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!)