Leo Laporte made a wonderful daring presentation to TEDxDubai.

The media is changing but are we ready?

Do we believe the media environment is really changing?

Call our media environment converging, diverging, clouding,WEB2.0 but the reality is a whole new playing field is before us like it or not.

The problem is we media educators need to put our past on the shelf and go boldly where nobody has gone before!

The problem is it is easier said than done.

Leo Laporte spoke at TEDxDubai 2009 and offered an invitation to UAE media educators and students, all of us really, to go boldly into the media environment where we have never gone before.

Leo Laporte’s invitation, dare, to embrace the new media environment.

What will you do?

Lets face it we academics are without doubt experts in not only HOW teaching and learning takes place and is disseminated today but we are also experts in our own particular fields of study.

So why when it comes to making our knowledge available to the world to we tend to jump at obscure journals and even more obscure niche academic conferences?

My theory is we are simply following the old academic protocol.

Research to Publish to Present with little to no thought being given to the HOW and WHO or even WHERE of the process.

Well there is an alternative and that alternative is the TED model.

The scary thing is so many academics watch TEDTalks but so few actually try to do their own work and presentations in that format, right down to the audio/video and show.

Some might say that the TED format dilutes the content of a presentation, I don’t buy it.

Here is the clip talking about TEDCannes and there is nothing light about the content.

Click here to view the embedded video.

It is time for the academic world to awaken to the possibility before it and not stay crouched behind a podium in a room tucked away on an obscure University campus and jump feet first onto the world stage and the model for this is TED!

Primary and secondary education is rapidly evolving in the UAE and trying to come to grips with the lessons from welfare states around the world as it crafts its own hybrid system.

One thing is for sure a complete hands off system does not work.

What if we retooled education from KG through University around the idea of significant interactions?

What if the issues of economy and society were encouraged to link and not sit alone?

What if we saw a vertical integration of KG through University education with partnerships on a global scale?

Of course this requires a true paradigm shift.

Dr. Chris Reynolds may be on to something as he talks about his vision of the education to come.

Dr.Chris Reynolds on the future of education as a business

Nightline a Conversation

Over and over again I have told my students that what we learn at school is secondary to the process.

Sure there are some exceptions but they are not as glaring as you might think.

What is important in our education is that we learn to follow through, meet deadlines, dare, challenge and ultimately get the tools to know who to ask and how to ask for help and guidance when we need it.

Sure some may disagree but that disagreement is fueled more out of fear of a change in the way we deliver education than the reality of the suggestion.

Last night I spoke to Iman Ben Chaibah about the creation of Sail magazine.

Iman Ben Chaibah on SAILemagazine.com

Nightline a Conversation

What is interesting is that Iman studied computer science and works in the computer industry, NOT the field of communication and journalism.

Yes there is no question Iman is a journalist!

The point of all this is wandering off the path is what education should be all about, getting us to explore and follow our gut feelings no matter how far from what we are trained to do it is!

It makes a lot of sense that music would be created for the way and where it would be played.

Does this apply to other presentations?

In particular I am thinking about academics like myself.

How much time, when I am planning a lecture, do I spend thinking about how the lecture will look and of course sound in a particular venue?

None! At least not consciously!

But the way my lecture looks and sounds is very important to the consumer, the student.

And what about the translation of my work to the MP3 player or a car radio and Vimeo?

A lecture is a creative and adaptive activity just like Byrne is talking about with music and in the end birds.

Maybe the problem we are facing as academics is we are no longer creating our lectures and teaching materials to fit the multiple contexts they are being delivered in.

Just a little food for thought.

Maybe we need to change what we do to fit the changing context.

The problem, and there is a problem, is that the space needs to function as a classroom, lecture hall, studio, think tank, recording facility, technology incubator, and new convergent media showcase all at the same time.

So who do you talk to?

Journalists have one idea.

PR people have another idea.

Academics have yet another idea.

Designers are thinking different,

The architects have a vision.

Nobody has asked the students.

And in the end what you can end up with is a pretty traditional space that might look like a CNN/BBC/CBC newsroom.

What are we looking at if we dream of a new space configuration?

A big open space with scattered technology in different corners to satisfy specific and rather non converged needs. This is the old way of thinking without a doubt.

One of the big issues with convergence is are we talking form or function. What we really need is a bit of both.

The form of convergence is the bringing of different, often old school technology, into one place, not very new thinking at all and really not very convergent.

The function of convergence is a way of thinking and this is the clever side, the paradigm shift, the bringing of content to different platforms simultaneously for focused, yet mass, dissemination.

So what will the space to teach and practice convergent media look like?

Click here to view the embedded video.

The d school at Standford has not only invented the space, with the proud insight of IDEO’s founders, but I would hasten to say perfected it!

As an academic and practitioner of convergent media when I am asked how I would design the ideal space to teach, learn and practice convergent media I say look at the d School!

If you put in a day digesting Seth Godin, Tom Peters, ChangeThis and then throw in IDEO, Diego Rodriguez and for good measure Mark Hurst you not only have a very sound reading list on business, creativity and leadership but also a question on your mind!

One of the common themes that is woven through all the blogs and sources I just listed is thinking about  the experience you are   engaged in with something.

Is the EXPERIENCE at the center of  everything you do?

