I think it’s most useful to take the long view here when thinking about how to adopt any kind of new technology into education.  There can be good and bad applications of any form of communication in learning, even face-to-face communication.  The standard lecture format really stinks in many instances because it can be so darn boring, even for us analog types who really enjoy listening to a good speaker.  Not everyone learns well that way, and sometimes that method actually inhibits learning.  Likewise, the use of television in the classroom can be good, if used the right way.  Courses taught remotely via television have, for years, been beneficial to those who are geographically (or otherwise logistically) separated from a place of learning (remember “Sunrise Semester”?).   A recent U.S. Dept. of Education study on on-line learning shows that students who take on-line courses often do much better than those who sit in a large classroom for the same course, and that those who take a hybrid course using both online and face-t0-face communication do best.  Using the Internet for formal educating seems to be gaining acceptance, despite years of negative opinions on the matter (even by me, I must admit).  These things take time.  It’s hard to break old modes of learning, especially by educators like me who like to do it the way we’re used to doing it.

Let’s be realistic, though.  We have to recognize that our communication technologies and styles have been changing for centuries.  These technologies change so much of who we are, and how we see the world, and we don’t keep up well in all areas of our  social/civic lives.  In particular, our education methods are far behind our modes of communication a lot of the time.  It’s not entirely the fault of educators.  They’ve been trained to use certain models of learning that keep them in tight communicative control of the learning situation, even with differentiation for learning styles (a hats off to special education teachers here).  The revolutionary digital era that we’re enmeshed in is changing us very quickly and it’s hard to think about having  everything change with it.

But not everything has to change, and not that quickly.  However,  cell phone technology ought to be seriously considered as one of many communicative tools that could be used in some education settings some of the time.  Note that I’m not suggesting it replace anything else being used right now.  I think that, as a mode of communication, cell phones are very engaging for students of many ages who take to it like ducks to water.  Texting, twittering and surfing the net are ways in which youth and many adults engage with the world.  Let’s not ban it altogether in their learning, but try to embrace it somehow where it makes sense, or at least try to experiment with it a bit.  That will mean we have to give up some of our dyed in the wool ideas about what learning settings are to look like.  And I don’t mean just learning settings where we’re teaching about technology.  I mean all learning settings, from mathematics, to ELA, to history, to even home economics (is that still taught?).  

I challenge you to stop some of your short-term fluster for a bit and put some deep thought into what a different paradigm of learning might look like.  For a short time, try not to worry about which cell phones will be used in the classroom, who will pay for the service, how will we get the DOE of wherever to change their policies, how will we keep control of the kids when they can’t pay attention to us because they’re so attached to their hand-held devices, etc., etc.  

I challenge you to think about changing your habits as educators, parents and even students.  Maybe there’s a hybrid method of learning we can consider where different types of communication can be used for different learning purposes.  We’re going to try it at LAMPcamp next week when we get to work with middle-school aged kids from Brooklyn who are attending a YMCA camp that we’ve been invited to.  Instead of having the campers check their cell phones at the door, we’re going to welcome their sidekicks and phones into the room, and we’re going to have the kids text us, and, most importantly, we’re going to try to have them really talk to us about their communication lives.  We’re psyched.  We have no idea how it’s going to go, but we’ll definitely keep you posted.   

–Katherine G. Fry

I forgot how much fun it is to do show and tell.  As a first grader I loved to bring something special from home to show my classmates:  something I made, something I thought was interesting, or sometimes any old thing at all, just so I could command their attention while I nattered on enthusiastically at the front of the classroom about the little bag or rock or book I brought from home.  What a rush that was.

 The LAMP got to do a show and tell of our own last week at Media Conversations IV, a media literacy/media education conference held at several venues in Manhattan from June 4-6.  Our show and tell was at Fordham, Lincoln Center from 1-3 pm on Saturday afternoon.  Conference organizers Lance Strate of Fordham University and David Walczyk of Pratt Institute invited us to be part of a conference that included pretty much a who’s who of media literacy, media education and media ecology scholars in the New York City and surrounding area. 

