The Rise of Image as Language

For me, the big takeaway from the NMC conference was the crystilization of this thought: Images, both still and moving, are fast becoming our primary means of communication. You see this phenomenon in higher education where multi media projects are not only commonly accepted as demonstration of learning by instructors but instructors are getting in on the act themselves. Witness some of the  incredible work of Michael Wesch and his Digital Ethnography project. Or the work by our own faculty and students. In fact, many universities are rolling out digital media centers to support the work of students and instructors.  We see this in popular culture where "conversations" take place via the mashing-up of video clips, music, and images as people build on one another's creations and post them to places like YouTube. At the symposium, Lessig talked about digital media as the preferred means of communications amongst the young digital natives and the pressure this brings to bear on the copyright laws, which were written for another age.

I saw an excellent demonstration of this in a pre-conference workshop by Beth Harris and Steve Zucker from the Fashion Institute of Technology. Using image and video collaboration tools, (this example uses Cozimo but they also used other tools), they built a shared understanding of various works of art with their students by annotating the image in real time (both synchronously and asynchronously).


What struck me was how the image went from being talked about to being worked on. And it wasn't so much the tools they were using but how they were using them to communicate. In many examples throughout the conference  an image or a video was the primary vehicle of communication. This was true regardless of whether the conversation was started by the students or the instructor. And regardless of whether the work was an original creation or an existing piece. The next layer of communication could be described as microblogging, short declarative sentences and interrogative questions whether done directly on the piece or using another medium such as Twitter. It was not until the third layer of communication where "traditional" expanded text-based narrative kicked in. At this stage of the conversation text was used for reflection, expanded narration, and for summary. This could be in the format of a term paper but more often as a blog post. And sometimes delivered via audio. In fact it is not uncommon  for the entire conversation to take place within the first and second levels with students building on each others work in response to one another.



This of course raises several challenges. If this is the way of communication, how do we build an educational infrastructure that supports it? Questions of tools, their availability, bandwidth, an education all need to be addressed. How do we aggregate content spread out over several mediums. Many of which our in the public realm and could, theoretically, disappear at any moment in time. How can this content be archived in a way that is meaningful and retrievable? How do we evaluate student contribution and measure learning in a collaborative environment?

We've begun addressing these questions but there is still much work to be done.