Re-viewing data in online environments

One of the issues that interests me is how rapid digital developments might change the way in which we use data and multimedia information in all its forms for educational purposes.

In the broader scheme of things there are fascinating developments taking place in the wider technological community that will, I believe, impact on how we can convey meaning and analysis to our students.

Here's a video example of a Microsoft developmental idea called Sea Dragon (thanks to Michael Rosenblum for mentioning it on his blog):

On a less practical yet interesting note for Media Teachers, here's a fun way to deconstruct YouTube videos into streaming film strips, that change every time a shot change is detected. 

Finally, I've written before about Wordle, the free online tool that creates Word Clouds. Now it's possible to extract key words by frequency. I was doing some training with the Religious Studies department at school a couple of weeks back, and my colleagues went crazy for this facility. They realised they could take passages from the Bible, or as one did, Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' speech, and pull out the most commonly used words. It made for some fascinating results.

As one teacher pointed out, this is a great way for students to see easily, quickly, and visually how words are used to convey meaning, and indeed to see the essence of a text, by taking a reductionist and minimalist approach to it, and using that as a starting point for further discussion.

So, there are changes afoot and there are options available now that educators can use to make information dynamic and appealing to Net natives, as well as providing useful complements to traditional methods for encouraging independent thinking and reflection.

New business models for newspapers

www.artsjournal.com

These are tough times for traditional news institutions. The world around them, technologically speaking, is changing at a frantic pace. The Web 2.0 read-write paradigm means consumers appear to want hands-on interactivity. And they want it for free.

The roll call of newspapers shutting down continues to rise, particularly in the USA. Does all of this spell gloom and doom for the journalists, editors, photographers and others involved in the craft of societal storytelling? Perhaps not. The signs are that alternative models will arise, and opportunities, hitherto unseen, will come sharply into focus. 

Here are two contrasting yet in some ways complementary views of where the news industry is and where it might end up.

Michael Rosenblum, the godfather of videojournalism, sees the move to visual communication in a multi-platform environment as one of the drivers for change. Content must cease to be static and evolve into a multi-dimensional offering.

Nicholas Carr offers a detailed review of how eventually we may end up making micro-payments for news-oriented content, however unpalatable that might seem now.

The bottom line for me is that how things were can't be the way that things will be. I look at my students, some of them as young as 11, turning out documentaries, making interactive PDF content for online delivery, recording podcasts, and see a paradigm shift in user expectations. It might be wrong to assume that future consumers will want to be active participants on a regular basis. It might be correct to suppose they will be looking for multimodal models of content delivery. 

The successful providers of advertising and sponsorship platforms will be those that understand this future reality and prepare for it now.  

The new face of journalism...is well worn

Ok, so maybe I'm on a roll here, but it needs to be said.

Back in 1994, when the old guard at BBC news laughed, when I trundled off to learn how to be a videojournalist with Michael Rosenblum, news visionary extraordinaire, I felt like I was getting to live in the future, only now. If you see what I mean.

Reading the following entry about how the Society of Editors is up in arms, about the BBC's plans for national rollout of local VJs, to produce content for its website, I feel a warm schadenfreude-filled glow welling up inside me. Why? Because although I pity those struggling to make a living from a dying medium (and let's be honest, how often do you read a local paper?) it makes me smile to see the use of VJs under the spotlight once more, not this time because of the nature of the job, but because of the job itself.

No-one seems to be arguing that being a videojournalist is a bad idea. In fact, it's a great idea. What the news editors are angry about, gathered together at their annual conference in Bristol, is that the BBC is muscling in on their territory.

So, here is a radical idea...why don't we ditch the videojournalist tag, agree that content production and reporting skills/styles have changed forever, and just call these guys journalists? A journalist could be making audio, video, print, or graphic content. If we move beyond thinking that the medium is the message, as McLuhan postulated, and consider that the medium delivers multiple versions of the same message, then all of this nonsense could be resolved.

There is, of course, the issue of the BBC leveraging its behemoth like weight, aided and abetted by the billions of pounds raised in Licence fees, to distort commercial markets. On that score, the editors have a point, although the BBC's riposte that it is delivering on its Public Service Broadcasting remit, is an interesting one. Does video online count as broadcasting? Answers on a big postcard please....

Certainly, if you're in the newspaper business, and especially at the local end, now isn't the time for bleating or idle ideology. I'm lucky. I'm an educator these days, so I can sit on the sidelines and not worry about when and where the next commission might appear. If I were trying to make an honest buck in the current climate I'd be looking at integrating every which way. Link to Facebook, add audio, video, Twitter text, whatever you can imagine to make connections with an audience on the run from the product you've been touting for the last century.

