Podcast som undervisning...

For øyeblikket tar jeg et 15 stp kurs ved høyskolen i Nesna som heter
Musikk og identitet på Nordkalotten. Dette kurset er bygd opp på en måte som er meget bra; lærerne er gode og stoffet er interessant. Den store forskjellen på dette kurset og andre kurs jeg tar ved høyskoler dette året er at dette kurset er basert kun på podcast.


Lærerne har spilt inn alt undervisningsmateriell og produsert gode podcaster. Nå er det ikke sikkert denne undervisningsformen passer for alle, men for min del er den midt i blinken. Det er sikkert ikke alle fag som passer på dette heller. Kurset består av 14 podcaster, hver på ca 20 minutter. Modulene er bygd opp på samme måten som et musikkprogram på radio, med to som prater om temaet blandet med musikk innimellom.

Hvis det nå skulle vise seg at denne undervisningsformen passer på flere fag, ville jeg tro at dette kan være fremtiden. Om man hadde slått sammen podcastundervisningen fra det nevnte musikkstudiet og det opplegget som brukes her på IKT avdelingen ved Nesna, ville man kanskje nærme seg noe som kunne vært den ideelle undervisningsformen for de fleste fag.

Hva er problemet med en slik undervisning da?, jo det største problemet, slik jeg ser det, vil helt klart være sosialiseringen blant barn og unge.
Det er sikkert mange fordeler og ulemper med et slikt opplegg. På den ene siden vil et slikt opplegg vil være mulig å kvalitetssikre på en annen måte enn undervisningen blir med den tradisjonelle undervisningen, på den annen side vil det være vanskelig for læreren å følge opp hver enkelt elev på samme måte som læreren klarer med tradisjonell undervisning.

Muligens passer det bedre på voksne studenter enn på barn. En blanding av tradisjonell undervisning og en webundervisning med podcast vil kanskje være løsningen.

Who will pay the journalists?

In Norway, and probably all other countries there are economic problems among the newspaper companies. More and more people read newspapers at no cost. Who wants to advertise in a paper newspaper if no one wants to buy it, and who wants to buy a newspaper if they can read the same for free on the internet?

Well this isn’t only a blac and white situation, I know. The situation is a little bit more nuanced. There are still a lot of people who wants to read newspaper in a paper edition. It will not be very wise to believe more people will go back to the paper edition.

My guess is that more people will use their laptop, cell phone, Ipad, etc to read their news. People will, of course, read news for free if they can.
Who will pay the journalists for their job? Maybe advertising, but who wants to read a newspaper with 3-4 popup advertisements for every article. According to the web page Mediebedriftene the advertising marked was reduced only in Norway with 625 mill kroner from 2008 to 2009.

So what is the solution then? Sack most of the journalists and let blogs and other stuff from private persons be the main contents?

Yes, thats probably a good idea. On one side this is maybe the only solution, normal people working as a journalist, costless for the newspaper company. On the other hand there will be hard to control the Source criticism.

There are a lot of issues to take care of in the future if this is THE FUTURE, one big problem can be the etical code of practice for the press - not necessary, the newspaper company can make rules, that to be able to write a blog, the blogger must use proper language, pictures, etc. If the blogger don't follow, that the blogger is banned from publishing anything. A lot of bloggers don't want to use their real name, and if the newspaper company accept them to use nicknames, the can of course use different nicknames.

Dagsorden - Agenda

In Norway we have a saying called dagsorden, that means the agenda the newspapers write about, or the topics in one or another news channel on the TV. This agenda can be a debate in other forum the next days, and if the case is big enough people in media debate the next week or the next month. It can even be changes in the government or changes laws of a nation.
In the modern society, the information society called the internet everything goes faster. If a newspaper or TV channels on the net post a news story to make this dagsorden, the journalists don’t have to wait until the next day to get a response on the news story. They can get a blog response within a minute, or a debate on the same page just a few seconds after the news story has been posted from their internet based newspaper. So to the problem as I see it, we have now something called minuttorden (it means the news story can get a follow up within minutes instead of a day).
Earlier the opponents could think 24 hours before they followed up the story, at least they could consider the following case before responding, they could also check out if the story is true.
With minuttorden, it is all about how fast you can give your response.
How fast can another journalist or another person do their source criticism?

Information Society - bad?

