regarding the methods to facilitate purposeful integration of digital literacies in the classroom, I feel strongly that the need is evident. Although I am neither an advocate of standardized tests, nor am I of the belief that these tests are the only means necessary to measure literacy skills, unfortunately, at present, they are at the pinnacle of assessments viewed within our formal education system. With that said, // the 2006 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), places fourth graders at 18 of the 45 countries participating in the test. Even more disturbing, is the evidence that 31 of the 45 countries improved reading scores between 200l and 2006, while U.S. reading scores dropped by two percent. Clearly these scores indicate that literacies need new learning. We must sound the call to action among educators, demanding swift and dramatic change in praxis. Coupled with educating the public, these changes must be made across the board from the training of pre-service and in-service teachers, to the training of administrators. We will fail our students if we fail to make these changes. In my estimation, affinity spaces provide the perfect forum to start a grassroots movement as the impetus for change. Our students have the right to an education that provides opportunities to develop 21st century skills that enable them to become successful producers rather than consumers of learning. //

References Brown, J. Seely & Adler, R. (2008). Minds on fire: Open education, the long tail, and Learning 2.0. //Educause// (January/February): 17–32.

Eckert, P., Wenger, E. (2005). Dialogue Communities of Practice in sociolinguistics: What is the Role of Power in Sociolinguistic Variation? //Journal of Sociolinguistics//. 9 (4): 582-589.

Gee, J. P. (2004). //Situated language and learning: A critique of traditional schooling//. New York: Routledge.

Gee, J.P. (2007). //What Video Games Have To Teach Us About Learning and Literacy//. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan.

Ito, et. al. (2010). //Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and// //Learning with New Media//. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Jenkins, H., with R. Purushotma, K. Clinton, M. Weigel, & A. Robison (2006). //Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st// //Century//. Occasional Paper. Boston, MA: MIT/MacArthur Foundation.