If not why not? Because….. is the typical answer.

Take almost any university.

Is there a Chief Experience Officer to guide the way faculty, students, staff, visitors and the average person who happens on the ivory tower interact with the academy?

We spend a lot of time thinking about publications and ads.

We spend a lot of time thinking about how a stage looks for graduation.

We spend a lot of time cleaning floors, windows, parking lots and even lagoons.

So obviously there is an element of experiential thought taking place in many offices, but is there any coordination?

Why not?

When how we fall in love with the experience of an Apple product is a big part of the iPhone or iPad environment why are we not saying the same about our education environments today and especially the university?

To put the academic experience in the hands of an HR department or student services department is thinking too small and too narrow.

What every university needs, especially today is a Chief Experience Officer to guide, mould and roll out a consistent experience for everyone who comes in the door of the academy, how hard would that be?

But a list in and of itself is a pretty useless thing.

The value of your inspiration list is it might open the door to a whole new set of ideas for others.

So don’t just make a list SHARE it!

And please share it with me!

My list of 2 great resources for the month is as follows.

Cory Doctorow, one of the co-editors of BoingBoing, and a fantastic author has a content rich website where he has also resumed his podcast! I like Doctorow because he is the perfect example of what I tell my students!

1. trust yourself

2. be amazing at what you do

3. share

4. make it worth while

5. dare

Changethis is one of my favorite idea sites.  What I love about CT is the contents are brief and they come in the form of a manifesto. Here is what it is about.

Are you an optimist?

Sometimes it seems as though our disagreements—over everything from politics to business to the designated hitter rule—are more serious and more divisive than ever before.

People are making emotional, knee-jerk decisions, then standing by them, sometimes fighting to the death to defend their position.

And yet, we’re optimists.

People call the team at Change This optimists because we don’t believe it has to be this way. We don’t believe humans evolved to be so bad at making decisions, so poor at changing our minds, so violent in arguing our point of view. We’re well aware of how split our country and our world have become, but we don’t think the current state of affairs is built into our very nature.

The problem lies in the media.

In the old days, we had the time and inclination to consider the implications of a decision. Everyone wasn’t in quite so much of a hurry. At the same time, most conversations (and most arguments) were local ones, conducted between people who knew each other.

Today, it’s very different. Television demands a sound bite. A one hundred word letter to the editor is a long one. Radio has become a jingoistic wasteland, a series of thoughtless mantras, repeated over and over and designed to fit into a typical commute.

What I also love about the site is it shines a light on ways to use technology or WEB2.0 tools to communicate better!

For instance how do we manage comments in a more public manner? What about disqus.com and I learned about this on the Changethis site!

OK your turn!

www.gapingvoid.com for the image!

Social media is an important part of our education, communication, political and economic environments today.

I have seen the writing on the wall for a bit over 2 years and the writing is in neon paint!

The problem we are confronted with is academia really has not been listening, walking around without its hearing aids in if you need a picture painted.

Sure that is really a generalisation but it speaks to the fact that many education institutions have simply not been keeping up with the times.

But are we shooting ourselves in the foot if we embrace all this new tech stuff, the gen y environment?

I mean education on one hand is about pedagogy, theory, paradigms and good hard learned truths contained in textbooks.

Social media recasts not only what we learn but how we learn it and even interact with it!

But social media is new, evolving at a hyper speed, and just now making it into the textbooks, and as we read about it it is outdated!

For over 2 years I have been pushing my students to experiment, in an academic fashion, with social media.

Facebook, Vimeo, Twitter, YouTube,blogger,wordpress and the list is ever growing.

In the process I have applied social media tools from  class lessons to practical projects, some have worked and some have not.

Here are a few examples.

Global Media Ethics Roundtable

#menalab3

ZU60

And of course there are the ongoing in class projects that have fed my understanding of social media, both its creation and distribution.

But academic exercises are one thing I have also been using social media in the corporate world of UAE radio.

Nightline

Nightline podcasts

Nightline TV

And then there is this blog, my Vimeo videos of my classes and my Qik videos of events as well as attempts at Audioboo.

So what is my point?

I have not written a book on these experiences and becasue of that I have zero credibility as an expert or specialist when it comes to social media in the academic world. Maybe the corporate world for that matter!

Just today a colleague looked me in the eye and told me that what I do with social media does not count it is the IT people that have the real value!

Yesterday I met a colleague responsible for publication issues and this person talked about contracting a service to teach them about social media, a DIY service of sorts.

In both cases I thought I must be invisible, or what I have done with social media must be invisible! Nope it is a credibility issue!

Maybe the problem is we still live in the old paradigm world believing that professors are detached from the real world?

Social media changes everything are we ready for the change?

I am and have long been working at the rebranding of Me, clearly I have a way to go!

I had the pleasure of meeting Ian Gilbert about a year ago.

I instantly knew that Ian had a story to tell and many people with ear plugs in need to listen and hard!

We have a global education crisis today because bureaucrats, CFO’s (chief failure officers), accountants and academic leadership in general has failed to do what needs to be done!

Maybe we all need to listen a bit closer to what Ian Gilbert is saying?

And maybe those education leaders who are failing our youth need to either stand up to the challenge or step aside!

Ian Gilbert Live at TEDxDubai 2009.