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?

The simple answer is we go to  school to learn how to act on our curiosity.

We are all curious right?

School provides a means to shape that curiosity, and if the student steps back from credits and grades for a moment, by glimpsing into the unknown and allowing some form of action/reaction to occur the shaping of curiosity can take place.

Take our WEB2.0 technology today as a perfect example.

Writing, art, research, design, economics, business… the full scope of university studies are being recast in the blink of an eye.

Tomorrow is here today and the university is really the only place that almost anyone can engage with this technology pushed change that is just starting to demonstrate tomorrow today.

But to engage students and teachers need to be asking, “how can I use the poetry I am reading”  and not “why am I reading this anyway!”

Take Layar for instance. This is the application of all we teach at University.

About Layar
Layar is world’s leading Augmented Reality Platform on mobile. The Layar Reality Browser currently has more than 1.6 million users and comes pre-installed on tens of millions of phones from leading handset manufacturers and carriers by the end of the year. Over 500 layers are published on the Layar Platform with over 2000 in development. These layers are developed by the global community of 3000 Layar publishers and producers, and by leading brands and agencies. Layar is located in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The company is funded and has 32 employees.

The free Layar Reality Browser is available on Android devices and iPhone 3GS. The Layar Platform is available for anyone to create their own Augmented Reality experiences on.

Layar, see the world
http://www.layar.com

Find more information and screen shots at: http://site.layar.com/paid-layer-launching-partners/ and http://site.layar.com/paid-layer-screens

The point is this is a brand new way of applying the thought process that has existed since we could think and the education we are delivering as professors is as relevant to this application’s development as it is to writing press releases!

BUT ,and that is a big but, we need to create an environment that provokes what might simply be called entrepreneurial-applied-education or EAE for short!

In my own college we do it is some places on purposes and by accident in others.

If we work at creating a culture of reaching for the unknown tomorrow and embracing the technology that may help or hinder us in the long run there is no question we are setting ourselves up for good things, even if we stumble along the way.

But we need to start and in many cases jump into a paradigm shift that like where technology is taking us feel like a step into the unknown.

And when you look around there seems to be little discrimination when it comes to downloading this or that without considering the intellectual property rights that they hold!

Is it all about cost? Do we feel we are getting ripped off by software companies or movie studios?

If the cost was the issue I am sure we would all be sending what we believe to be a fair price to the distributor.

Hmmm… just a thought, why is that not something being thought of? A fair price forwarding service?

There is a huge black and grey market for pirated video/audio/software… what if we could pay what we believe to be fair for that pirated product to the original creator or distributor? A fair price distribution service?

Of course we do not condone copies and illegal downloads, but we know it is out there. If we operate on the assumption people are not born thieves and are willing to pay for things if the compensation is fair would that be a reasonable stop gap?

You pay a fair price BUT could be busted for being Robin Hood!

I think the issue is much larger than the finances it is really based the lessons in morality that we are giving the next generation of problem solvers and content creators.

The Globe and Mail has a great article on this whole idea of illegal downloads and the lessons learned.

So what do we do?

Follow the crowd or pay the price and be laughed at by the crowd?

I use the can I look at myself in the mirror approach!

“Illegal downloads aren’t stealing!”

Can I look myself in the mirror and believe it?

I have been following Cory Doctorow for some time.

Whether it is on BoingBoing or his own site Cory Doctorow is what we can call a switched on guy.

One of the most interesting rants from Cory I have read in a while is about the iPad!

I have posted a piece here BUT if you click the title it takes you to the full and worth your while piece on BoingBoing.

Why I won’t buy an iPad (and think you shouldn’t, either)

Cory Doctorow at 5:23 AM April 2, 2010

I’ve spent ten years now on Boing Boing, finding cool things that people have done and made and writing about them. Most of the really exciting stuff hasn’t come from big corporations with enormous budgets, it’s come from experimentalist amateurs. These people were able to make stuff and put it in the public’s eye and even sell it without having to submit to the whims of a single company that had declared itself gatekeeper for your phone and other personal technology.

Danny O’Brien does a very good job of explaining why I’m completely uninterested in buying an iPad — it really feels like the second coming of the CD-ROM “revolution” in which “content” people proclaimed that they were going to remake media by producing expensive (to make and to buy) products. I was a CD-ROM programmer at the start of my tech career, and I felt that excitement, too, and lived through it to see how wrong I was, how open platforms and experimental amateurs would eventually beat out the spendy, slick pros.

It is nice to read the other side of the coin from someone who is informed and articulate.

If you are getting on the technology train to be like the masses you are doing so for the wrong reason and are likely to resent the whole experience!

