MediaSnackers Education

barney

Losing my weblog posting cherry.

(WORLD) Welcome to my first MediaSnackers post. I will be putting one of these out every week or so, containing general content on new technologies relating to education, education initiatives relating to new media and any other choice stuff that I have come across plus a regular update on what I have been doing with MediaSnackers.

This first blog is going to be a bit of an introduction to all that (which I have kind of already done…ta-dah) and also a bit about me and my first couple of weeks as part of the MediaSnackers team.

I have always been drawn to jobs where I had the opportunity to learn, some might say it's because I am a super nerd and I guess at heart I probably am. I like finding out new stuff, doesn't really matter what it's about to be honest, and I like enthusing other people about the stuff that I've found out. Since I've joined MediaSnackers and been on a couple of training sessions I have been boring…I mean enthusing, unfortunate friends and family about all things media-tech related.

Bottom line—this stuff is cool.

The learning curve for me has been massive, I am not a tech-type person at all (although I have aspirations), but I am motivated to find out more because:

1. It's very interesting
2. It's my job.

Two things strike me (as I ascend the curve):

One is how quickly things are moving. A couple of years ago I was at a colloquium in London talking about new technologies and their role in education. During the lunch-break a few of us were talking about convergent technologies and we were all speculating about how soon we would see convergent handsets publicly available at a reasonable price. I don't think any of us guessed at 2 years (possibly this just illustrates our ignorance) but here we are and the Sony Mylo is already available (in the states), iPhone available in the UK at the end of this year and Nokia N95 out now.

The other day I was playing playstation with my little boy, he took the controller off me and showed me what to do on a bit where I was stuck (he had the decency not to be patronising about it). This is fine and something that I should get used to I guess, I imagine its going to be happening a lot over the course of the next fifty or so years. The only thing that I find a little surprising about this is that he is three and a half years old!

This is the second thing that strikes me: no matter how fast things are moving young people (including really young people) are keeping up!

Once your eyes have been opened to the fact that the world has changed you can choose to go with it (cue steep learning curve) or pretend it hasn’t happened. I have chosen the former, the curve is steep but I think it will be worth the climb.

Contributed by Barney

MediaSnackers is currently in 'permanent pause' mode—check out justadandak.com where most of the juicy action is at nowadays!