It is truly amazing the impact participation culture has had on the world. I really enjoyed the example of how fast YouTube grew in the video. I think today’s obvious example would be TikTok. It grew insanely fast and if you are a frequent user you can see how common participation culture occurs on the app. Every new original video you see on the app whether it just be a dance, a song, or a voice over it is rare that you will only see it once. Over time depending on how popular the original video got there will be thousands of recreations making the video seem like the next big thing, until a new one comes around the next week.

This graphic was one that really shocked me. It is crazy to think that one app can have such a large amount of people using it until the next app comes out and we see it slowly fade away. Im curious to see as we get into out later years of teaching what this will look like. Will Facebook even be a thing? Will everyone still be using Snapchat? Will something have replaced TikTok?

As for future classrooms, I think participation culture will continue on the path it has been on. Not only students but teachers will be continuing to look for new technologies to assist them with learning and teaching but also continue using the new apps during their free time. One thing that comes to mind for me is the use of AI, we have seen it absolutely takeoff in this past year. Personally I seem to find a new AI tool out there at least every week. It will be interesting to see where AI goes and as teachers and students how we will be able to take advantage of it and monitor it in the right ways.