This subject has been of intense, if not consuming interest to myself - especially over the past 5 years of witnessing a quantum change in the manner, quality and form of thinking & communicating capacities with which university students enter their studies these days.Diebert writes in the start-a-fire thread: Personally I haven't much faith in the language of video. Those projects seem a step down in effectiveness as such medium would confirm more than challenge the illusion (of "watching" for example).
Please save your arguments right now that anyone entering university studies is "dumbed down" anyway. They are, however, as each year passes, as products of their social conditions, more pointedly exposed at increasingly earlier ages to the 'language' of video, or rather, the receipt of information through vibrating pixels and visual aids. I don't have a fully baked thesis to present, but a lot of half-baked impressions that are beginning to crowd themselves into something vaguely identifiable.
Firstly, Kelly is correct in assuming that young people are quite likely to respond favourably, if not more-so, to the vehicle of video (regarding whatever project one wants to start or get-across for future generations). That's a done deal, and it is the world they recognize and the one in which they "live."
Secondly, it is also quite correct that generational change is not a stoppable thing - that the 'old guard' will and shall always have to give way to the new, and that it could be to chew one's own foot off to ignore this dynamic.
Having said that, a strange crop of new problems presents itself - at least to myself, who is ever on the alert for the thinking 'pathologies' extant in the students I encounter. Something quantum is happening there, and the response of some educators is "if you can't beat them, join them," whereas another response from other educators is to double-down on the old-guard disciplines through which they themselves learned.
The Words Are Dead on the Page
Many persons are unaware that even whilst they are reading long passages of words on the computer screen, these words are moving. After all, they are delivered by light waves; they vibrate imperceptibly, and in so doing, are providing extra stimulation to the brain. This stimulation is not necessarily connected to the stimulation of thought. It's just stimulation, and as with all stimulants, when it's missing, it becomes more difficult to stay engaged. Present a student with print media (you know - a book), and they will report all sorts of difficulties about getting into it. It looks "dead," they can't concentrate, cannot sustain involvement, is missing all the colour, movement, is boring, and for some, nearly impossible.
So far, I have not found this an irreversible situation. Can't tell you how many times a passage read aloud in class, discussed deeply, re-referred to word-by-word will cause innumerable students to remark something like "geez, I didn't get that out of that at all when I tried to read it." Not infrequently do they quip good naturedly that I've given them a headache by the end of class. It appears that they themselves can recognize the use of synaptic effort that otherwise lays dormant without use. It makes them 'sore' with the effort to hook into and stimulate meaning on their own, but they can do it. They can. So far, at least. Needless to say, I also see this as a step back - recovering cognitive processes one assumes that prior education has already jump-started.
A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words
The power of an image is known by us all. Some educators have given-in entirely to the image-orientation of the age, and their classes are filled with short youtube videos, illustrated powerpoint presentations, playing movie clips, and otherwise engaging students with as much visual stimulation as they can muster. A picture is worth a thousand words, indeed, but what I've noticed is that a picture replaces a thousand words. The problem after all this full-on visual delivery is that students cannot SAY anything about what they just saw. It's just there; it just is-what-it-is. If the so-called 'end' of all wisdom is resolved in silence, then this is the ticket. But it's a different kind of silence, in my estimation. A cessation of thought, but for perhaps the wrong reasons.
Too, the visual distractions. The guy speaking on the video looks weird. Or, I couldn't stand the sound of his voice. Or, those were lame graphics, or, I really liked the soundtrack, etc. etc. That's the kind of comment evoked. Up to our ears in postmodernity, these are savvy viewers who live Marshall McLuan's observation of the age that "the medium is the message." It's not necessary for them to look any further than that. It is what it is. End of thinking.
The Disappearing Attention Span
This one's a no-brainer (pun intended). I have heard of students complaining of video presentations that last longer than the accustomed youtube length, or the duration of a popular song. Taking their world in small bites has affected their digestion for the feast. There's no stomach for it, no well-stretched brain cells to endure the marathon, and most importantly, no center - no central thrust identifiable to them, just a moving on to the next thing, the next thing being the thing itself. They want to "get it" and be done, and video seems to deliver this to them the most effectively (see comments above).
Perhaps in the end, it will have to be a can't-beat-them-join-them affair. Perhaps visuals, faces, graphics, sound, light, colour and brevity will have to be the delivery vehicle of the future, the litmus of value over the words dead on the page. Perhaps it is time to give-over to the next generation and release the old guard.
But for the reasons above and many more, I have not been able to measure these quantum changes as progressive, or even very effective - at least for my own philosophical aims. Presently, they manifest as quite the opposite to me. They've gotten in the way. If consciousness and linguistics are as deeply related as many of us suspect, then succoring the appetite for videocy will well and truly change what it means to be wise or reasonable, much less enlightened. Perhaps intelligence itself will have to take on a new form in response to its confinement to the megamachine.
I've not joined, nor have I been beaten. Still we can unearth the cognitive capacities that seem to atrophy at an ever-growing rate. I've yet to have a student with bloodshot eyes and a headache tell me that their efforts netted them nothing. Quite the contrary. They're sleepless and awake and aware that what is happening to them does not happen to them anywhere else. Once in a blue moon, one of them comes to reject on their own the movement, colour and noise of videocy as the hampering, hectoring, sensuously indulgent and potentially empty thing it just might be.
Still, as old guard, I have to give over to projects such as Kelly's and the ilk. Many have determined that this is unbeatable and must join. Might be right. Might not be. I guess we'll just have to see . . . . In any case, the goalpost has been tampered with, moved . . . .