Somehow I missed this article - “Is a Cinema Studies degree the new MBA?” - when it first came out in the New York Times last March. (It was about the time that I moved to Buenos Aires, so my mind was rather occupied with visions of tango dancers and art nouveau buildings).

The article mentions how cinema is the professional language of the future. That’s an interesting perspective, which I think is not too far from the truth.

Still more, Ms. Daley, the U.S.C. Cinema-Television dean, argues that to generalize such skills has
become integral to the film school’s mission. More than 60 academic courses at U.S.C. now require
students to create term papers and projects that use video, sound and Internet components - and for
Ms. Daley, it’s not enough. “If I had my way, our multimedia literacy honors program would be required
of every student in the university,” she said.

Supporting multimedia literacy in higher education, however, is a particular challenge. While a film school dean talks favorably about the widespread adoption of having students in various disciplines create video/audio projects, most film schools or communication programs do not see themselves in the position of providing multimedia support to the entire campus. These schools welcome students to enroll in their courses and to use the labs for projects related to cinema courses but students in other disciplines desiring to create audio/video content often have no lab to utilize.

Academic technology centers can play an important role in supporting multimedia literacy. Libraries also can play an essential role. I was successful at establishing digital media labs within the libraries both at Old Dominion and Miami for use by students in many disciplines in the creation of multimedia content. The location of such labs will depend upon local institutional issues but one should never assume that a film program or communications school will shoulder the burden of university-wide support for digital media literacy.

Jon Udell has an entry on streaming video of course lectures and raises the good questions that universities are having to address:

Permission to make and use such recordings will become a hot issue, if it isn’t already. As a student, can I audio- or video-record a lecture as a memory aid? If so can I retain it for future personal use? If not, should I expect to be able to access this material using university infrastructure while a student? As an alumnus? As a non-affiliated person? What fees would be charged (or not) in these various cases?

This also relates to yesterday’s trial-balloon posting about the future of blogging as a form of resume and autobiography. Should professors, and more broadly all professionals who speak to audiences, publish audio and/or video samples of those talks? Will professional blogs be expected to include or link to these materials, and comment on them, in the same way they might be expected to mention and contextualize professional publications? What level of “fair use” can or should govern one’s own performances done for hire?

I just saw this post and a thought occured to me, so I wanted to get it down in writing, on the blog, before I forget it. That’s exactly what blogging is, or one form of it: what Will Richardson calls “opinions in progress“.

Blog postings are usually off the top of one’s head, so to speak, and not carefully crafted essays. Of course, some people do take the trouble to write very careful entries. But for others, blog postings are akin to thinking aloud about a topic. For some, the blog is a way of tracking research on a topic, exploring ideas, taking notes, and sharing those thoughts with others and getting feedback through comments.

So, if you read something on a blog (certainly on this blog of mine), don’t conclude that a post is necessarily my final thoughts on a topic. Indeed, I may ultimately change my mind completely about an issue that I’ve written about here and, yet, forget to go back and update the posting.

Interpreting blogs have interesting implications for historians in terms of how they will analyze blog postings.Blogs also have a far more important implication for people today. I’ve learned in any organization that miscommunications are the biggest source of problems and conflict among co-workers and supervisors in an organization. It’s obvious then that one’s own blogging could inevitably lead to miscommunications within one’s workplace if one’s co-workers, boss, or employees read your blog. I’m willing to bet that if you’re a boss, then all of your computer literate employees read your blog very closely, much more closely than you would expect.

Another implication of blogging as opinions in progress relates to students who haven’t learned how to contextualize and understand the role of blogging in the world of information. A student’s misunderstanding of information learned through a blog is another factor that needs to be addressed through teaching analytical and critical thining skills.

Will Richardson points out that students also need to be taught transactional writing skills:

we have to begin introducing the idea of transactional writing, of writing in and for networked audiences that are invited into the conversation. The more they understand that writing is a part of a process of learning and not just a product of it, the better off they will be.