What is a teacher?

Public education?

Smart?

Not?

Economics vs intellectual?

I am moving to a new school in September to help create the UAE’s leading mass communication program.

I say leading because if we are going to just do what is typical today there would be no point in moving to CUD from ZU.

We are going to put a program in motion that is in constant re-invention.

We are thinking of journalism in terms of the craft and the delivery.

We are thinking advertising in terms of what, who and where.

We are thinking about PR in terms of the story and delivery.

No more we need huge expensive pools of equipment to make media, WE DON’T NEED A HUGE SET OR A HUGE LAB.

What we need is people who are engaged as mentors and learners.

Watch this video this to me is where CUD’s mass communication program is going.

Of course we don’t or we like to say we are not innovative.

The biggest failure today in pretty much every industry is failing to see the ability to innovate what we do.

And education is top on my hit list of places and process that have failed to even scratch the surface of innovative thinking.

The problem for educators today is that the system has become so rooted around architecture, space and time that the innovation we need is simply the thing of fantasy dreams.

Columbia makes cloths BUT they are also leaders in personal innovation, really.

Check out this video.

Cool Hunting Video Presents: Omni Heat Electric from Cool Hunting on Vimeo.

If Columbia can be innovative with something as common as the boot, glove and coat what is stopping you from bringing innovation into your workplace?

You!

Communication can and does take many forms.

The ability to harness a variety of forms of communication through the creative process is something we are not doing so well in our education systems.

Don’t get me wrong there is lots of creativity and lots of communication but we are not doing a lot to connect the 2.

Here is a great example of that connection taking place.

My question is how do I get my creative advertising students to see the forest in spite of the trees?

In the past advertisers have liked to believe that you want to avoid consumer confusion by keeping messaged clear and single media based. Sure there may be messages across media but the logic has been that different screens being used simultaneously in multimedia messages will only confuse.

This is also the logic used in education.

While we like to use multimedia we do not want to promote confusion by sending the same message simultaneously via all available screens.

Maybe the opposite is true!

Here is an interesting report.

As part of the research, consumers visiting the CBS TV City Media Lab at MGM Las Vegas were asked to look at content on a TV set, a computer, a smartphone and a tablet.

Also, according to the report, people who saw the video on four screens almost always had more positive opinions about the car compared with those who watched only TV, in categories like reliability and power.

According to the data, consumers use computers and smartphones for searches throughout the work day; smartphone use increases during commuting times and in the evenings.

And the use of tablets for searches “spikes dramatically” in the evenings, according to the blog post.

“If you are an advertiser, you might be wondering which is the best screen to reach your customers on,” the post concludes. “The answer is: All of them. These screens are better together.”

Maybe, once again we need to throw our old conventions about getting attention and sharing information into the wind and start thinking about the user/consumer in a different way.

The reality from an educators point of view is we need to get our content onto every possible screen and now.

The other reality is educators, as a whole, are far from embracing the possibility being offered by technology even as it stares them in the face.

I would like to go for a starter!

The Cannes Creative Academy.

Now take a look at what it is all about.

Look at what the students are put through.

The learning programme

Students follow an intensive schedule of activities during the Festival week, under the leadership of course Dean Jim Stengel, Former Global Marketing Officer for P&G, andTutor Suzanne Tosolini.

A provisional framework for the learning programme includes, but is not limited to:

Why creativity matters for today’s successful brands
Reach a deeper understanding of the role of creativity and how brands are successfully integrating it into their strategies.

Creative effectiveness
A demonstration of the measurable nature of creativity and why it has a proven impact on a client’s business; creativity affects consumer behaviour, brand equity, sales and profit.

The impact of digital
How digital technology has revolutionised creativity in communications and changed the communication development process.

The modern brand
Delegates will hear from creatives from organisations representing the worlds of music, film production and design, among others. Creativity is at the heart of these industries.

Manage the creative process
How to get the best out of the creative relationship between clients and agencies.

Creative leadership
A session delivered by the Berlin School of Creative Leadership.

Case study: a presentation of Gold and Titanium winners
Creatives who have produced some of today’s best known work present a unique insight into the creative thought process behind it.

Cannes Lions 2011 seminars
We will guide you through the relevant Festival seminars to help you make the most of the learning programme.

 

So, as an educator I am asking myself the simple question, why is all our education not like this?

Worldwide mobile advertising revenue forecast to reach $3.3 billion in 2011

The numbers are pretty amazing and if they are anywhere near target wow!

My question goes back to education.

Are our business schools, IT Colleges and Communication schools onto this idea?

Worldwide mobile advertising revenue is forecast to reach $3.3 billion in 2011, more than double the $1.6 billion generated in 2010, according to Gartner, Inc. Worldwide revenue will reach $20.6 billion by 2015, but not all types of mobile advertising will generate the same opportunity. Search and maps will deliver the highest revenue, while video/audio ads will see the fastest growth through 2015.

Here is a chart that comes from this worth reading article.

What is for sure the landscape of media, advertising and PR is in a very clear transition and this is happening fast.

The question is who can keep up?

Or if you don’t keep up with the media transition what future do you have?