-twitter

-facebook

-myspace

-delicious

-Vimeo

-YouTube

These are just a few popular technology tools that are out there.

And then there are the hardware options!

Think of the person who tried twitter and not just calls it junk! That person got involved for the wrong reason 9 out of 10 times and their reaction is based on that and not the technology!

We are pushing too many people towards technology and they are pulling the other way!

But if you did not push and just kept making the technology work, we seem to be in a perpetual beta test, and actually managed to make the tech work around needs then the game changes.

The point is I love technology and change BUT only when there is a use for it in my routine! If there is no use then I opt out.

We don’t all need all technology and the sooner we realize this the better off we will be!

We are sitting on the break of an education revolution and the mobile environment is just the leading edge of the emerging wave.

This Fast Company slide show tells us a lot about the very young student and how technology is part of their life.

What about the University student?

How many students in a communication program or IT program or business program or design program are even thinking about apps?

How many of the students in the programs mentioned above are even thinking and experimenting with loading content into a bog to see what works and what does not work?

Some for sure but too few by far!

Why?

Are we professors to blame? Some for sure.

But the real issue from where I am sitting is the fact that apps and technology application is nothing more than experimenting with being a micro-entrepreneur!

Maybe the problem is students are not curious enough?

Maybe our education is now profoundly misaligned with the reality we live in?

Maybe students just don’t care?

Or maybe it is hard to see the possibility of applying technology to new frontiers of thinking because of the application in place that act as a blinder?

I think what we need to do as teachers is demand more of our students and push them towards possibility.

I think students need to realize that school is just a giant incubator for possibility and they can and should incubate ideas and to not is to miss a giant opportunity!

Content is important BUT context is also very important.

Do you really listen?

When you are listening do you get the point?

Or do you hear what you want to hear?

There are always alternatives and how we use them depends on us!

Watch this video, at least 3/4 of the way and you will see exactly what I am talking about.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The obvious answer is that I spend a portion of my day in the classroom, at the university level, and deal 1st hand with the education realities of the day.

I am also part of a group of educators that is int he process of fundamentally redesigning what we teach and more important HOW.

Which is a logical lead in to the question of what is is that students want from their education?

I am getting ready to teach a convergent media practicum where we are going to set up a morning information portal at Zayed University.  The working title is “Good Morning ZU“, why reinvent a wheel that is working well!

What we are going to do is combine video/audio/text all that may be housed in autonomous web2.0 services and put them in one place.

What I would really like to see is this project find a home on the students BlackBerry or iPhone and bypass the computer/blog delivery totally. We are not there just yet.

But what I am surprised about is how slow the group is to pick up the tech tools and use them!

The reality I am seeing is that we are talking web2.0 and that takes us to facebook and twitter BUT when we look at the other more detailed content creating options the youth uptake is stalled.

So, my question to the youth of today is very simply what do you really want when it comes to web2.0, education, practical activity… what do you want?

Technology is great,don’t get me wrong, BUT we are failing in a epic way to manage the use of it in a manner that is healthy!

And the classic example of our failure to manage and live with technology is email!

We have lost control of out time and the reality of interactions, on a personal and professional level!

We are living in a crisis of expectations, unreasonable expectations.

Email, by design, is fast, immediate and rich in volume.

But what is happening is we are being forced, by technology, to be hyper connected to issues instead of taking time away to think and ponder a response.

Email gives the illusion of immediacy and to not answer as fast as a message is received seems to indicate some level of inferiority or disregard yet a fast response may be fraught with error and short sightedness.

Our communication technology is new and we need to re-educate ourselves, schools, industry and society in general about how to use these tools for their greatest advantage.

It is great to learn, apply, use technology on the fly BUT at some point we need to reflect and rethink the communication process and that point is now.

To be very honest the use of new communication technology excites me!

I love the way Twitter, #jamesed_me, allows me to communicate links, materials and ideas to my students.

Facebook creates another forum for interaction, especially if the group is protected.

Livestream allows me to actually film and stream the content of my classes.

I know some students are using the tech tools I am throwing open to them and some are not.

But does the use of tech tools to open more lines of communication make the class any better?

I know I spend more time on the back channel with my students and I seem to get a sense, very fast, if they are keeping up or not, this can only be a good thing.

But if everyone in the class is not on twitter am I disadvantaging some students who fail to be part of the complete discussion?

I think we are in a transition phase.

There is still more buy in to be had with tech tools for communication and we need to figure out where the physical and cyber lines cross.

I am glad to be part of the process trying to figure that mix out.