Out for a ride with time to think

The morning sun shines into my room, and birds are chirping. The two-month holiday at the language school where I’m working has just started. It’s a bit difficult to believe that the time for the last entry for this blog has already come. I still have lots of thoughts to share with our readers!

Lately I’ve been riding my bike in the countryside in the evenings – it’s a good chance to relax after a very full year and to improve my skills in photography. Along the way, I think a lot about the enormous difference between rural and urban areas in my country, and between their inhabitants’ mentalities. What’s difficult to explain is that many Russians would like to move outside the city and buy nice houses there, but most villagers prefer the idea of finding a job in the city (or at least sending their children to get educated there). Of course that’s due to the financial divide between these areas, but we need to make this division less extreme.

Apart from modernizing infrastructure and offering programs aimed at stimulating young teachers to work in village schools (or small towns) by offering them additional money for several month stays and providing them with accommodation, we also need to promote studying abroad. But at least when it comes to my own pupils, I have been really glad to talk to them and discover that practically all of them think globally.

A toast to the first year of my friends' start-up

What are my expectations for the future? As I said in the very beginning, I’m the kind of person who embraces change. I’d like to try something new – not as a hobby, but as a job. Now a couple of my friends and I are working on an Internet-based project which will try to encourage people to waste less time online. Like Kathrin mentioned, the Internet can be great for learning, but it also presents plenty of distractions. I guess that as technology develops, we’re bound to see more edutainment (a combination of education and entertainment) in this sphere.

When we started the blog, I never would have thought how interesting it would turn out to be. I got impressions of educational systems in other countries, got to know my fellow bloggers more and got somehow inspired by what they discussed. It’s a pity there are regions that prevent citizens’ voices from being heard (as in Hellgurd’s case). However, youth can be an enormous force for change. I do hope there will be chances to work together with Hellgurd, Maria, Emmy and Kathrin on other projects – why not on our own?

Much still to learn...

It may be a wrap for this blog, but it is definitely not a wrap for the issues we have talked about. The convergence of more than 2,000 participants from over 100 nations who attended the three-day DW Global Media Forum to discuss “Culture. Education. Media – Shaping a Sustainable Future” was testimony for me that this discussion just got started at another level.

For me as a media professional with a background in education, it was interesting to see around 500 colleagues in media, including bloggers, meeting with policymakers, businesspeople, academics and representatives of civil society organizations to share their experiences and ideas.
The role of individuals, organizations and governments in propelling more inclusive, better quality education for all was a topic I enjoyed reading on, discussing and learning more about including during the conference. I believe in trying out solutions and implementing them – not just talking about them. But I feel like I have more to talk about now. Educational issues jump out at me more than before. Newspaper articles, discussions among friends, news on TV: Everything seems to have something to do with education, thanks to writing the blog.

Well, it is bye-bye for this blog, and I hope that the discussion will be carried on offline and online. I plan to continue my work with youth, training them to use media to tell stories – including on educational issues.

I also intend to further my education and pursue a PhD, most likely in information and communications technology as well as in development, as these are issues that I am passionate about. Perhaps I will start a new blog soon about research, media and education in the near future.

The anticipation builds ahead of a panel at the GMF

Wow! I’ve found the Global Media Forum really interesting so far. The first thing that stood out to me was the diversity on display – people from lots of different countries mix at the conference, some in suits, some more casual or in business wear. There are lots of colorful dresses, men from Africa in robes and women in headscarves. The clothing is just an outer signal of how many cultures are represented here. And in the middle of it all are my fellow bloggers and me.

Emmy, Hellgurd, María and I met up for the first time here. But I have the feeling that we’ve known each other for a while now. We’ve given each other insights into our lives and the educational systems in our countries here in the blog, so we’ve gotten to know each other a bit along the way. But it’s a real shame that visa problems prevented our fifth blogger from being here: Pavel was unable to leave Russia.

As I mentioned in my last entry, I went to a workshop yesterday that discussed how algorithms influence contemporary education and worldviews. At the podium were Falk Lüke, Mercedes Bunz and Marc Jan Eumann (State Secretary in the Ministry of Federal Affairs, European Affairs and Media of North Rhine-Westphalia). All three had interesting information to present, and the audience had plenty of comments and questions.

I especially liked Bunz’s idea that, with the Internet, we have created an additional public space, but until now, this space has primarily been shaped by economic interests. I think she gets at an interesting point there. Of course there are lots of publicly sponsored content providers on the Internet, but they often play a smaller roll, largely because they don’t offer their own search engines that could provide an alternative to Google. Would it be possible to have a publicly financed search engine? After all, here in Germany we have public broadcasters that offer an alternative to private stations.

But instead of giving the state the task of developing algorithms that deliver search results, I found Eumann’s approach better. Being aware and critical are just as important online as they are in the analog world. Schools could support these values by putting information online that helps people understand power structures and interests better – including those of Google or even of traditional newspaper publishers, for example.

Critical analysis of these topics and of technology in general is very important, which Bunz also discussed, saying that although we continue to conceive of technology as the “other,” it is constantly with us. Conferences like the Global Media Forum are a great way to take up this topic, and the opportunities for international exchange are especially good.

The GMF brings participants from around the world together

The global exchanges taking place here in Bonn are really extraordinary. At a workshop yesterday afternoon, the participants were from India, Malawi, Colombia and North America! Everyone talked about their experiences with free radio programs that are co-produced by lay people. These programs provide important information. Since many people take part in the production process and get to have a say in the programming, the interest in the result is much higher, and listeners find the statements contained therein more trustworthy.

