Participatory Culture and Schools: Can We Get There From Here?

In 1959, The British scientist and novelist C.P. Snow wrote about the Two Cultures problem(sciences vs. humanities) of modern society. We could steal his term and use it to characterize the two-culture problem our kids experience as a consequence of the dramatic proliferation of Web 2.0 applications. Applications such as social networking, blogs, recreational and educational col-laborative games, and publishing of videos, pictures, stories, and commentaries have a pervasive presence in their personal lives and the lives of their friends. But the presence and effective use of these applications for learning in schools is much less prevalent. Thus, young people experience the two-culture problem as they move between in-school culture and out-of-school culture.