When I was young, we had our daily newspaper, and only one TV channel. And nothing happened, it was a boring world. No robberies, rapes, murders, etc. Maybe because it was a boring world, maybe it was because we never knew.
After the Information Society came creeping in to our kitchen, school, living room, office, etc the world turned out to be a cruel place to be.
Nowadays you see the robberies, rapes, murders, etc every day.

Did it happened before, or is this something that came with the Information Society.
I would say; yes, it happened probably before.

Did the Information Society increase the violence?
Let’s look at two examples:

Example 1:
Let’s say there is a school massacre in USA; Can this happen again in Finland, with almost same procedures, a few years later without the Information Society?

Example 2:
Let’s say there is a school massacre in USA. The media are full of stuff, how the person did it, why he did it, and how he did it. They even find the persons diary, describe everything they find here and print it in media. There are psychologists telling their story about how people like that think, and say it will happen again.
Can this happen again in Finland, with almost same procedures, a few years later with the Information Society?

Are we the one to bring up our children?

Earlier, the parents knew how to bring up their children, they learned from their parents, or from other parents. The children knew how to behave when they met other people on the street. Most children were nice and humble. And if they weren’t, the neighbors told their parents about their behavior.

Today, the children learn on the internet from God knows who, maybe from the information society.

If they meet other people, with their nicknames, how do they act?
Are they still nice and humble, or are they worse.
How does the parents know?

Let’s say they don’t behave as they should. Maybe they are troublesome, and do illegal things on the internet, and get caught; “I saw you did that SweetLittleAngel, I will tell your parents”
The one with the nickname “SweetLittleAngel” will probably laugh, “How? Are you going to call SweetBigAngel?”

Should we only give up on this one? Let the children be assholes on the internet as long as they still behave when they’re talking with their parents IRL. I think some children feel internet is a place where they can do whatever they want, without thinking consequence. The internet has probably no consequences.
I have given up, trying to follow up how my children behave on the internet...

A little digression:
The information society isn’t only bad for the parent-children relationship. At least parents don’t have to do those embarrassing “flowers and bees” conversations anymore. The children already learned everything they need to know from the information society.

Information Society - the concept an related notions

What is the information society?
I can look it up in Wikipedia to see what it is, I can look through our classroom to see if there are some explanations, or I can do what I think is most funny, just write something and use my reflections. When I am finished I can look it up.

My mind works best when I listen too Zappa, come on Over -nite sensation:

Well it has something to do with information, and when was information invented, and used in a society?
Maybe, when the two first persons made rumors about a third person, some million years ago was the start of the information society.
Or later, when the printing press was invented by Johann Gutenberg in 1447, at least that was a big step into the information society.
When the radio and later the television were invented, we are almost there. Computer, internet was even greater step on the way, and finally when the first spam message was sent in 1978 from DEC Marketing to every Arpanet address on the west coast of USA; we are in the information society.


I look it up:
Well, I was close, Wikipedia says:

An information society is a society in which the creation, distribution, diffusion, uses, integration and manipulation of information is a significant economic, political, and cultural activity.

Guess what? It is now! just now. We are the digital citizens of the world, my friends...

Are we all participating in the information society, yes in one way or another.
My auntie, who doesn’t have her own computer and of course don’t use the internet. She is a part of the information society, because she use a cell phone. In fact she is a digital citizen.

I look it up on my old encyclopedia: whatis.techtarget.com.
This is what the G7 (now G8) recognized a few years ago:

Progress in information technologies and communication is changing the way we live: how we work and do business, how we educate our children, study and do research, train ourselves, and how we are entertained.

And this is from a 1997 IBM report also quote from whatis.techtarget.com:

A society characterized by a high level of information intensity in the everyday life of most citizens, in most organizations and workplaces; by the use of common or compatible technology for a wide range of personal, social, educational and business activities, and by the ability to transmit, receive and exchange digital data rapidly between places irrespective of distance.

Well I’ve cleared out some things now, I’ll be back!

The paperless school!

Back in old the good old days before 1995, when only nerds knew about the internet. The school consisted of boring black board and cheap books.
When you should write about “how was your holiday” or whatever you should write about. You used a pencil, writing in a book, delivered to the teacher, just to wait a week or two, to see if your grade improved or not.

Here is the point:
I was thinking about, well maybe someone already use this, but what if the students used blog as the primary tool to hand in their work, the student could get feedback from the teacher, from other students, and even from the parents.
Or the blog could be set up so only the teacher could give feedback and the parents could look into the blog, from time to time. At least we will save the Amazon rain forest :)

Well, it was just a thought; maybe the paperless toilet will come before the paperless school….