New and Traditional Media

New and Traditional Media

Based on UNESCO, Media Information Literacy, 2011

There is no doubt that new technologies and the constant and immediate access to electronic devices and to internet, have made traditional and new technology to go in the same path. Recently is almost as common as to have access to a newspaper that to an electronic one. I would say that the main difference between traditional media and new media is the prompt access to it and also its “democratization” meaning that anyone with a mobile device can have access to the information, and most of all, almost anyone can publish, so it ii is no longer privilege of a few.

El Reforma Online.
Picture taken from an IPhone

That is the democratization of the media, that anyone can post or publish “news”  without having to go through an editorial process which is most of the time very expensive and selective. But “going back to basis” it the fact of credibility. Newspapers and magazines have a broad process before publishing and that is exactly what makes them more reliable. In Mexico for example, you know what kind of information you can find in “El Reforma” or in “La Jornada”, you know the angle or tendency of each newspaper, and despite the tendency people tend to trust that what they publish is based on real facts or based on real data. Today, we can see blogs and tweets that are changing the way news are spread. You get to know the information before it it is "officially" published in the news.

New technologies and its immediate access by readers, it has had a huge impact in to education as we have studied in the Master courses. Students have all the information in the palm of their hands, so their students can question the teacher immediately. Years past, the teacher was “the owner of the information” and it was difficult to validate what he was saying. The teacher as a speaker lies in the past. What is important? Not the content it self, but the way we can teach the students on how to interpret, analyze and study the information. It is very important now a day when we are in a “open content” (Universal Access) tendency that allows democratization to be more focused in teaching thinking skills in teaching how to interpret the information. We have the huge responsibility  of teaching our students in when and what to trust, which sources of information are reliable, to read in between the lines, to recognize an author’s point of view.

Is traditional media really outdated?
Photo courtesy of definitionabc.com

Yes, new technologies have made information more accessible, but that is not all teachers need. Technology is a fantastic tool that can put all the world`s information in the palm of our hand and our student's hands, but the role of the teacher remains the same.- to teach thinking skills, to help them be better readers, to be good at researching and to be better prepared to face their future, no matter if the information comes from digital sources or traditional ones. We need to question and to teach students to be inquisitive in the source of information, the author and the content.