For those of you in the business and thinking that maybe I'm shooting from the hip, without any backbone to support my argument, let me tell you something. The students I'm working with now, even aged 11, are making films and podcasts that I would have been proud to call my own a decade ago. They're moving into making their own motion gaphics and they are hungry for change.

Technology and rising media literacy means the next generation of paying subscribers will know the production tricks, will be able to deconstruct the machinery behind the content, and they'll be adept at making their own content too. Text on a page just ain't gonna cut it.

To conclude then, change must happen and it must take place fast. Strangely, I look at what's happening, remember the derision that greeted those of us who speculated a decade ago that this might be where we'd end up, and wonder why it all seems to have become so difficult?

Like I said at the start, it's the future waiting for now - but some of us were there yesterday.

Where does journalism go now?

I worked as a radio and TV journalist for a number of years back in the late 1980s to mid 1990s.

I loved being a radio reporter, found being a videojournalist not really my cup of tea (face made for radio, as they say) but loved storytelling with moving pictures and words.

Back in 1994, many people mocked what the station that I worked for, Channel One, was doing, using journalists who filmed their own material. I was lucky to be part of the launch-team and it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. 

I was reminded of this recently because the man who taught us VJs how to be multi-skilled, got in contact with me from his New York base. Michael Rosenblum was an award-winning journalist in the States who couldn't see why journalists needed a large and unwieldy team to help make a news report. As he used to say, imagine a newspaper journalist needing to take along a PA to news conferences to write everything down. So, Michael bought himself a cheap hi-8 video camera, went off to the Occupied Palestinian Territories (as they were called then) and made a film. From this he won more awards and started to preach his style of working, which he called videojournalism.

When I joined Channel One on September 5th 1994, for the first day of training, I had left behind a blossoming career working at BBC Breakast News. Most people there thought I was nuts leaving a national newsroom to help start up a small local cable TV station.

However, I could see the potential and it seemed irresistible. Of course, a few years later Sony introduced DV, which made videojournalism a practical way to news gather. We had begun humping around huge Betacams, the type you tend to see camera operators wielding. A few years ago the next evolution took place and high definition entered the equation. Indeed, we have invested in three high def camcorders at school, and these are yielding a great benefit to the sixth formers who are using them.

Over the last six years or so the power of laptops to cope with digital video, together with the software to edit and manipulate content, has grown at an incredible rate, while falling in price at the same time.

The end result of this is that anyone now can be a VJ, and the rise of audience contributed content to news bulletins on TV and the web continues. Indeed, the popularity of You Tube shows us what a cultural shift affordable camcorders, editing software, and broadband access have made possible.

Which brings me to the title of this post. Where does all of this leave mainstream journalism? It's an important question, because no matter how easy it might be to slate the tabloids, or deplore seemingly falling standards and an incessant obsession with celebrity lifestyle, the truth is that a healthy democracy needs a healthy press. 

With advertising rates plummeting, the move to online amongst consumers happening at an ever-increasing speed, and the whole communications landscape appearing to change its appearance every six months or so (last year Facebook, this year Twitter for example), newspapers in particular are scrambling to find their place in the world.

Roy Greenslade, a pre-eminent journalist, academic and media commentator, has written this week about this subject. His article is worth a browse, as it highlights a number of the issues that confront newspaper owners and editors at a time of unprecedented audience shift and financial turmoil. 

Where, then, might we look for signs of the 'new' journalism about which Roy writes in his article? I would suggest my colleague and one-time videojournalist, David Dunkley-Gyimah.

When we left Channel One in 1997 David took a path that was unique amongst those of us who had acquired new skills and then tried to find a place for them in the old-guard landscape of mainstream broadcasting. David learnt web-design, Flash animation, at a time when these technologies had just emerged.  He took his many years of experience in film making, reportage and documentary, combining them with the fledgling skills of the new media.

Since then, he has found an eminence as a producer, trainer,  and academic, investigating, promoting and designing new ways to communicate. He's studying for a PhD at present, looking at ways to embed links within video content itself, amongst other things. He's a fascinating man and I'm hoping to get him into school early next year. 

Check out his excellent online multimedia journalism site, View Magazine. You can also find a profile of David on the Apple website.

Finally, if you're interested in seeing what life was like for us as trainee VJs back in 1994 then check out this film clip, which David has posted on his site. If you look carefully, you'll even see me in a couple of shots!