Academic institutions need to embrace new technologies that shape their students' lives instead of suppressing them out of fear, Professor Henry Jenkins, co-director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said in a lecture last Thursday.Library and Technology Services, the American Studies department, the Computer Science department, the Education program, the Internet Studies program, the Community Engaged Learning program and the Cultural Production program co-sponsored the event.

To demonstrate the omnipresence of media in young people's lives today, he gave the example of a representative student named "Jessica," who uses her computer to chat with friends, download music and do her schoolwork.

"Jessica" receives a text message from a friend that includes a music video of Soulja Boy, Jenkins said.

He said Soulja Boy first published his song on his blog. "He moved from being an obscure figure . to someone performing at the Black Entertainment Television Awards," Jenkins said. "He did this by using all the channels of participatory culture" such as the file-sharing software BitTorrent and audio streams on Facebook.

Concluding his example story, Jenkins said that "Jessica" and her friends created a YouTube video of themselves performing Soulja Boy's dance.

For Jenkins, this phenomenon is exemplary of today's participatory culture. It's characterized by "low barriers for engagement," he said, meaning that it was very easy for "Jessica" to move from being a video viewer to a video creator.

This culture increasingly creates a safe "space where you can start out bad and get better," he pointed out, with less fear of rejection and more options for improvement, adding that "there are very few public spaces where that is possible." Online, "all [members] must believe they are free to contribute."

He said people are increasingly forming knowledge communities, where a variety of individuals contribute their specific expertise.

Jenkins described an enigmatic map that flashed on the screen during an episode of the TV show Lost. Fans freeze-framed the screen, created screen shots, drew their own sketches and tried to solve math problems included in the map.

Jenkins explained how such online participation could offer more personal freedom to students. "Popular kids may have a geek side only known to their virtual world," he said. "[The Internet] frees them up to do things they would never do in the hallway in high school."

The skills necessary for working with new technologies "take as a given that traditional literacy still matters," he said. "If you can't read, you can't immediately participate." In fact, he said, fan fiction communities where individuals write stories based on movies, books or television shows can be a "really powerful tool to learn to write."

Jenkins noted that many educational institutions are insecure about new media. "Most high schools block access to YouTube, so teachers can't bring it into the classroom," he stated. "That's absurd."

"As a teacher in training, I thought the examples he had were very useful that I could implement in my future classroom," Ana Grossman '09 said.