 We just loved telling our audience what the LAMP has been doing for the past two years, and showing them a selection of videos from our media scavenger hunt, our advertising, documentary and news workshops, and from other special events (all available on our youtube channel).  We even got to whine a bit about the challenges we’ve faced trying to bring an enlightened, reasoned media literacy education to our fellow New York families, educators and the like. 

 On the one hand our show and tell was a great way to strut our stuff for educators for whom I have deep respect, and on the other it was a wonderful chance to reflect on all that we’ve been able to accomplish on a shoe-string. 

 Our particular show and tell was flanked by two spectacular panels that same day at Fordham.  The morning panel consisted of panelists working on media literacy issues internationally.  It was a most impressive presentation and discussion about the media literacy work Hofstra University’s Paul Mihailidis is doing at the Salzburg Institute, that Holly Morganelli of Pratt and Sister Mary Bosco Amakwe of Seton Hall have done in Africa, and that Jordi Torrent is doing via the Media Literacy Education Project through the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations. 

 The panel following ours included esteemed media literacy pioneer Renee Hobbs of Temple University, Dan Latorre, Martin Levinson, Bill Petkanas, and Thom Gencarelli.  With their opening remarks, the five of them, an interesting mix of academics, consultants and a former President of the Institute of General Semantics, set the stage for an inspiring philosophical conversation about the direction of media growth, how we talk about and think about media across generations, and how all of us, as educators in one sense or another, face amazing challenges in our quest to come to terms with what media are and what they will become. 

 I was flattered that the LAMP had the chance to showcase our media-literacy-on-the- ground amongst this stellar group.  What a rush.

Katherine G. Fry

Another recent reminder that news as we traditionally conceive of it is losing the battle with our current economic/social/technological circumstances is the New York Times report that in many TV markets news studios are either pairing up with local newspapers or are sharing resources (equipment and talent) with other competing studios.  Or they’re doing both.  More and more news businesses are losing money because advertisers don’t have many advertising dollars to invest these days.  And they pay for most of the news we get via the traditional outlets such as TV and newspapers/news magazines.  They even pay for a lot of web news content.  

Pair that situation with the fact that , for a longer period of time, journalists, journalism educators and public advocates of all types have been concerned about what happens when everyone is a journalist, and whatever anyone posts through any digital platform is considered news and treated as news by any number of fractured audience groups.  What happens to cohesion?  What happens to journalistic standards like fairness, balance and truth?  What happens to people getting good information that they can use to make sense of the world?  What happens to shared information?  What happens to making lots of money from the news?

Maybe news shouldn’t be a business at all.  Seems hard to imagine since news has followed a business model in this country for literally centuries.  Journalists have been trained, either in school or on the job at newspapers, in newsmagazines, at radio stations, on television and for many websites (sponsored by the CNN, MSNBC, FOX, NY Times, etc.  brands) to create news that will sell audiences to advertisers.  News is a product.  Even the news for PBS and NPR is a product fit for the public broadcast brand, though less so than within the for-profit world.  The point is that now we need a new paradigm for thinking about news and information. 

The digital realm is forcing us into a new paradigm deeply, though the current economic situation is making us feel it more acutely at present. Unfortunately paradigm isn’t a word that sits well with many people because it, accurately, suggests a revolution in thinking, then practice.  Maybe we’ll just go with model for right now.  That’s a more palatable word, especially for those who think like business folk.  The business model for news is on the way out.  It’s time to face that fact.  What a journalist does is going to change.  What a journalist is will change as well.  Maybe we won’t have the word journalist eventually.

But I’m taking a very long view, as I prefer.  Starting with baby steps, let’s consider the proposal by long-time journalist and journalism educator Len Sellers.  In a recent interview published in Miller-McCune Magazine, he’s suggesting that the solid sources of accurate, responsible, cohesive reporting ought to be centered in the nation’s leading journalism education university centers pairing up with big money foundations.   In other words, the centers for solid reporting will be  journalism students and their seasoned mentors working at universities which are funded by foundations, not corporations.  This is a shift in the business model, and will change the relationship of advertising dollars to audiences.  The news generated from these sources could be created for all platforms, and more time could be spent preparing in-depth investigative reporting.  Hallelujah.