Charles Simbi of Story Workshop Educational Trust presented a “message matrix.” It’s a systematic table in which, for example, one can work out the topics that should come up in radio programming for a given community – and how these topics should be presented. The tool is structured for topics that have social advantages for the community, such as medical help during pregnancy. I think we can learn a lot from practical tips like the message matrix and that we should try to incorporate them into other projects.

The Internet makes learning easier - for those with access

Before I talk about paths other family members in my generation took in the German educational system, I want to come back to what my cousin Thorsten said in his interview: “The future of education is in Web.2.0.”

Many of the other bloggers and I have already written about this: No matter whether in Kenya or in Germany, technology opens new doors to education everywhere. But these don’t overcome old problems.
As I wrote in May, the higher your level of education already is, the better you can profit from the opportunities the Internet offers. If I only speak one langue, I can understand only a small fraction of what is available online. Speakers of economically important and widely-used languages – such as English, French, and German – are still in a better position: In their languages you can find so much more than in languages of smaller language groups. So you will find almost four billion English articles on Wikipedia but only 361 in Swazi. There are many more examples of this. They show us that people who don’t know English are disadvantaged in the digital world, too. Therefore, inequality in access to education can’t be completely balanced out through technology. On the contrary: Sometimes it is even exacerbated!

Technical prerequisites must be in place to open websites at all. But lacking Internet access, rural areas or countries with poor infrastructure are more left out than before. In these areas, companies can’t profit from installing wires or radio towers. Costs may be too high, or there may just not be enough people who’d pay.

An e-book: new technologies make masses of information available

Economic interests don’t only determine who gets Internet access. They also influence what we can read online. If we trust in “googling” our knowledge, the risk is high of the first results being those manipulated by companies who have paid their online marketing and search engine optimization specialists to get their sites placed highly. Of course, the crowd of “normal” users has a certain power, too – but is it strong enough to counter economic – and often also state – interests?

I find such questions very interesting. And I think all of us in society and politics have to grapple with them. That is why I’m looking forward to next week’s Global Media Forum that starts on Monday in Bonn. During this international media conference hosted by Deutsche Welle, I’ll be able to discuss live with the other four bloggers and listen to experts. This year’s motto is “Culture, Education, Media.” I’m especially excited about having the opportunity to participate in the different workshops. Some deal with my new blog post’s topics, e.g., “An Algorithmic View of the World: How Google and Others Shape Awareness and Education“ and “Learning Is a Two-Way Street: Participation in Communication and Education.“ I’ll write next week about my experiences from the conference.

Let's look for ways to entertain ourselves beyond the TV set

A friend will ask me occasionally, “Have you seen the latest episode of…” – and then name some program. I usually answer, “You know, I haven’t watched TV for about 2 years.”

Strange, isn’t it? But actually it’s all quite simple: I find nothing interesting or noteworthy in the most well-known channels. When there’s anything educational, I can also easily find it in the Internet. And many in my generation do the same. It’s not that the Internet penetrates more and more into our lives – it’s that it substitutes many spheres of our lives that intelligent young people are not satisfied with. So what’s the connection with education here?
Television used to be (and still is) one of the most popular forms of entertainment. A kid gets home after school and may watch a cartoon before attending extra courses of after doing homework; a worker relaxes in front of a TV after a proper supper; a housewife uses it as the background noise while doing housework. But what do they see on the screen? Do they get any useful information or is it a waste of time?

Television, as part of the mass media system, has some degree of influence upon society. It can also create trends. For instance, TV is one of the most popular platforms for tobacco advertising. Clips are aimed mostly at the youth – the ads promote smoking as a way of fitting in with the smart and chic parts of society. And according to the survey conducted by World Health Organization in 2010, 25.4% of Russian youth population now use tobacco products.

Parents need to make sure their kids don't become too reliant on TV

In the 20th century, TV was often used for ideological propaganda in the USSR (the group of countries that collapsed 21 year ago, and its members, including Russia, became independent states in the world) – and some elements of brainwashing seem to have been revived. For example, there’s a significant lack of educational programs as well as shows devoted to different aspects of world cultures now. Don’t these types of programs broaden your horizons and make you a well-educated person, able to form your own opinions and stand up for them? I think they do. And I also think they motivate you to learn more, to travel more – ultimately, to be more independent. But under certain political conditions, such people are not welcome since they tend to take a different view of what it means to develop a country than do the ruling authorities. To my mind, the situation in Russia has been moving in this direction for the last 8 years.

At the same time, there is too much violence or low-standard humor; at whom is it aimed, and what will it turn the viewers into? Many experts and well-known people in the cultural sphere prefer to use the web to distribute their ideas and not to lose their former audiences. Some TV versions of really great programs have been ended on the grounds that they do not get a big number of viewers – mainly because they are devoted to the topics an average man finds a bit complicated or boring. There just aren’t enough informative talk shows, for example. So that is why my generation dives into the Internet; complaining is no good, it’s time to look for alternative sources.

I don’t believe that TV should be the only source of information (and entertainment); people should take a good deal of information skeptically. And a teacher, in my opinion, is the one whose aim is not to mechanically knock knowledge into someone’s head but to teach people to be more independent. Making a mistake is not so bad if you are able to express your way of coming to the conclusion you did; following patterns in every situation blindly is much worse than a mistake here and there.