New Media for Learning

A constant aptitude towards learning and knowledge acquisition is something that can not be done away with in the Information age of today where in keeping oneself updated with the current trends and technology is something that is inevitable in order to sustain in the highly challenging and competitive environment. The key to excel in ones field is not only to work effectively with what one commands mastery over, but, it is to work innovatively and smartly by being able to walk hand in hand with the ever-evolving new technologies and applying the same in the work area. Hence the pressure is now on continuously learning new things.

Along with the expansion of the amount of knowledge that one should possess to keep oneself at par, the number and the quality/effectiveness of the resources available has also expanded double-fold. According to the constructivist theory, learning happens best when you are not only consuming knowledge, but also creating it. From here, comes in the picture, various interactive tools like Blogs, Discussion forums, podcasts, Screencasts, Videocasts etc. which allow us to not only acquire but also to create the knowledge. Learning in an interactive and collaborative environment makes life much easier by enabling an individual feel like if he’s actually involved in some face to face discussion among his peers, getting one to one mentoring by intellectuals over the web, seeking advice from an expert in the domain which otherwise would not have been possible to accomplish.

Blogging is an activity that allows people to present their view, share their knowledge, and offer their learnings to others so that the readers can prepare their mindset about an issue dealt with and at the same time get inspired to contribute to it and sharing it with others too. You can talk of anything in your blog like share your experiences and learnings that have been gained over the time, be it during studying or the working phase, let people know of the best practices that you followed or discovered, answer to some common problems and issues addressed etc. All this can help the students as well as the nascent professionals, who are about to step into the industry, build and strengthen their knowledge base.

Visual media has got a lot to contribute in the learning process of individuals. To make learning more effective, it would be nice if we are able to make it more interesting. Monotonous reading and studying of the facts and concepts doesn’t help in gaining and retaining the knowledge at the same time. It could be that, we can grasp the meaning of what is being read or studied, but we are not able to remember it for long. This could be well examined by going through the books and the learning material wherein there are no images and pictures involved and then comparing it with the ones that include the same. The obvious difference that one can make out from that is, the learner is able to recall more from the latter than the previous one. This is just because of the fact that a single picture or an audio-video can incorporate vast amount of information in it, all of which could be easily recalled just by going through it even once, as it is easy to recall whatever you have seen or heard. A similar example could be that of a graph or a chart that can speak of volumes of information embedded within it, which if otherwise would have been stated using the text medium would have taken more than a page to read and obviously more complex to remember.

Hence to summarize my view point, I would like to state that such kind of activities as blogging, listening to podcasts, videocasts, and all, that new media technology has to offer, can amazingly help one acquire great deal of knowledge and get benefited by applying the same in one’s work area.