I’m on board with that kind of news future, but I think it would necessarily be paired with a good slew of citizen journalists doing their own investigative, local, even micro reporting across many different platforms as well.  News and information have to come from lots of different sources.  Everyone needs to be a consumer as well as participant.

And that’s where I give my spiel for news literacy.  No matter what the paradigm–or model–everybody’s got to know how to evaluate news and information, and everyone’s go to know how it’s put together, how the arguments and facts are arranged to convey meaning, whether using words, images, sounds or various combinations of all these.

Maybe some will still make money from news in this transformed news and information order, but many will not.  It will require a shift in thinking and practice.  But that’s where we’re headed.  In the long view.

–Katherine G. Fry

Susan Boyle certainly does have talent.  Her voice is beautiful.  Everyone was buzzing about her and especially about the video of her surprising the studio audience and panel of judges who, by the rolling eyes and snarky comments during her introduction, were expecting a train wreck of sorts themselves.  That she surprised them is quite an understatement, by the way.  They were shocked that a woman of her age, who looks the way she looks, could sing…. really sing.

The obvious comments here are that we should all be ashamed of that audience and those judges–and ourselves–for assuming that those who deserve to win on a TV program showcasing artistic talent should be physically beautiful by the standards set by over 100 years of visual media.  That we should never again assume that someone–a woman–who is 47 (gasp!) should dream of hitting it big through her talent and determination, despite the fact that she looks so completely like someone’s ordinary, middle aged mom.  Shame on all of us for our superficiality and our emphasis on a woman’s looks and youth.  We’ve all learned our lesson.

Of course, we haven’t.  That’s why this video has been given so much buzz.  Susan Boyle’s appearance on British TV, and her subsequent big win, will fade away quickly and she will be replaced on the program with more young, skinny, booby, plastic women who may be able to sing a little, but who don’t have nearly the raw talent that she does.

But all of that is not really what I was wrapped up in as I watched the video.  Though angry with Simon Cowell and all the rest of them for that matter, I was mostly amazed at the very fact of the video.  Who set up  those cameras that focused on Susan?  There was at least one backstage and one on-stage.  Why do we see such deliberate, focused footage of her backstage before she goes on?  And who were those guys waiting back there with her? Do all of the participants get the same coverage?  It all seemed a bit rehearsed to me, like a dramatization of an actual event.  Or the staging of a would-be event.  And what about that song, “I Dream A Dream?”

I’m not saying it was a dramatization of a would-be event.  Clever editing can create the illusion of events that didn’t exactly happen the way they are presented later on Youtube (or any other video venue).  There was something weird about those first cut-away shots to the audience and the panelists.  We were all visually set up to be surprised by the amazing transformation of this ugly duckling into a beautiful swan once she opened her mouth.

But as one media scholar pointed out, it wasn’t actually she who was transformed.  It was us, the audience.  She stayed the same.  We were transformed from a culture/media-shaped expectation that she would embarrass herself because she wasn’t physically fit to be on that stage, to an audience appreciative of her talent IN SPITE OF her physical shortcomings.  

This video on Youtube made us all into fools.  Or did it?

 Today’s New York Times Styles section article about Susan Boyle just put us right back into our naughty, looks-obsessed ways.  The article deals with the necessity, even the science, of stereotyping, and how snap judgments are made about people, things and situations because it has some sort of survival value that goes way back in time.  No room for history here.  In that article, Susan Boyle herself is quoted as saying that, with regard to people judging you on your looks, “There’s nothing you can do about it.”

All of this ignores how we’ve been shaped by our media.  To make a short point from what could be a very long diatribe, visual media such as television (and digital extensions like Youtube) have been training us for years to value appearance so that it becomes center stage.  Ask any young (or old) woman and she’ll tell you,  the pressure is on to look not just good, but hot.  

