A couple of weeks ago when I was at the Broadcast Educators festival in Las Vegas, I was struck by the words people use to talk about new media. Words like: inundated, overwhelmed, deluged, complex, confusing, and potentially dangerous. It struck me that many of us are trapped in our own brains and not able to think about how this all looks from the brains of kids and teenagers, who use words like cool, fast, and awesome. This is an awkward situation if the people who are feeling inundated and worried are designing media and curricula for the people who think fast is awesome and who are reveling in the new worlds and ways of being that new technologies have made possible. Personally, I like to think of us all as interacting in an information environment, where different media technologies are among many facets. I was, therefore, incredibly excited (even discounted for my normal enthusiasm for cool media stuff) to listen to speakers at the Joan Cooney Ganz Center’s Digital … [Read more...]