Old Media

I decided to check out Wil 's Blog, and one of his most recent posts caught my interest (Mourning Old Media...).  In this blog entry Wil discussed the transformation of "old" Media into new "digital" media.  He referred to some methods of editing and publishing that really can make someone feel old.  For example the old fashioned ditto machines and copy-editing using an old green pen.  He talked about gathering a variety of print newspapers so his students could find worthwhile articles or stories.  

Although I wasn't instructing students and using those materials as teaching tools like Wil, I can still remember my teachers using them.  His post really does make you see just how far the world of media has come in not that long of a time period.  I decided to think about the topic of editing and sharing student work.  For some (most, myself included) students the traditional writing process of drafting, editing, rewriting and publishing can be torture. The physical act of rewriting your own words multiple times was enough to make you forget all about your topic or passion for your work.  The collaboration capabilities of modern word processing application, like Microsoft Word, can almost eliminate the hand cramps and paper pencil task of creating any type of writing.  Students can now accomplish the lion's share of typing once and save their work along with changes easily.  For collaboration, students can add comments or keep track of changes to a document then choose whether or not to include them in their final work.  Document files can be shared between teacher and student via the internet or a web server's drop box, then edited and returned to the student.  If a student's typing skills are on par the entire writing process can be cut down significantly in terms of time.  

Publishing work is also exponentially easier and can reach an almost unimaginable audience in no time.  Email, websites, blogs, podcasts, electronic newsletters, and other forms of communication can get a document out and about before paper copies can be picked up from a printer!

Wil goes on to make reference to a quote from an article in the NY Times by David Carr.  The quote asked you to think about where you were reading the article (paper format or some digital method).  It made the point clear that if you actually had a physical copy in hand you were a part of the minority!  

The final idea that I wanted to highlight is that of the decline in actual trusted print news sources.  It is scary to think that even Eric Schmidt the Chief Executive of Google stated he worried,  "that if the great brands of journalism — the trusted news sources readers have relied on — were to vanish, then the Web itself would quickly become a “cesspool” of useless information." 

It is more important now than ever that we prepare our students to be critical readers and load them with the skills they need to distinguish between good information sources and bad.