It wasn’t always that way.  Really.  Maybe that was a long time ago.  But Susan Boyle and her beautiful voice are around right now.  Let’s see how long we give her visual media attention that’s NOT ultimately about how she looks.  Oh, that’s right, we never did.

–Katherine G. Fry

I think that information speed and overload have been vexing us for quite some time.  Twitter is not entirely to blame.  It’s only the most recent service in a long line of available media that have, gradually, allowed us access to more and more information in shorter bits.  And along the way we’ve been changing, for better or for worse, depending upon who you talk to.  It started with books, you know.  From there it’s just been one long road to more information in different forms–print, electronic, digital.   

I won’t go into the long, sordid, fascinating history here.  But it’s worth taking a long look back at developments in communication media to put into perspective the fears and widespread warnings that come with each new media development (Socrates was sure that writing signaled the end of Democracy).  A colleague, George Rodman, and I (briefly) cover the history of developing media in the Western world and accompanying changes in sense of individuality in the first chapter of an upcoming anthology entitled Technology and Psychological Wellbeing (shamelessly I plug) published by Cambridge University Press (you can pre-order it at Amazon.com). 

Most times, in my professorial mode of thinking, I can take solace in the fact that we’re in the midst of yet another change in communication media, that the warnings and laments of doctors, scientists and others is just part of the transition to new modes of communication that do, in fact, change us.  Sometimes, though, on a personal level, I feel too quickly overwhelmed by the changes in communication media.  I long for more contemplation, and less obligation to the electronic masters which I’ve allowed to re-shape how I work and even how I think.

Specifically, I’m finding it hard to find time to just think and write (at least write without using an excessive amount of parentheses, which indicates, I think, a need to display my  inner dialogue while I write. Or maybe it’s just insecurity.  Or maybe I’ve just grown to love parentheses).  Personally, I’m too terribly busy reading and responding to emails to actually compose my thoughts about communication media or anything else.  The emails come fast and furious and they demand my attention all day long.  I feel as if I’m obligated to jump instantly on the request of anyone who emails me for information, with a question or with information.  Soon my entire work day has been swallowed up by email demons.  I realize, of course, that  it’s my own fault for not carving out certain times in the day when I’m online doing email, and leaving other chunks for more contemplative communication-related activities (after all, I am a communication professional!).  I myself have  allowed the electronic emailing task to shape how I work.  I’ve not stepped away enough.

That said, I’m willing to concede that in five to ten years my work habits in relation to electronic media might be completely different.  All of ours might. By then I may find new ways to catch up with emerging communication media.  Or I might drop out altogether.  

There’s always the allure of a digital-free bike trek across one country or another (talk about a completely different way to get information).  But by then everything will be wireless, anyway.  

–Katherine Fry

What Cole W. Camplese, the instructor of a group of Penn State graduate students,  is thinking is that students need to engage.  We’re all trying to figure out what the onslaught of digital communication, and social networking in particular, means for our everyday living.  Those of us who spend many classroom hours with young adults know that digital media are changing our students who use them all the time.  We can’t expect to reach them the same way we did even a decade ago.   Clearly, the old education models aren’t always working, and inevitably are changing because of digital media.  I give credit to professors on the forefront of experimentation in the classroom with the tools of discourse that  students are engaging in outside the classroom.  

True, it’s hard to imagine how a focused discussion or imparting of information can take place when everyone in the class is sending quick bursts of thought in short text messages via their phones or laptops.  Obviously, what Professor  Camplese wants is for students to comment on the materials being covered, not writing about things personal or irrelevant to the class topic at hand.   But the technicalities of making the running stream of tweets available on screen for all to see, and analyze, throughout the class period bring difficulties: in setting up and in managing the stream throughout a fixed period of time.  How can so many things happen at once?  Will students actually be learning anything worthwhile?

