Text has dominated learning for 500 years, but no longer…
Here’s a post I meant to link to last week but never got round to. Jeff Jarvis notes how Google plan to include video, photos, and news into their search results. He says:
This promotes other media to the exalted rank of text… You should be using whatever media best communicates information in the form the user wants.
I completely agree. Although he’s talking about news, I would argue the same applies to here at ChinesePod and SpanishSense. It’s the end of the Gutenberg era. As is happening with news, no longer does text dominate the learning landscape. Now, audio and other forms of multi-media are all on an equal footing.
There now exists a whole new variety of tools and channels with which to learn and communicate. Each one of them can add depth to the input, add more ‘dimensions’ to the learning. Crucially, it’s up to the user to decide which forms suit him best, to consume it on his own terms. Jarvis continues:
One thing I’m starting to learn doing the PrezVid blog is that one can use different media strung together to tell a story: text, then an embedded video, then an original video, with links all about. It’s not having text here and video over there and audio up there. It’s about using all the tools appropriately at all times.
Although we’ve only used video on a limited basis, his point applies. This is what is called ‘blended learning’ - using every available channel to ram home the messasge. Even within a given channel you can do this: the podcasts can be consumed as ‘dialog only’ or ‘with commentary’. Transcripts, exercises, etc, are obvious additions here, but so too is discussion, Q&A, spoken practice, etc. It’s all blending and it all adds depth. (Video will come, down the road.)
Ken Carroll
I certainly am quite excited about innovations in communication technologies, knowledge distribution, availability of information, new ways of learning etc.
On the other hand, I suspect that this will help to increase the (digital) divide between people with access to the latest tools AND infrastructure. (There is a saying in German: The devil always tends to shat on the biggest heap.) You need a certain income to afford the machines, the access to e.g. the internet - and sometimes you just have to live in the right place with such things not being geographically distributed in an equal fashion. (I won’t bring up the number of people worldwide without access to a phone line, let alone an internet connection. Even in some places in China, your mobile connection fails between big cities.)
In addition to that, I fear the increase of the number of people unable to process more than one page of text in the future. I fear the decline of a culture where people read and ENJOY it.
I certainly love books. I have tried ebooks on my palm and was somewhat disappointed. I still don’t read longer texts on a computer screen.
MAYBE, projects like One Laptop per Child (http://www.laptop.org/) will help to address the issues I mentioned first.
As for the latter issues, I am not certain.
Joahcim,
I see the politics as a separate issue. Just becasue we cannot ensure that everyone gets access doesn’t mean we shouldn’t develop it. (In the same way, I would argue, that we shouldn’t stop developing medicines even though we know we can’t give them to everyone on the planet who needs them.)
How we get the new technology into the hands of the world’s poor is a trickier issue. I am convinced, however, that most change comes about, not as a result of giovernmental or UN decisions, but through individuals taking action for themselves. This week, lots of Afriacan heads of state are in Shanghai to talk about developing their economies as China has managed to do. Apparently the message they are hearing is: “Reform agriculture first. Just get out of the way and let people grow and sell the produce. The economy wil grow from there.”
I guess I have faith in people. People have been incredibly resourceful learners in the past. I’m not worried that we will all be so zombified by technology that we cannot read more than a page of text.
Ken Carroll