I Was Born This Way . . . Maybe

In the article, Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century, Henry Jenkins discusses the several skills that educators have deemed important in order for students to understand media and how to use it. My classmates and I were all assigned a skill; mine is distributed cognition. At first hearing, it sounded super complicated and scholarly-- something I could handle but didn't want to. When I read about it in Jenkins article, I discovered it is quite interesting and isn't very complicated at all. Professor, sorry for doubting you.

Distributed cognition is "the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand our mental capacities" (Jenkins 37). In other words, it is using the tools we have in our lives, such as computers, calculators, refrigerators, etc. to expand our knowledge and intelligence. Jenkins cites a few educators who emphasize that technologies can help out our brains instead of hinder them; he writes that since they claim that technologies are actually a part of our thinking process, then "it makes no sense to “factor out" what the human brain is doing as the “real” part of thinking, and to view what the technology is doing as a “cheat” or “crutch"" (37).  Take that grade school math teachers who said I couldn't use a calculator!

There was one thing in this article that really got my attention. Jenkins cites Pea, who wrote that "intelligence is accomplished rather than possessed" (37). I believed it from the beginning, but then I really got to thinking:

 

We're raised to believe that the amount of smart in our brains that we're born with is what we get for life. But . . . what if that isn't true? Think about it. We know very little when we're born; in fact, we don't know much about the world until we get to the high school, and even then we still have a LOT to figure out. We aren't labelled "dumb", "smart", "intelligent", or "genius" until we're in school. And we only get labelled one of those until information is put before us and we are required to learn it. From what Jenkins writes, it sounds like intelligence is our ability to learn something new-- that's also what Google says when I searched for its definition. If we catch on quickly and retain that info, then we are smart. If we struggle or fail completely to grasp something, then we are dumb.

 

This can be expanded into how we speak of technology literacy. It is a new skill unique to the 21st century. Never before has literacy of new technology and media been so essential to living in the modern world. Never before has there been a difference between someone being just "smart" and "computer smart". There are many, many people (mainly of older generations) that are technologically illiterate or at least struggle to understand and utilize it when otherwise they are extremely intelligent and even border on genius.

 

I think we're beginning to associate intelligence with how well you can work technology and how much you can do with it. I don't believe that's good. Perhaps not the most terrible thing in the world, but not great, either We could miss out on a lot of incredibly intelligent people in our businesses, school, government, and culture if we disregard someone just because they don't understand Tumblr.

 

Should we encourage these struggling computer readers? Yes! As Jenkins writes, "a classroom designed to foster distributed cognition encourages students to participate with a range of people, artifacts, and devices" (39) is one way to begin with young generations. With older users, it might just be sitting down with them and going over how this or that functions until they get it. You know what they say, anyways: you don't really know something until you've taught it to someone else.

 

I do believe that we are born with a certain amount of intelligence, but it is expanded and developed throughout our lives depending on what we learn and what we do or do not apply.

 

Bibliography: Jenkins, Henry. "Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century." (2006): 37-39. Web. 4 Nov. 2015.