Saturday, February 28, 2009

"What do you do to keep up with worldwide events?"

Here's a vlog from YouTube, below, which does my heart good.

It's a self-professed "rambling" stream of consciousness on the state of the media from Katz20two; she reminds me of the students we get in the Creative Communications program at Red River College, *(start plug) who are - for my money - the best in the land (end plug).*

It's great that she's so earnest and genuinely interested in what's up with the media, and using new media - if we can still categorize YouTube with that sweeping generalization - to express that concern.

It's also very interesting to see someone who's obviously YouTube-savvy admit that she feels like she's behind the times in terms of getting her news.

Tell that to the senior citizen who's never been online! Before my grandmother passed away last year, I showed her "the Internet" and after five minutes, she said, "Don't you have to go home now?" Ha, ha! A sure sign that grandma wasn't buying into the new media.

Watching Katz20two's video, I'm reminded of something that every teacher and student should know: "One of the sure signs of intelligence is knowing what you don't know."

Last night I watched Alexandra "daughter of Nancy" Pelosi's scary HBO documentary: "Right America: Feeling Wronged," and never before has the difference between "knowing what you don't know" and "being proud of being stupid" been so clear. Check out a clip from the documentary here.

Back to the original point: if you're trying to get into Creative Communications, or a student in Creative Communications, these are the same kinds of questions you should be asking yourself: how do you get your news, how is that changing, how will you participate in the new media, and what will we be losing or gaining in the process?


RRC employee runs for school board

Red River College Communication Specialist, Colin Fast, is a candidate in the by-election for school trustee in the Winnipeg School Division, Ward 1.

Colin is running on an interesting platform: that school trustees should have their right to tax taken away. You can check out his blog on the topic right here.

When I worked at Rumors, I often told a joke about how it's unfair that people like me, who have no kids, have to pay education taxes to pay for other people's kids to go to school. The punchline: "Buy a condom, get a refund!" I thought it was a great idea, but it usually got boos from the audience.

That's why Colin is running for office, and I'm not...

The election will be held on March 17.