As participants, creators and stakeholders it is important that we capitalise on, rather than fear, the shift in power enabled by this technologically driven change
NEWFOTOSCAPES – GRAIN and Library of Birmingham
How appropriate are walled and closed institutions for the digitally mediated world?
Arguably that the biggest disruption facing educators is not caused by the global economic crisis itself, or even the failure of vision of any particular government, but the one housed by the behemoth server farms and the global content producers of the Internet. We are in the midst of an educational system in which knowledge is being liberated from scarcity; previously the scholar’s role was to offer authoritative elucidation on the (rare and inaccessible) book to the privileged few. Today in the new ecology of ‘knowledge’ abundance, we have the potential to educate the masses – our problem is keeping up with and deciding what content to educate them about.
The Disruptive Media Learning Lab is designed as a cross-University experimental unit that will provide support for new and on-going pedagogic development in new and disruptive technological spaces. The Lab draws upon areas from which the University has established a track record of innovation, e.g, the Serious Games Institure, which has pioneered the use of games logics and Apps in educational content delivery and the Media Department’s teaching and learning ‘experiments’ with Open Media Classes (e.g Phonar, Picbod, Creative Activism and Digital Formations) and research/publication experiments, the Disruptive Media group; as well as the LIRG research, evaluation, experimentation and publication on the impact of virtual worlds on pedagogy and chatbots in higher education.
