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!

The 1st thing I love is the site.

When you go watch the upload counter and stop it to see the words!

00=limitations or zero limitations, very cool!

The second thing I like is the institutionalized idea of breaking the rules and thinking out loud all over the box, the box of your environment.

Idea paint is whiteboard paint that can be applied to any surface!

Imagine the ability to transform your office walls into idea space!

A hallway into idea space!

A floor into idea space!

Every surface becomes a creative tool! Institutionalized and encouraged use your environment to succeed.

Clever and cool!

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!

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!

The recent 6000 dirham hike in student fees at Uptown School was the straw that broke the camels back.

What Taaleem was,Beacon Education, and where it is going is no longer clear to me.

In 2005 I was the inaugural speaker at the then Beacon Education Convocation at the Dubai Convention Centre.

I met with the executive leadership of then Beacon and crafted a presentation that I felt was a light into the future and a bit of direction on how to get there.

The response was overwhelming and teachers,today, still refer to that presentation.

The 2005 Beacon Day Presentation by James Piecowye.

Truth be told the actual powerpoint is from Saatchi and Saatchi’s Kevin Roberts presentation about Lovemarks, and I have told him all about this ripoff and how good it has been for me!

In fact I have not used another powerpoint presentation since 2005! I use the Beacon Day presentation for just about everything.  But I have recently been trying Prezi.com and it is worth a look!

I bring up the Beacon Day presentation for 2 reasons.

First I would hope that the Taaleem administration would go back to this presentation and their own roots and ask if they have followed through on the lofty ambitions laid out in 2005 or caved to the easier route that they said they would not go.

Second, I believe that it is very useful to return to the beginning and remember why we started something, what we believed and where we wanted to go because too often we lose our core focus and without focus we are destined to wander well off track.

Remember focus and values are not just repeating nicely crafted sentences they are all about enactment and doing, something we all need to be reminded of on a regular basis.

DREAM-DO-BE  DARE!

Some point a finger at politics, others culture, others economics and many say WWW!

So what is it?

How do we even begin to think about the change that is happening in our communication landscape?

I point you to Robert McChesney and John Nichols.

Robert McChesney and John Nichols, who have co-authored four books on the subject. Their latest, The Death and Life of American Journalism, offers a brisk eulogy for the corporate media system, a dismissal of the Internet’s power to revive it, and a call for what they see as a return to government-supported U.S. media. The stakes for American democracy are too high to leave to a “free market” that no longer wants to invest in journalism, McChesney and Nichols argue. If Americans really want public-interest journalism to survive in the 21st century, they must financially support it—to the tune of $35 billion annually, which they note is close to what some European nations spend on media subsidies on a per capita basis.

Maybe they are on to something?

How are we linking news and information to public interest?

Maybe the current media/communication model is wrong?

Maybe the need to hyper localize and pull support from the state is a reality that needs to be re-visited?

Maybe it is not about converging interests and means of distribution but divergence and aggregation?

The Dubai School of Government and Dubai Municipality have begun these very conversation in terms of one aspect of the revised media landscape, social media.

What is clear is there need to be community conversations that look at all sides of this rubiks cube and explore the permutations that work for us here and now regardless of what is going on in other parts of the world contingent on another set of circumstances.

And it seems to work!

Education Re-Boot with Sheena Reynolds

Nightline a Conversation

The what we will teach was the easy part, the how is still to come.

The big words in media today are free vs pay, convergent, online, citizen, social, web2.0, web, mobile.

Journalism and mass communication education is being turned on its head.

And I believe we needed to do this long ago.

Journalism and mass communication education is a lot like museum studies in that it is based on how can we preserve the past, both in content and technique, to keep a vocational path alive.

I have stopped counting the number of journalism and mass communication professors I have met who tell me about WHEN then worked for CNN, BBC, NBC, ABC, they all puff out their chests and stand on their tip toes.

Of course when you call them on the fact that they are no longer in the field and living as an observer reminiscing about the past they stumble on to how they are still in touch and contact with people in the field.

When a broadcast journalist tells me their sample reels are on tape and cannot be played as examples to students I get very worried.

The fact that the field of journalism and mass communication is in a total reinvention phase and that the bedrock of the vocation is being recast makes me wonder how relevant anyone teaching in the areas of journalism and mass communication can be if they themselves are not engaged in the field!

I teach in a communication and media sciences program and I am totally engaged in the media where I am teaching!

Is it possible we have things backwards in journalism and communication education?

Today in the program I teach in we have an internship at the end of an education program.

What if we were to turn the education process around?

What if the education was the internship with courses offered intensely, using web2.0 and beyond with a short academic stay at the end?

Why not?

Media is about engagement, communication, technology, community yet we effectively disengage students form the very community they are suppose to be joining.

Is this possible? One word, iTunesU!

Yes this internship to academy education model is possible if those teaching can pull themselves out of the museum model of journalism and communication education.

Why are we so averse to online teaching?

Why not hyper specialize our education?

Check out the funk university!

Bootsy Collins presents the world’s first Funk University for bass players of planet Earth. Construction of this online campus will conclude in June, with the first semester beginning on July 1, 2010.

Why are we pulling students away from the workplace when we could educate them in the workplace?

It is time, today, to reconsider the way we educate.

SU226EV2P5MZ

And I keep coming back to the idea of being young and foolish!

The people who we charge with making change, on the whole, are old, tired, jaded and pretty much worn out as far as creative thought goes! But the old goats have a whole bunch of experience.

The young on the other hand have no experience and pretty much no fear!

So, how do we change the world, start with something small of course, we need to bring the old and young together!

Sounds simple but it does not happen that often, and look at the mess we are in!

Gemma Sisia set up a school system in Tanzania that is the product of being young and foolish and well, it is amazing to see what has happened!

Free education for the poor and a chance to make a change in Tanzania for Tanzanians!

BUT if Gemma had asked a school head in Dubai about doing this what would they say?

IMPOSSIBLE, money, students, teachers, politics, can’t be done.

Gemma is the example of how being young and foolish and not having baggage can actually facilitate global change.

Yes global change!

But you need to start with what you can do, you  need to start!

Gemma Sisia and the school of St Jude, be amazed at the power of acting on your ideas!