New Media and Pedagogy

The University of the Philippines honored five of the students' favorite faculty members at the Great Ideas symposium on Wednesday, 6 October. The Great Ideas Project aims to highlight the great ideas -- projects, activities, passions and pedagogies -- of the faculty members of the University, and in turn inspire others to come up with their own great ideas as well.

Think brilliant, spread brilliance was this year's slogan, and five brilliant professors out of the over 400 other brilliant professors nominated in the polls, did just that. Check out greatideas.ph to read the abstracts of the winners.

What I found interesting among all these winners is their use of new media, specifically, media found on the web, in their discussions. This jumped out at me as Prof. Gonzales discussed his documentation strategy using digital video; Dr. David's demo of the forecasting software using available photos, video and data on the web; Dr. Gonzales' and Dr. Tolentino's references to YouTube stars and the virality of certain videos on the media-sharing site; and Prof. Billedo's use of social media to explain cyberpsychology.

While appropriating any media in the way we teach is not new, it should be mentioned how these new media figured in the great ideas of these faculty. Scholarship and pedagogy are starting to build around the software, platforms and content on the web. How we begin to approach solutions and explanations to many long-suffering issues and problems are starting to take on new forms. How we think and do things now are informed by the tools and media that are available via the internet.

This begs the question, if the internet were not around now, would these ideas have been born? I think they would still be born, albeit much later in our history, in someone else's brain, with far more effort and more cost. This isn't to say there isn't any effort in what we see today. It's just that, we're lucky this happened in our lifetime, otherwise none of us would probably be alive to even see a hint of these ideas.

Thanks to these ideas, we are able to add infinitely more to our methods, we are able to share and exchange insights in almost real time with our students. We are able to communicate both formally and informally online, and keep those links long after they graduate. We start to build a network and this network suddenly becomes a well of relationships, wisdom and praxis both students and faculty can draw from. I am particularly interested with how Prof. Gonzales and Prof. Billedo have successfully integrated new media into their methods. Their use of the media endears themselves to their students, and there is a sense of understanding. In an information glut human beings want to be identified, want to be understood as individuals.

This is what their use of the new media allows these professors to do: it opens up a venue for students to express their individuality, preference, beliefs, passions and desires in a familiar, unthreatening way. When they know they are on safe ground, in an environment that is open to their opinions, they will be less inhibited, they will have impassioned exchanges, and subsequently learn from their peers, and learn from doing.

It's a great way to build true confidence in kids. They need that confidence and self esteem to properly navigate their identities online, and not fall prey to the bullying and influencing that can happen online. It takes a strong character and self-awareness to safely navigate the many unexplored territories of the Web. But we use those very tools that were employed to create it, to teach kids to trek through it safely.

It is this confidence to speak out that allows them to throw their great ideas out there. It is the self-awareness and self-esteem that allows them to see their ideas through to fruition. They've been trained using the web, now they can go conquer it. Many say using the Web can seriously affect learning and attention spans; it will make them more prone to plagiarism and induce them to laziness. But if we as teachers show them the potential to use these tools responsibly and use these tools to inspire change, then we have an army of change agents at our fingertips.

What is important to me is that they are here now - the internet, the Web, the new media, the students -- and we have the means to spread these ideas, right on the very platform that inspired or pegged the great ideas in the first place. Here is a genuine way to share and collaborate, to pass on best practices, to document processes and pass it on. Here is a way to study and teach, and reach out to generations still waiting to be born.