Newness and limitation of new mediaA critical view on the newness of new media and the application of

new media technologies in education.

Trends and strategies in the creative industries november 2009

Nikki Kamps (310850)

Sophie van de Kerkhof (324062)

Charly Rozenberg (295682)

Pieter-Jan Oddens (316393)

Lecturer: Matthijs Leendertse

1 Introduction

Education is the foundation of communicating knowledge from one person to

another. But it depends on the quality of the teaching how well the knowledge is

transferred from teacher to student. Technology is rapidly changing and improving,

which means one has to keep up with technology through education, but on the other

hand, education has to keep up with technology as well.

Our challenge is to research the possibilities of creating a new learning

environment, thinking beyond technological boundaries. This can involve new

methods of learning, new ways of distributing knowledge, making new content or

thinking about a whole new way of teaching students. We think that this is a great

challenge, but it needs to be formed in a more realistic and researchable question.

New media as they are, are formed throughout history by adding new abilities

to old media, converging techniques to create new options to improve the standards

of bringing a message, whether it is television, music or education. In this essay, we

will show that thinking of new media without technological boundaries is not that easy

without thinking of what the past has produced. The past might dictate what needs to

be taught to children as basic knowledge and new technologies might not have been

invented without thinking of what has been produced before.

In this essay we will first show a short history of the creation of new media and

explain the idea of remediation (Lister, 2009: 47) to have a background on our vision

of what is new about digital learning.

We have adopted two critical viewpoints, the first being a critical viewpoint on

new media. How new are they really? The latter is a critical view on the limitations of

the application of new media and technologies. Here we focus not on how new the

media are, but on how their newness can be applied to education. What are the

boundaries for applying new things in education? How new can education be?

2 History of the development of media

In the history of new media-inventions one invention leads to the other. Great

historical philosophers, like for instance the Frenchman Michel Foucault, gathered

with inventors and technicians to extend his ideas and to discuss what is possible in

creating ‘thinking machines’ (Lister, 2009). This sets the mark for inventing new

machines that incorporate components that could communicate with each other

automatically.

The weaving machine created by Jacquard Loom was one of the first automatic

machines that made use of sophisticated mechanical engineering. After this invention

the Babbage Calculating machine could be realized (Lister, 2009). This calculating

machine is the predecessor of the widely used personal computer.

The Calculating machine is used in navigation, trade and commerce to extend world

exploration and colonisation. Popularity leads to it’s mechanical reproduction and

eventually to mass culture.

The invention of such a computing system is also of great use to the parallel

developing ‘written’ media and communication technology. By transforming written

language into a binary code, systems could communicate much faster and needed

less space to work (Lister, M :2009).

The invention of the internet, at first for military use and later on for commercial use,

leads to connecting personal computers around the world making way for

globalization and finally spreading mass culture.

Remediation

Remediation theory explains the central idea for thinking about new media through

the concept of remediation. This concept suggests that all new media, in their

primary period, always remediate. By remediation it incorporates or adapts previously

existing media. Early cinema was based on existing theatrical conventions, computer

games remediated cinema and the world wide web remediates the paper magazine

(McLuhan, 1964).

By doing so focusing on not creating a new media ‘language’ but incorporating the

old media into the new can explain the new media. In the name of progression the

new media has to do the work of the old media (McLuhan & Fiore: 1967).

A teleological vision on new media is based on viewing the development of

new media as a linear phenomenon. According to the teleological vision every

technological media development is new and must make us forget it’s predecessors.

The contrary explanation is more likely because no entirely new media ‘language’ is

created.

3 People vs. technology

Introducing technological advancements into education makes sense. When society

changes, the way we teach our children about it should keep up with it. Allowing

education to fall behind on the technological developments that seem to be affecting

the way we work, think and socialize makes no sense. However, as we have stated

before, the definition of the concept of the ‘new’ media appears problematic.

Therefore, the way they should be applied to education is by no means given and

requires some serious thought.

Thinking about a digital learning environment without any of the current

technological restraints should provide with opportunities without end. The sky is the

limit. However, in education even more so than in other fields, one must take into

account the interaction between technology and people. Technology used must

comply with the abilities of children and teachers to be of any use in education. In our

imagination we could take away technological constraints, but not the physical and

mental constraints that human beings provide. Perhaps we could imagine creating

educational technologies for a scientifically created breed of super humans, but this

would eliminate virtually all the practical use of our research. In order to safeguard

the use of our research we should always keep in mind that people are involved and

that it is those people and not technology that provide us with limitations.

We want to try to work towards the most efficient educational use of

technology in education. If our goal is to make learning easier and therefore

education more efficient, disregarding limitations makes our research futile.

Nowadays, teachers and students often have trouble applying new technologies.

Every student and teacher could attest to this. Technology in itself may become

flawless, but it often fails in the interaction with people. There is no reason to assume

why this would be any different in the future. If people cannot keep up with

technological innovation now, they will always be behind. To us, the problematic

interaction between people and technology is one of the most crucial points in

working toward a digital learning environment that is of any use.

An example of physical restrictions of people using new media (for example in

education) is a research on media multi-tasking. The outcome of this study shows

that heavy media multi-taskers (people who switch al lot between different media or

using them at the same time) have trouble performing well when faced with new

tasks. They are less able to filter out irrelevant stimuli and input (Ophir, Nass,

Wagner, 2009).

4 Our vision on digital learning

We have just made two critical remarks on what the ‘newness’ of new media is and

what the implications are of the application of new media and technologies in

education. The question is now how this affects our vision on creating a digital

learning environment.

Remediation also occurs in the field of education. The basic way of teaching in

primary schools existed of a teacher standing in front of a classroom and teaching

the students through speech. When time passed, new media and products were

introduced into the classrooms to teach the same content. Examples are the

blackboard and schoolbooks. The book is a new medium were all the subject

material is written down and the students were able to read it in their own time in any

place. The blackboard is also a medium to improve teaching by writing the material

on the board so students can easily write it down and the teacher is able to clarify the

material. After the introduction of these media al lot of other followed. We can think of

a beamer, a (digital) whiteboard, computers, internet, TV and sound (cd-player).

These different media all try to teach the same content but the difference between

the media is the way in which they are trying to communicate this content. So also in

education the new media used are not necessarily new.

They are communicating the same content and the media used are actually older

media ‘refashioned’ into new media (Lister, 2009:47). The fact that the content

communicated through the media used in education will always stay relatively the

same is unavoidable. Learning requirements restrict changes in content.

However, we do think that we can add new content to the media used in digital

learning environments. The new content should exist of information on how to use

new media to it’s full potential and when people are able to do this, the advantages

and value of new media and technologies can be fully put to use in education. This

takes into account our previous statements about the problematic interaction

between people and new media technologies.

Literature

- Lister, M., J. Dovey, S. Giddings, I. Grant & K. Kelly (2009) New Media. A

critical introduction. Second Edition. London: Routledge

- Ophir, Nass, Wagner. September 15, 2009. Cognitive control in media

multitaskers. PNAS 106 (37).

http://www.pnas.org/content/106/37/15583.abstract.

- Smith, H. J., Interactive whiteboards: boon or bandwagon? A critical review of

the literature (February 4, 2009). Journal of Computer Assisted Learning 21,

pp. 91-101.