"Video is the New Text" (The Column)

Per my previous post, here's the link to my latest column: "Video Is the New Text". And here's an excerpt:

Television’s power to communicate goes beyond sports, movies, and sit-coms. Technology enablers have paved a way to better education models: multi-screen delivery, pervasive broadband access and ever-improving video compression are just a start. Smart phones, YouTube channels, and the Web itself have created a culture of Googlers and clickers that innately get interactive video. With the iPad, Android tablets, and on-line curricula platforms proliferating, that audience easily distinguishes good teaching materials when they see them.

. . . But where is the killer educational-TV app? Where is the academic or industry champion that can close the gap between advanced technology and a byzantine, de-centralized school purchasing and curriculum system?

 . . . In the past, video classes have been about “pointing cameras at teachers” says Charlie Jablonski, currently VP of Operations for cloud video gaming platform OnLive. I ran into Charlie at the Luxembourg event after he had just completed a seminar on technology and gaming enabling education. His voice on these matters comes through having served as NBC’s head of engineering in a 16 year tenure there, and as former president of SMPTE. In a follow-up conversation, Charlie went on to tell me that “today, if you give twelve kids in the class the video tools, there’s a better chance that they can figure it out than parachuting someone in. It’s about interaction with teachers, the Socratic method—this enables learning. Otherwise, you could just film every professor and put them on the shelf.”

Full Article . . .