What is convergent journalism and is anyone really teaching it?

Sure there is a lot of talk but is there a lot of actual application?

And then there is the whole issue of whether convergent journalism simply further blurs the PR/journalism line altogether.

Here is a good place to start the conversation, a definition.

Criado and Kraeplin (2009) give a very functional definition. They define convergence journalism as, “print, broadcast, and online news staffs forging partnerships in which journalists work and distribute content across several news platforms” (p. 19).

So is convergent journalism the media, the message or a bit of both?

I opt for the second and then wonder, out loud, if we professors are actually teaching convergence or building our own media silos to protect our fields of interest!

I suspect the later.

The only thing getting in the way of students being taught how to be convergent storytellers is academia!

For instance check out this converged story.

You have not heard of Storify?

You need to watch this interview with the creators.

One of the guys was an AP reporter for close to 12 years.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Convergent journalism is about tools and how we use them.

There has never been a better time than now to start talking about the media and the message being combined to tell the full and continuing story.

Journalism isn’t just telling anymore it is curating content.

Is today’s academia ready for convergence of the storytelling process?

Maybe the better question is does it really matter if academia is ready or not for the convergence process?

The speech was published here, http://tedchris.posterous.com/a-speech-to-graduating-harvard-architects-6122, I think it is worth a read for several reasons.

1. Chris Anderson is swimming in the TED idea pool so it is interesting to get his view from the pond

2. This is a wel prepared talk

3. Another set of ideas about our post-education role is presented

My take home from the speech are these words!

Pursue discipline. It’s an old-fashioned word, but it’s never been more important.Today’s world is full of an impossible number of distractions. The world-changers are those who find a way of ignoring most of them.

Give Chris Anderson’s speech a read and pass it on to a student who is wondering what the time in at High School or University is all for.

First of all, I’m not sure if your organizers today were aware of this, but  I actually don’t give a lot of speeches. I’m usually the guy doing the inviting. Frankly, it’s a lot more comfortable that way.  But… I couldn’t pass up the chance to spend some time with a group of people who have so much to offer the world. Truly, it’s an honor to be here.

To begin with, a favor.  If you are one of the graduating class, I would like you please to stand up.  I want to see you properly.  Thank you. Congratulations. You made it.  And if you would, I would like you to hold your heads very still for just the next 10 seconds or so. Because, I  have an app on my ipad here that’s pretty cool. I’m not taking your picture. What I’m doing, if you don’t mind,  is just grabbing a download of the contents of each of your brains. Thank you. You may sit.

Now unfortunately, this app is still in, let’s say, pre-alpha mode. It doesn’t work that reliably. But if it did, I wonder what a read out would reveal. Of course today there would be all manner of emotions around the years you’ve spent here and the prospects ahead. Excitement, nostalgia, hope…  regret, panic. We’d no doubt uncover a few unexpected jealousies, embarrassing memories,  a complete record of everything that happened late at night over there in the trays.  (Don’t worry, it’s all 100% privacy protected, unless you forgot to check the box marked no public humiliation.) But along with all that, there would be something else in this data. We would be able to see an astonishing picture of…  the future. Better than any crystal ball, or forecasting tool, we could see what our world will look like in a couple decades’ time.

Today there’s a growing consensus that we should think of humans differently. That far from living in separate cultural bubbles we actually share millions of years of evolutionary history. That there are far far more ways that we’re the same than that we’re different. The anthropologist Donald Brown has documented more than 200 human universals present in every culture on earth. They ranged from things like body adornment, feasting, dancing to common facial expressions and, yes, shared aesthetic values. This latter question has been the subject of countless experiments around the world in the past couple decades, and they’ve mostly revealed an amazing degree of resonance among vastly different people on what they find…  beautiful.

This shift is surely allowing us to change the language in which architecture is discussed. In a world of pure cultural relativism, there are no absolutes to appeal to. To succeed you had to learn the opaque language of a tight-knit clique of critics and opinion formers. It didn’t matter if the rest of the world was left scratching its head. Today, slowly, gingerly, it’s become possible once again to use language the rest of us can understand. I think it’s even OK to use that B word again. Beauty. Not as a proxy for arrogant artistic self-expression, but as a quest to tap into something that can resonate deeply in millions of souls around the world.  I’m happy to report that in the last couple years at TED  we’ve been wowed by a new generation of architects  Joshua Prince-Ramus,  Bjarke Ingels, Liz Diller, Thomas Heatherwick and others, as they’ve shared with us – in plain English –  their passion, their dreams, and yes, the beauty of what they’re created. When Thomas Heatherwick shared his vision for a stunning, new residential complex in Kuala Lumpur, curved out from narrow bases like a bed of tulips, I had just one thought.  I wish I had been born in the future.

I suppose an architect might have dreamt of such a development 30 years ago… but it could never have been built. And that brings us to the second trend. Technology is changing the rules of what’s possible. The astounding power of computer-assisted design and new construction techniques are giving us the ability to actually build what before could only have been a whimsical doodle on a sketch-pad..  Suddenly the fractals and curves of Mother Nature, are a legitimate part of the architectural lexicon. And around the world, as people watch these new buildings arise, instead of muttering “monstrosity”, their jaws are dropping, their eyes moistening.