Though this seems odd and certainly unprecedented, I admire Camplese’s approach.  After all, engaged students are happier, more attentive and more apt to learn. And those in the classroom who are too shy to speak might not be too shy to tweet.  Imagine if all of the students were building on each other’s ideas and comments–then had a recorded stream of their comments to look back on in subsequent class periods?  This could be a new model for classroom engagement.  Or it could be a huge bust.  Regardless, it’s worth a try.

Last Friday, April 3, I gave a workshop at the day-long Northeast Media Literacy Conference at the University of Connecticut at Storrs.  Near the end of our workshop, which I called “Media Literacy is Medium Literacy,” participants and I engaged in a discussion about the gap between generations when it comes to using digital media for social networking.  They, like I, grumbled loudly about Twitter.   Yet despite my personal feelings about tweeting, I told them, I can appreciate it as a form of communication highly valued by some.  I can be personally uninterested, even somewhat annoyed, but professionally interested in the means and uses of this form of contact.  We agreed, by the end of our discussion, that it’s best to try to understand technologies and services like Twitter because there’s no going back.  And the ways in which digital communication will (and has already) change learning and education requires new ways for teachers to think about their role in the whole educational process.  That is something I find very interesting.

It’s a time of experimentation, of open-mindedness, and of skepticism.  Ask any professor — it’s always a good time for skepticism.  But we shouldn’t let it get in the way of our open-mindedness.

If I get my technical act together I may try it in the classroom next fall.  But don’t–ever– expect me to tweet about my mundane personal stuff.  Not even I care about some of it.  

–Katherine G. Fry

The kids had a ball playing a board game for half the time, then got restless and played hide and seek for the other half. They loved it, and didn’t want the lights to turn back on at 9:30.

The biggest kick for them? The melted wax from the candles. Go figure.

We grown-ups had fun just watching them from the couch. There was a lot of laughing, a log of negotiating, and some bad feelings.  Well, all that might have happened with the lights on, too.  They’re kids.

I think we should do this at least once a month.

What did YOU do?

The LAMP will be switched completely off during earth hour this coming Saturday evening, March 28^th, from 8:30-9:30 pm.  You’ve probably already heard about this event.  It’s a global initiative of the World Wildlife Fund, a leader in worldwide conservation.  There’s a whole website devoted to earth hour:  www.EarthHourUS.org.  Check it out.                          

We’re participating in this important global event in our own way, by encouraging people to turn off all their lights AND their electronic communication devices for one hour.   We’re all about media and media literacy, and we don’t think people stop and consider often enough how much their lives revolve around the use of the cell phones and computers.  A little electronic media deprivation is a good time to contemplate your participation in the world of electronic communications.

Some organizations are encouraging people to participate in earth hour by turning off their lights for an hour, and suggesting that during that same hour people use digital communication devices to talk about earth hour with others.  

Huh?  What about the carbon emissions from that use of electricity?   I think we need to be really serious  about earth hour.  

We’re going all the way.  We’re encouraging everyone to go without electronic lights and communicate without their electronic devices for one hour.  We believe this will raise our collective awareness not only about how much we all participate in carbon emissions production with our use of electricity, but also about how much we rely on electronic communication media, like cell phones, the Internet, and PDAs, to connect with others.  We want people to turn it all off and communicate for awhile in other ways:  discussions, storytelling, reading aloud by candlelight…

Then, when it’s all over, by all means, come back here to our blog and add a comment about how you spent earth hour.  Or send us a tweet, or visit us on Facebook. We’d love to hear how you and/or your family participated, your thoughts about the earth, electronic communication, and anything else related to earth hour.

I, personally, will be hosting a 5th grade birthday sleep-over with 9 children total on Saturday evening.  How will we do it without electronics for an hour?  There will be food and candles and probably lots of silliness.  And I’ll post here how it all went.

We are delighted to be a part of this event, and hope you will be, too.

Don’t forget to turn it all off for a little while.

