Educators must work together to ensure that every American young person has access to the skills and experiences needed to become a full participant, can articulate their understanding of how media shapes perceptions, and has been socialized into the emerging ethical standards that should shape their practices as media makers and participants in online communities. A central goal of this report is to shift the focus of the conversation about the digital divide from questions of technological access to those of opportunities to participate and to develop the cultural competencies and social skills needed for full involvement. Schools as institutions have been slow to react to the emergence of this new participatory culture; the greatest opportunity for change is currently found in afterschool programs and informal learning communities. Schools and afterschool programs must devote more attention to fostering what we call the new media literacies: a set of cultural competencies and social skills that young people need in the new media landscape. Participatory culture shifts the focus of literacy from one of individual expression to community involvement. The new literacies almost all involve social skills developed through collaboration and networking. These skills build on the foundation of traditional literacy, research skills, technical skills, and critical analysis skills taught in the classroom. The new skills include: (1) Play; (2) Performance; (3) Simulation; (4) Appropriation; (5) Multitasking; (6) Distributed Cognition; (7) Collective Intelligence; (8) Judgment; (9) Transmedia Navigation; (10) Networking; and (11) Negotiation. (Contains 81 sources.) [This paper was written with Katie Clinton, Ravi Purushotma, Alice J. Robison, and Margaret Weigel.]