With the advancement of technology, new modes of communication have emerged and are being used in the field of academics. Traditional media played a pivotal role in spreading knowledge in all sections of societies in the world. Traditional media proved to be a powerful tool in the process of making learning and teaching more effective, interesting, and simple to insure everyone benefits to the maximum. Social media are newly-emerged communication networks which are in use not only for sharing information but also for education, knowledge transfer, and for building a global community of academicians. Different tools of social media are in use in different streams of education. Over the years, it has been realized that both traditional and social media have much potential and use in education at all three levels e.g. primary, secondary, and higher education. But, the integration of traditional and social media still has a long way to go in terms of acceptance. This chapter highlights some major points related to changing academic environment, with the use of technology in classes, students vs. teachers' perspectives on learning and teaching, academics, and use of media – Traditional vs. New media in classes and integrating traditional and social media within the academic environment.
TopIntroduction
The gradual growth of human civilization has witnessed mammoth changes and communication has been the determining element for each and every leap towards progress. At different developmental stages of the human civilization, we invented and used different modes of communication. However, the goal of inventions remained the same in each era and that was transferring the knowledge. From symbolic transformation of messages to written communication and from print to electronic media, today we are living in a digitalized era. In today’s digitalized world, it is easy to share the knowledge and information in a very transparent fashion. Technology has given us wide scope for exploring and sharing our knowledge and talent with the world. People in all parts of the world are using different technologies for different purposes.
Benefits of new technology are being utilized in academics, education through radio and TV programs, web conferencing, satellite telecast, and distance education and now through social media. In recent time, lot of research has been done to find out new methods and techniques for teaching, to understand student’s interest, to increase their involvement in learning process, to make teaching and learning more interesting and issues related to changing academic environment. All over the world academicians are involved in developing new methods, new techniques and tools to make teaching learning process easy and interesting. In today’s context, a significant amount of work is being done to explore the advantages in academics. Use of new media in education is a new area of research for academicians. But if we can go little back and see, we find that over the years traditional media also played very important role in teaching and learning, and integrating both these two media in contemporary education system can give us tremendous success in academics.
Traditional media includes contemporary modes of communication such as television, radio, newspapers, magazines, newsletters. In traditional media, usually the sender or the source of the information decides what to publish, broadcast or telecast, while receiver (readers/audiences and viewers) always receives the information. Receivers can respond their views, opinions on the subject and on presentation of the program or news which is published or broadcast from any media organization but normally they do not play any role in the creation of any news story or program. In private and public media organizations normally owners of the organizations control, hold and are responsible for the content and material published, broadcast or telecast. There are also some authorized agencies which play a very responsible and important role in the overall functioning of public and private media and in providing permission to start and run a media organization and also in deciding certain code of conducts for functioning of a media organization and it’s process of information sharing.
The term, “Social Network” is defined by the Webster Online Dictionary to be - Forms of electronic communication (as Web sites for social networking and micro blogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (as videos).
Social media is digitalized, computerized and networked form of information sharing which includes different network groups which operates certain social websites e.g. Google plus, Facebook, MySpace etc. Social media gives lot of freedom in the creation of information and in information sharing. Any user can start communication on any topic and anybody can participate. It is always user’s choice on what they want to discuss and share. The organizations which hold the network generally do not take any responsibility on the quality and content of the conversation or any uploaded information. These social networks can be used for multiple purposes such as chatting with like minded people, to do online business and also for knowledge and information sharing. Special features give lot of choices to the users.
This chapter will highlight issues related to integrating tradition and social media within the academic environment, such as:
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Changing academic environment in education system.
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Teacher VS Student’s perspectives on teaching and learning.
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Academics and use of media
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Integrating traditional and social media within the academic environment.