First of all I want to thank my readers for their feedback - via several (social) media - on my previous blog. This blog was inspired on Chris Crawford’s idea of a god who determines every detail versus a god who deals in rules and principles. Both gods of course are personifications of visions on reality and on virtual realities - personifications and story-telling can be used in communication in order to make it easier to comprehend complicated situations.

One of the trends that came forward during the Media Future Week 2011 in Almere, was Gamification and Chris Crawford gave a very inspiring presentation about game design. In his vision a game designer is god of the universe that he creates for the game. What could this mean for education?

Do you have any idea why higher education is still mainly delivered as classroom teaching? Most lecturers know that a lot more is possible and some of them even enrich classroom teaching with innovations such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and iTunes U. But knowing it is one thing, applying this knowledge is another thing. Why?

The education system really has to change so Roger Schank tells us. He has a very strong quote on his website to underline this: There are only two things wrong with our education system: 1. What we teach; 2. How we teach it. Actually, many people say that the education system should change radically. Bill Gates is convinced that people do not only learn at school and that they should be rewarded for what they learn elsewhere. Of course he himself is a convincing proof of that; he dropped university to start his own business and he is rewarded with being the second richest man on the planet. Now, what he means is that people should be rewarded with certificates and diploma’s for what they are able to, instead of receiving a certificate or diploma for having passed all the exams. I agree.

Good old PR guru Anne van der Meijden already said it over twenty years ago: good external communication starts with good internal communication. Meaning that building and maintaining a fruitful relationship with a target audience starts with building a coherent group of employees first. We can apply this on the relationship between lecturers and students.

Crossmedia is the solution, but what is the problem? That an organization wants to send the same message through several media? I don’t think so. Getting rid of a message is never a problem. It’s like getting rid of garbage. There’s always a way to push it out.

Most students are eager to learn. A school is a good place for that, because there are many lecturers who are eager to teach. Sounds like an ideal situation of actors who offer (lecturers) and demand (students) information, knowledge, experience and competences. But it isn’t.

Why is it that I like to download from YouTube? Since I have put RealPlayer on my computer it offers me to “Download This Video” every time I watch a video on YouTube or any other website.