Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking out: Kids Learning and Living with New Media was written seven years ago. While I've been reading, I've enjoyed thinking about the differences between the new media then and the new media today. While the book points out that its focus is less about the exact forms of media and more about how the media is used, I do think that the media options we have today would make a difference in the Creative Production chapter. I found the chapter highly relatable, not just for me but from what I have observed from my friends. The authors talk a lot about camera phones and their ability to mobilize the photography process. In these short seven years we have made the leap to phones that have high-quality cameras and ways to share these pictures with just one click on the social network of your choice. We also have hashtags to socialize this experience and create groups of people rallying around subject matter, aesthetics, or methodology. I have witnessed people become professional photographers by gaining popularity through Instagram (For example, see the company http://tinker-street.com/tinkermobile).
New media has created new opportunities for people--youth or otherwise--to become something that years ago would have required much more time and money in establishing. That's not to say that new media isn't inexpensive, though. Access to computers, smart phones, cameras, and software is often out of reach for those with less money. In Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking out: Kids Learning and Living with New Media we are introduced to many students who find these resources in after school programs. As we all know, the library too can be a place for providing these resources to anyone in the community. This point feels more real when, in the Libraries in the 21st Century video, Pam Sandlian Smith speaks of allowing a homeless patron to "check out" a room for a puppet show. We often talk about leveling the playing field, and the library is a prime place to do so.
I loved the story of the boy putting on a puppet show and I think it is a great example of how we can provide access to materials that some people wouldn't normally be able to use. I feel like this new media has provided opportunities for leveling of the playing field, in that people can access more information and resources more easily than before. At the same time, for those who don't have access to even a computer, they get left out of a whole component of learning and social life that wasn't around before (Which again, is why we're here!).
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