Preparing Online Communicators for the Future of Information Systems

CROSSPOSTED FROM PRSA PHILADELPHIA BRAINSTORM BLOG

Diane Penrod and Bill Wolff of Rowan presented on information "ecologies," including online portfolio, RSS feeds, and social bookmarking tools. Goal is showcasing how information is moving. Bill showed an example from a student about how that student is gathering information from multiple blogs and rss feeds and aggregating them in a way that is useful for her own collaborative writing projects.

Diane is interested in the "semantic domain" of Web 3.0. Beat-blogging is citizen journalism mixed with professional journalists and other experts interested in journalism. Twitter is mentioned in coverage of spot news events increasingly.

Teaching them a semantic, linguistic structure - Tweets are different semantic, linguistic structures.

Students are not digital natives, they are digital "primitives." They are not completely fluent. Goal is to take the primitives and get them away from the primitive uses and move the communications process forward by helping them learn how to use these technologies better.

Wolff: goal is to think critically about these tools and technologies, rather than just using them.