| The shift from broadcasting to "narrowcatching" has its counterpoint in the university in a shift from teacher-centred to student-centered education. The fourth generation of media (multimedia) simulates the fourth communication setting (many-to-one) in this respect. Multimedia downplays the authority of the author by inviting the reader to be a co-author. My use of multimedia in lectures, seminars and tutorials is still teacher-centered. It simply enables me to put on a better show. However, its use in the many-to-one communication setting facilitates the shift to a student-centered system. Resistance to the use of video in school was perhaps justified because the student could initially play only a passive role. However, a number of innovations have enabled what one of my students, Nathalie D'Souza, calls "the revolt of the couch potato" (see Figure 6). The button powers now available in the third generation are considerably enhanced in the fourth generation. The students can not only press pre-created buttons but can create and press their own buttons.
All the talk about "building" the electronic superhighway obscures the fact that it is already here. Internet was not built mechanically from the outside in but grew organically from the inside out. As it continues to grow exponentially, there will be a huge demand for delivery vehicles and for competent drivers. Broadcast educators are in a strategic position to provide the people who will build and drive such vehicles. The delivery trucks of the immediate future will be CD ROMs. Currently the skills in building and driving such vehicles is being picked up here and there in a random manner as interested individuals poke around on their own, checking out menus. Wherever a program is established, there is a feeding frenzy as companies, with powerful machines but few people who know how to use them, fight to hire the graduates. For example, the Infotech program at Capilano College has immediately placed all but a few of their graduates every year. Broadcast education programs could fill this gap and a central place within the university by broadening its scope. Broadening within the third generation of media (the caricature of the one-person broadcasting studio with camcorder in hand and satellite disk on head is becoming a reality); broadening even further to integrate the skills of the fourth generation of multimedia; and broadening the base of students to include fellow professors, students aspiring to teach in disciplines other than broadcasting, as well as those who will build and drive the vehicles for the electronic superhighway.
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