The Education of Mass Communication Students

Fall semester draws near.

With the approach of the next academic year, I am reminded about the purpose of education. For students, the atmosphere of learning enlightens the promise of the future. Careers and knowledge about subject and life converge in this environment. Growth and discovery are, like John Dewey stated, the full measure of learning.

As I revise my syllabus for an Introduction to Mass Communication course, I reflect upon the role of the professor. Are we the "sage on the stage" or the "guide by the side" in this educational process? Faculty, clearly, must be experts on their subject---researchers, practitioners, innovators. If students are to fully learn, then professors must do more than profess, or tell, about a discipline. Guiding, and therefore mentoring, students needs to be an important objective of all instructors. Supporting intellectual and creative discovery should be paramount to the teaching-learning dynamic.

No discipline requires this feature more than Mass Communication, with ample opportunities for project, presentation and portfolio experiences. As I craft my teaching plan, the excitement that students will read new material, research unknown areas, speak on media-related issues and learn more about themselves cannot be contained.

Tuesday morning cannot arrive soon enough.

ePortfolios

Save your work. Don't throw it out!

We all remember a time when we searched our house or apartment looking for a missing item. We could never remember where we put it. Then the shock wave came over us because we realized that it was tossed a month ago. Perhaps it was an old shirt or a letter from an old friend. We wished we held on to that now valuable piece of memory. Maybe that missing item was a wonderful article that we wrote, a documentary video that we created or a spellbounding photo of a sunset that we shot.

This documentation is the value of an ePortfolio. The idea behind an ePortfolio is to manage and save creative learning evidence (ie, class projects) for a resume. Students are the creators and managers of their own ePortfolios as artistic, text-based, research, video production or aural messages are kept as evidence of work during a collegiate career. Moreover, it allows students an opportunity to organize and convey important work.

To document is to decide the fate of one's future.

Are Social Media The New Mass Media?

Are social media the new mass media?

We like to live in definitions, those little boxes that form our awareness of the world. Neat packages that make us feel comfortable and necessary. Conventional thought enables humans to create patterns which, in turn, shape our culture.

The terms we give to mass media are no different. Mass media are cultural industries. Mass media are the channels of communication. Mass media are movies, radio, books, newspapers, music and television. Upon further reflection, can we make a case that social media are forms of mass media and therefore, they are the next generation of mass media?

Maybe with our foundational thought, we have ceded the term mass media to a one-way street where corporations provide us the content. We merely consume it. But social media are different. Social media allow us to be the creators and distributors. We seek out new friends, communicate in 140 characters, and display our creative works to a potential world wide audience with unfettered freedom. We make our own media texts and we circulate them while creating the grammar of communication.

Like Webster, our new grammar has purpose. Like McLuhan, our new grammar breaks from conventional ways. We, in our social media universe, become the next Gutenberg's.

Beyond iPhone?

Can it be that a good thing cannot last forever?

For AT&T the future appears to be one without the cozy partnership with Apple's iPhone. Despite making scads of money since the introduction of the iPhone, AT&T is looking beyond mobile phones for growth. That growth might include an electronic-book reader, a camera or another wireless media technology.

If the choice is to roll out an electronic reader, then the main competition will be Amazon's Kindle. It will be a bold new world for AT&T, however, the pairing with Apple was a risky, bold and innovative venture. Perhaps the pairing could remain solvent as electronic-book media technology could shape up to be the next iPhone.

Nonprofit newspapers

Today's paper is brought to you by a grant from the Ford Foundation.

It seems unreal that an institution driven by the public's quest for knowledge has fallen on hard times. That morning paper, read with a coffee cup in hand, is disappearing from our sight. Not long ago, its cousin, the afternoon paper met a demise fueled by the competition of television news. Now the morning journal is sinking due to the technological marvels of the internet.

Perhaps some relief is in sight as a Senate subcommittee seeks to find a proven measure to save daily print journalism. That measure would let struggling community newspapers become nonprofits similar to local public broadcasting stations. The idea would prohibit papers from making political endorsements but still allow reporting on all issues, including political races. All advertising and subscription monies would be tax-exempt and patron contributions, like public broadcasting fundraising campaigns, could be tax deductible.

This notion is intriguing. Could it lead to a solvent structure for local journalism publication? Or would it create the merging of both public newpapers and public electronic media stations? Or is it the last gasp of an elderly media technology?

Les Paul Remembered

We stand on the shoulders of giants.

Les Paul died the other day. Who was Les Paul, you might ask? Paul, a guitar virtuoso, created a technology that made him stand above all others as the original master of rock and jazz innovation. Clearly, he was one of the most important people in the creation of American popular music.

Les Paul invented the solid-body electric guitar, an instrument played by Pete Townshend, Jimmy Page, and Justin Hayward among other notables. An iconic figure beyond description, Paul developed technology that would become the cornerstones of rock, pop and jazz recordings for the second half of the 20th century. His use of multitrack recording that allowed for multiple layers of "overdubs" spawned the careers of Buddy Holly, the Beach Boys and the Beatles.

Paul was a futurist who acted upon his ideas. Les Paul, who passed away at 94, was the first visionary of rock-n-roll.

MassMediaZone

We live in curious times. The rapid pace and ascent of media and communication technology mystifies us, beckons us and engages us in ways we cannot ascertain. We live in the MassMediaZone.

With this subject in mind, I started the blog to challenge my students and myself to a search along a path of discovery. The path is full of historical, current and future perspectives on media and our culture. As we proceed, we grow.