 –Katherine

Cramer, exposed as a liar at best, and big finance fraud whore at worst, squirmed a little bit as he was forced to watch clips of himself  admitting on camera–though not on his program–to understanding various back-room financial shenanigans, and to misleading audience by leaving out crucial pieces of information.  Those clips and his actual on-air admissions to Stewart laid bare what the agenda of “Mad Money” has been all about.  Under the guise of financial journalism, Cramer’s been shilling for finance biggies like Bear Stearn’s and their ilk while pretending, on CNBC, to be looking out for the best financial interests of us little guys who rely on information from financial “journalists” to give us the information we need to not only understand the financial markets and economy at large, but also to make good decisions about our personal finances.  But no one’s blamed guys like Cramer for contributing to the financial dump we’re in except Stewart.

Who else but Stewart goes after this kind of stuff in journalistic interviews?  The Daily Show is media literate in one sense because Jon Stewart understands how to use the format of news programming, the conventions of journalism, and the attitude of journalists themselves to uncover and critique the same.  But he does it in such a way that it’s both funny and brilliant.  And, on top of that, he interviews better and bolder than almost all other journalists on television. He understands the form, shows us the form, and improves on the form.  He’s making us more savvy news watchers.  This is a valuable form of media literacy.

So why did Cramer agree to go head to head with Stewart on The Daily show in the first place?  My guess is that his ego couldn’t take the beating Stewart had been giving him for several nights before he went on.  He was smart enough to understand that an invitation from Stewart, who’s cultural cache is as solid as his following, was to be jumped at.  But he wasn’t smart enough to get that Stewart is smarter than he is, and he doesn’t get the purpose of the program, which goes way beyond news parody.  Watching Cramer perform on the Daily Show, you’re convinced that the guy is used to having to dance around a bit, lie at the drop of a hat, and keep acting as if he’s without responsibility, even seconds after he’s admitted fault.  A guy like that isn’t going to understand the world empathically, the way Stewart does.  He just may not understand what happened to him on the program the other night.  He’s just not smart enough.  

But Stewart is smart enough, and clearly concerned enough about how the rest of us get and use information about finances and markets.   We can’t get down to Wall Street everyday, and the vast majority of us don’t have insider information on trading.  By exposing this face of the financial mess, Jon Stewart is giving us another dose of media literacy–on the finance front.  He’s not afraid to show us that CNBC isn’t doing it’s job, that they’ve not been reporting the whole thing, that lots of news organizations are guilty of the same thing.  It’s not just bad mortgages that have created this financial mess.  It’s bigger than that, deeper than that.  In the end it reaches back to the quality and the format of information we get. 

Our only safeguard is understanding how the media operate.  And that includes why, when, and for whom.  That’s a big chunk of media literacy.  Thank goodness someone in media gets that.

–Katherine G. Fry

What I know is that this technological signal change signals a bigger cultural change.  This is the end of the television era.  The television era started in the late 1940s, when analog television broadcast stations, and specifically the network system, began in earnest to take over for the radio network that dominated broadcasting in the U.S. for about two decades prior to that.  Radio had to change, and began to narrowcast, serving a very different function once television became the broadcast medium that became a kind of cultural glue binding the country with shared visual programming, and more.

Over the air broadcast television, free to anyone in this country who owned a set, changed news, changed advertising, changed politics, changed family habits, changed us.  Network broadcast TV defined us for decades.  But that’s all over now, and it didn’t happen over night.  We’ve been headed in this direction since cable began.  We’re now residing in the digital era. 

Completely digitized signals, in the works for a long time, allow for interactive viewing, sharper visuals, and more communication options.  Television will soon be more like the Internet.   This is a huge change, making obsolete many television sets that only receive analog signals.  Sure, the converter box will work for awhile, but all sets now manufactured will be digital only.  The last time something similar happened to broadcast signals was when the government mandated radio stations to broadcast in AM and FM to encourage development of the FM spectrum. 

But this is even bigger.  We’ll still have television, but it’s not going to be the same technology, and it’s not going to serve the same cultural function.  Television has meant shared programming through over-the-air broadcasting.  Broadcasting was analog, narrowcasting and interactivity are digital.  Digitization will shape us in very different ways.  

This is definitely the end of an era.

–Katherine G. Fry