Media 101: Creating the Future by Understanding the Past
Media 101: Creating the Future by Understanding the Past
will be the theme of BEA2007 -
(broadcast education association)
Technology might be changing at the speed of light, but the basics we teach our students remain important and relevant. Interesting programming is a must no matter if you deliver it to a battery-operated portable radio, a high-definition flat panel television, or an iPod. Good writing is good writing, no matter if it is done with a pen, a typewriter, or a Wi-Fi enabled laptop. Creating ethically responsible communicators was our job in 1955 and it is our job today. And the scholarship that we create about what we teach and how we teach it is possible only because of the scholars who came before us.
So let’s use BEA 2007 to reflect on the core issues and values that we convey to our students and each other. How do we teach students to write? How do we teach students to frame the perfect shot or tell the perfect story? And why do these basics still matter when technology becomes obsolete before you open the box?
History is the foundation on which we build the future. It serves us well, as media educators, to consider how this changing technology impacts both undergraduate and graduate education. In a fast-changing world, how do we train the next generation of professionals and how do we train the next generation of professors?
In the year 2007, we will celebrate many important milestones in electronic media history. Milestones that act as reminders of where we have been and the lens through which we can view the future.
• Eighty years before our convention, Congress passed the Radio Act of 1927, the law which provided the basic structure of the media industries that we know today.
• Sixty years before our convention, NBC permanently linked four stations on the East Coast to create a permanent network.
• Forty years before our convention, Congress passed the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 and Sony introduced the first lightweight, portable and cheap video recorder, known as the "portapak."
• Thirty-five years before our convention, The Electric Company debuted on PBS, the WGBH Caption Center prepared the first open-captioned national broadcast (The French Chef), and the FCC began to regulate cable in an organized fashion.
• Thirty years before our convention, South Africans see television for the first time, as test transmissions begin from the state-backed South Africa Broadcast Company with half the broadcasts in English and half in Afrikaans.
• Twenty-five years before our convention, Sun Microsystems, Adobe, and Silicon Graphics Inc were founded. Looking back on any and all of these events can give us a clearer view of what is to come.
Without a firm grounding in history, we simply flail about – reacting to each new technology that comes along as if none of the old teachings still apply. So let’s also use BEA2007 to view the future through the lens of the past – finding out how the new technologies fit into the grand scheme of Educating Tomorrow’s Electronic Media Professionals.
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p.s. interessante sul sito e' la sezione JOBs dove si puo' notare la quantita' di offerte di lavoro concernenti l'educazione dei nuovi media .... in America ...