And finally, perhaps most important of all, we’re at a moment in history where the world is paying attention to you like never before. As leading designers of scale, you, more than anyone else, hold in your hands the answers to the most important question we all face. Namely this. Can the coming world of 10 billion people survive and flourish without consuming itself in the process. The answers if they are to be found, – and I think they will – will come from… design. Better ways to pattern our lives. There is nothing written into our nature that says that the only path to a wonderful, rich, meaningful life is to own two cars and a McMansion in the suburbs.

But it’s becoming urgent for the world to start to see a compelling alternative vision. Probably it’s going to come down to re-imagining what a city can be, and making it so wonderful, that few people would want to live anywhere else. If there are to be 10 billion of us, we will have to, for the most part, live close to each other — if only to give the rest of nature a chance. Indeed more than half the world already lives in cities and the best of them offer so much to the world : richer culture, a greater sense of community, a far lower carbon footprint per person - and the collision of ideas that nurtures innovation.  And the future cities you will help create need not feel claustrophobic or soulless. By sculpting beautiful new forms into the city’s structures and landscapes; by incorporating light, plants, trees, water; by imagining new ways to connect with each other and work with each other, you will allow the coming crowd to live more richly, more meaningfully, than has ever been possible in history – and to do so without sacrificing your grandchildren.

Now finally, I guess it’s traditional at a time like this to offer some personal advice to you as you embark on your career. Everything from “one word: plastics”.  to… “follow your dream, pursue your passion”. Indeed the mantra of romantically pursuing passion is hammered into us by countless movies, novels and pulp TV. I’m not convinced it is very good advice. Apart from the fact that many people aren’t sure what their passion is, even if they were, there are lots of wonderful things in life that absolutely should not be pursued directly. Take love.  We all want it. But there’s a word for people who pursue love a little too directly.  Stalker. Or take happiness. Go after that wholeheartedly and most likely you’ll end up a hedonist, a narcissist, an addict.  A great musician who wants to pursue the absolute in artistic creativity doesn’t get there by being creative. She gets there by being disciplined. By learning, listening and by practicing for hours… until one day the creativity just flows of its own accord.

Knowledge, discipline, generosity. If you pursue those with all the determination you possess, one day before too long, without you even knowing it, the chance to realize your most spectacular dreams will come gently tap you on the shoulder and whisper… let’s go.  And you’ll be ready.

And that is how you’re going to help shape a better future for all of us.

No pressure or anything, but we’re counting on you.

But there are problems to be addressed.

I am not a BlackBerry fan BUT maybe, just maybe, the PlayBook is the answer to the problems of reading off of a mobile phone screen?

The pairing or bridging of the PlayBook with a BlackBerry phone is the logical extension, or playground for the user of the BlackBerry.

So what is the issue of reading with my iPhone?

Size of the screen and the ability to read the content.

This is something that is being spoken about and I am not so sure enough attention is being given to the content consumption issues associated with smartphones and the screens.

Here is an interesting bit of research on screen size and data comprehension.

Summary:
When reading from an iPhone-sized screen, comprehension scores for complex Web content were 48% of desktop monitor scores.It’s more painful to use the Web on mobile phones than on desktop computers for many reasons:

• Slower downloads
• No physical keyboard for data entry
• No mouse for selection; no mouse buttons to issue commands and access contextual menus (indeed fewer signaling states, as discussed further in our seminar on Applying HCI Principles to Real World Problems: a touchscreen only signals “finger-down/up,” whereas a mouse has hover state in addition to button press/release)
• Small screen (often with tiny text)
• Websites designed for desktop access instead of following the usability guidelines for mobile
• Whacky app UIs that lack consistency

New research by R.I. Singh and colleagues from the University of Alberta provides one more reason: it’s much harder to understand complicated information when you’re reading through a peephole.

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/mobile-content-comprehension.html

Yet another area to give a little more consideration as we start talking about smartphone use in education.

Sometimes, as a professor of communication and media sciences, I am uneasy talking about career options becasue who knows where you might end up with a communication degree.

Sure many, maybe even the majority of grads ,will travel along the traditional prescribed career path but more and more today students are going madly off in different and new directions.

What I have learned over the last 6 years of doing radio interviews on DubaiEye is that more often than not our career paths are anything but obvious.

Take Daniella Williams as a case in point.

Today Daniella is a very good and very successful accountant to small business.

Daniella has been called the thinking accountant and this has happened because she is far more than a book minder.

But Daniella did not get to this point following the typical carrer trajectory.

Daniella studied piano, violin and drama initially and went on to become a music teacher.

Then after 3 or so years of teaching Daniella realized that teaching was not her love and instead of sticking it out, becasue teaching is a vocation you know, she went back to school and got an accounting degree.

Today Daniella has married education and accounting as she works  with SMEs to help them learn to be successful.

Who would have thought?

And it is because of stories like this that I often find it hard to point a student down a specific career path.

I was totally inspired by Daniella and recommend listening to this interview with anyone who really wants to take their career in a different direction but is not sure if they should.

Totally 100% inspiring.