I make no apology and I have not used a Nokia or any other smartphone to make any comparison.

I love my phone because as a phone it works BUT as a multimedia tool it also works.

The big seller for me was SIMPLICITY.

This technological tool makes complex tasks easy and painless.

Take Nightline, the radio program I host.

I needed a new intro for the podcast and simply didn’t have time to get into the studio to record the intro.

And if I had there would have been editing and transferring issues, a 10 second job would have taken 30 minutes.

What do I do?

I sit in a closet, really, and record the intro on my iPhone and send it to myself to be added to the podcast!

Broadcast quality recording on a phone that is simple to transfer!

Listen to the iPhone recorded intro, pretty good if I do say so myself.

When I talk about SIMPLICITY the iPhone is another example.

SIMPLICITY is about taking complex ideas and/or tasks and making them accessible to anyone!

Why is this idea so hard to make stick?

The issue is how the iPhone might reboot ENGAGEMENT in education, and in this case we are talking about University education.

The goal was simple!

The initiative’s goal was to explore how the always-connected iPhone might revolutionize the classroom experience with a dash of digital interactivity. Think web apps to turn in homework, look up campus maps, watch lecture podcasts and check class schedules and grades. For classroom participation, there’s even polling software for Abilene students to digitally raise their hand.

And it seems to be working!

Of course the big question is do our schools, globally, want to run ahead and be teaching and living in the manner that students are living?

“For us, it isn’t primarily about the device,” Rankin said. “This is a question of, how do we live and learn in the 21st century now that we have these sorts of connections?…. I think this is the next platform for education.”

What makes iPhone applications work is they are the way computing once was, simple and to the point.

Somehow the general way we use a computer has lost focus and my iPhone has brought it all back.

More to come!

I believe that journalism is on the brink of becoming irrelevant as a field of study NOT because students are abandoning the field of study, but because the professors and practitioners of the trade are unable to grasp, see, live, adapt to the rapidly changing environment the news lives in.

YES THINGS ARE CHANGING.

YES WE ALL NEED TO RE-CONCEPTUALIZE.

TOO BAD THE OLD GUARD IS PUTTING UP A WALL OF PENS AND PAPER, I HOPE THE SHOW IS A S GOOD AS LES MISSERABLES!

So what do we need to do?

The solution is in your hand and staring you in the face!

We need to get our students totally involved in the journalism/storytelling process as it exists at the grassroots level.

I would call this pocket journalism.

Almost all  students are in the possession of a Nokia/Blackberry/IPhone or variation of the ever common smartphone and they could use these as reporting and publishing tools if they knew how.

So lets show them!

Why can’t the old guard professors show the new guard the way forward combing the old and new?

We can have a print, audio, video presence tomorrow on every campus around the world, ok lets start here in the UAE that is manageable, REALLY tomorrow, if we embrace the idea that technology enables grassroots journalism, not to be confused with instant or citizen journalism.
We have a new journalism and it is hand held and App driven.

The sites below are the new tools of journalism.

www.audioboo.fm
www.twitter.com
www.12seconds.tv
www.youtube.com
www.facebook.com

By using a smartphone and only the smartphone we can create an instant, not to be confused with point and shoot journalism, media presence on the global stage! Students can talk to students, the displaced can talk to the displaced and leaders can talk to all and explain what is happening, why and how things will be resolved.
Journalism goes from being near history to immediate history.
What do we need? Build the living evolving course that applies our writing, research, design and thinking skills to the modern art of journalism.

Who is teaching the course?

Where is the course being taught?

Who are the students?

Tick tock, time to get activated the iPhone has changed everything when it comes to education and specifically journalism education time to get in front of the wave!