As a single, stay-at-home parent, I find myself knowing the latest PBS Kids and Nick Jr. character developments. Because of this, I am pleased to tell you that I am refreshing my understanding of basic Spanish, and am learning conversational Chinese. I have watched and been assessed on animals I have ‘helped’ rescue. What’s my motivation? Interacting with my toddler.
I have also used print media to review science. While riding in the elevator in our building, my 2-year old has repeatedly asked me how it worked. Post visiting my local library, I plan to re-create a model to illustrate the technology. As a mother, I am called upon to apply lessons learned from a nineteen-eighty-something elementary school lesson.
With assistance, my child already knows how to operate the latest technology: small home appliances including the DVD player, the remote control, the microwave, the dishwasher, and the phones: cordless and cellular. I am pretty sure that if I left her unattended with my laptop and a happy meal, she could visit “Mcdonalds.com”. Not only has corporate branding educated my future life-long learner, it continues to inform me.
As a powerful behavioral tool, the media is also a learning technology which has a social responsibility assigned to it. It can bridge cultures by triggering the “hood-rich” to purchase a luxury sedan in order to be accepted into the upper echelons of society. It can cross generations by threading history into the present and ultimately the future. The media can stimulate action or annihilate innovation. It is changing the way we – seniors, adults, teens, and children – learn and think about ourselves and our fellow man.
The informed consumer is aware of this, and enacts change either in accordance with or in spite of ‘the machine’. The conscious artist recognizes this and creates because of and through it. The adult learner takes responsibilities for their actions and discovers their world and how they relate to it. As a role model, I hope to teach organizations, my daughter, and other adults about media technology’s powers.
Although the media is by no means a new technology, “instant” learning is in-fact newer (think: on-demand cable content). By having content quickly accessible via the ‘click’ of the mouse, remote, or I-Pod, adults can then gain knowledge of limitless content. As a reader (in contrast to my toddler), designers could co-produce on-demand content written on screen to supplement the children’s show, but geared for the adult learner. Say for example that while my toddler is engaged in a children’s television programming show, I could also interact with a device that allows me to see the verb “comer” conjugated in different tenses and for different voices. To me, this would be an effective use of time because I could make further meaningful knowledge connections and teach my child outside of the traditional half-hour broadcast.
Further still, a supplementary web-site, print-guide, and ‘hotline’ could be created to help stimulate learning for the adult viewer. To me, this seems like a viable option to help fulfill the charge “Each one Teach One” by using varying methods to reach different audiences. Current technology exists for closed-captions, DVD language translation, and digital television guides. By including education into this information, the media could assume responsibility and help teach society.
M. D. B. Ballard, April 18, 2008
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Created for TRDV 450.98, Roosevelt University (Chicago), Spring, 2008
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