Hannah Rudman Gets IT

Blending the traditional with online… media

The Pew Research Centre for People and the Press have released a new report that proves how people blend online and traditional media.  While traditional media has declined (newspaper readers has dropped from “40% to 34% in the last two years alone”), it certainly hasn’t been abandoned. In the report we’re introduced to new terms: integrators, net-newsers, traditionalists (largest group), and disengaged. We’re still at that interesting crossroads of serving the the function of the old with new media and beginning to recognize new opportunities.

Blending the traditional with online… learning

I’ve just started studying via a MOOC (Massively Open Online Course). Via the University of Manitoba, I’m studying Connectivism and Connective Knowledge online with other students globally. Here’s a short presentation by George Siemens (an academic whose work I’ve been following for about 3 years) introducing massive open online courses (MOOCs) . The University of British Columbia has started its own version of the TED conference, recognising the value in sharing knowledge for free, and via short videos. The arts sector has so much content of value, and could do well to present it like this: watch this space!

(Even traditional academic institutions - such as Oxford in this case - have begun contributing to a research base on the dynamics of distributed networks for information creation and sharing. Its arguable whether we need “serious academic research” to tell us what we’ve known for years (that distributed networks are used for “sharing, contributing and collaborating”). How antiquated the findings seem!)

Nokia has announced that it will be launching pre-pay and pay-as-you-go base model phones that will carry its unlimited music service. In a bid to compete with Apple’s iPhone and iTunes, Nokia’s “Comes With Music” pre-pay phone will allow the download of up to 2.1m tunes - onto the mobile deveices and computers. After a year, users have to buy a new Nokia device to keep the ability to download, but the older devices will still play all the tracks downloaded. The idea behind the service, which is being launched first in the UK, is to put some revenues back into th music industry. The Comes With Music marketing is aimed at parents who want to legitimise their childrens’ music - expect a few demands for the Nokia 5310 to be under the Christmas Tree. However, don’t expect to be able to have the phone on contract - all 5 UK operators have refused to carry the phone, so pay as you go SIM only are the only options.

Merce Cunningham dancer Daniel Madoff has constructed a very nifty website for touring dancers and their fans. He explains:

“Touringdancers.com is targeted specifically at touring dance companies and their audiences. It features a combined company calendar in which the viewer can see multiple company calendars side by side. The benefit for dancers is that they can locate their fellow dancers and friends. The benefit for audiences is that they can locate their favorite companies abroad. They can even search by city if they know they will be in a specific foreign town at a specific time.

The site also features a forum section, where anyone can write about his or her favorite places to eat, sites to see, or things to do in highly toured cities. We strongly encourage readers to add their own postings so all users benefit from each other’s expertise about one city or another. This is a chance not only for dancers to exchange ideas, but for people interested in dance to have a positive effect on the people who bring them so much joy.

The site is also interested in adding new dance companies to the schedule so it can become a larger resource. “