elearnspace

Education, like news, journalism, and marketing, is undergoing a substantial shift. Essentially, the individual formerly known as “student” now has far greater control over information, conversation, and access to experts outside of the classroom. Broadcast lectures are giving way to interaction and learner control. A great example of a similar shift can be seen in what marks an important point in marketing and PR: the Old Spice campaign. Basically, the campaign blends traditional media with social and real time media. The actor in the commercials has been responding via short videos (15-35 seconds each) to questions on Twitter, Facebook, Digg, and other services. At last count, over 180 short videos had been posted – a wonderful, and amusing, way to waste time. Some have called it “the best use of social media yet” and that the campaign will “turn out to be the case study from how to turn advertising into content and how to use social media to activate mainstream coverage”. The making of the videos is a big shift from planned image control that most companies exhibit. Writing and production happens in real time without usual vetting/discussion, exhibiting strong trust between the company and the ad agencies.
Perhaps we should model an Old Spice educational campaign: real time learning driven by learners questions in various distributed tools, not the instructor’s pre-planned content in a classroom or LMS. But with shirts on.