In the News Retuning the Republic New Civic Education
Dr Kris Rampersad 
On the eve of our Jubilee as a Republic, the Government Information Services approached me to contribute some brief thoughts about Republic Day.
As most of my followers beyond our shores – in the diaspora and the wider world – would not have access to these broadcasts I share a condensed version pepped with some visuals.
It provides me with an opportunity to demonstrate the potential for rethinking the way we deliver knowledge and education. As you may know, has been the reason d’ etre of this web portal, the GloCal Knowledge Pot and my ongoing innovations around multimedia content.
This of course aligns to earlier presentations on the Republic as in the inauguration of the first Woman President and others on the first and now second first Woman Prime Minister. Deep diving into the State of the Nation must have become par for the course, given that LiTTscapes – Landscapes of Fictionis the quintessential representation of nationhood. It is the official commemorative publication of our Jubilee of Independence. From what follows I envisaged a similar output on our Jubilee as a Republic will take on a very different character, nature, shape and form.
Read on and See Videos below.
LiTTscapes is a work of art; but also it is a documentary, a travelogue, a critical work with visual and literary power. It takes us on a tour of the country, giving some exposure to almost every aspect of life….No one book can be everything; no one book can set out to achieve everything that a literature and a visual text can do for its people and its nation; but whatever you say one book can’t do, this one almost does it!
Professor Al Creighton, Guyana PRize for Literature Review of LiTTscapes – Landscapes of Fiction by Dr Kris Rampersad
It is no secret that the new media world has left the conventional formal institutions of learning in a time warp.
Fast Food for Thought
In a world in which children are being fed fast food knowledge from the internet from as early as a few months old, my insistence that we need to find new ways of capturing the imagination of our children at the earliest age to overide the bombardment of foreign and alien material becomes more and more imperative.
Yet, I do not see this as a front and centre issue in the loud and vociferous pronouncements on sovereignty now engaging the attention of the social pundits and pontificators.
With the current preoccupation on Sovereignty, it surprises me that there is less vocal outcry when the intrusion is onur minds and subconscious and an ever present threat to our personal hegemony and the minds of next generarions.
I have more to say on this in a subsequent introspection on the treatment of the issue of sovereignty by those who are given voice as opinion leaders and educators, later.
Vulnerable Education
The COVID-19 epidemic made us all too aware of how vulnerable our education system was with its focus on large, bureaucratic institution for educating children, and indeed to foreign information feeds as well.
But have we awakened to that reality?
During a recent online meeting with the regional watch body, the Caribbean Telecommunications Union, I asked an ardent official listing all they have done in terms of information literacy. In effect, his was a listing of how they are expanding education on how to use these new technology. I complimented him on the work the tech community is doing to educate children to become great consumers of technology. Then I asked what was being done to rather make us better producers and creators of technologies, to which of course there was no adequate response.
Rethinking Education
The focus on technicalities and technical of education leaves much to be desired without a concurrent appreciation of th larger sphere and reach of ‘education’ itslef.
Recognising this lack, and indeed the institutional lag in this phenomenon – a time warp of at least two decade, should add – I stepped out of the formal newsroom to build a field of what I today call CEIBA-EDUtainment that is now aligned with AuthenThink Intel,the MultiMedia Micro Epic and now the new EPIC Landscapes and MindScapes of World Heritage & History.
Retuning the Republic
This involves meshing the worlds of media, culture, education and entertainment – all worlds which practically existed in their own cocoons – we even have separate Government ministries that treat with each of these.
More to Blended Learning than Digital Form
This did not come out of the blue. It has been a long process of investigation, interrogation and experimentation. Out of it has come several of my pitches of novel edutainment forms. This includes:
Story Science which blends scientific method and approached as advanced by National Geographic Society with traditional forms that tap into natural impulses to rescue the alien form that formal education takes in our environment as it has always been – inherited from colonial systems. This looks further than just blended learning which has come ti mean integrating technical tools in teaching and the classrooms – and at its most basic and stanrdard form is converting dog-eared teaching notes to PDFs.
Story Science, CEIBA-EDUtainment, AuthenThink Intel look to a more holistic and conscious understanding of integrating the world of new media, even in the forms of artificial intelligence, into our lives – and that is not only for children and students and teachers and parents – it applies to every sector and age.
The MultiMedia Micro Epic and now unfolding in various styles as the new EPIC Landscapes and MindScapes of World Heritage & History that follows on LiTtcapes – Landscapes of Fiction are evolving novel experimental forms!
Evolving World of Knowledge
The world cut up into disciplines and silos each treated as countries and continents of their own are revealing that they are all rolled into one, in one world where each impact the other.
So too the world of knowledge. The agents of knowledge transmission are all rolled into one – media, culture, education, entertainment were all separate disciplines. The new age is demanding that we recognise that from the cradle we should be conscious of how they are one.
We should have the tools to do that too.
Yet, what we are left with are teachers who know very little about how the world of media impact on learning. That is, that each form of information – sound, visual, motion – all have different appeal and impact, and rolled into one with new age education they are oblivious to the very many ways and signals they are impacting and shaping a child’s reality.
Gaps and Disconnects
That is a very large disconnect between the world of elders and the new generations that is feeding youth restlessness and impatience with older generations.
This became very clear when I was preparing my National Geographic Capstone which asked that I utilise National Geographic material. Presenting a seemingly innocuous video on migrating butterflies to a classroom of pre-schoolers – one of my experiments on the ground – the teacher was surprised at the terror it evoked in a child when the national and domestic discourse on mass migration was filled with trepidation. Most are not tuned to nor trained to detect nor treat with these dynamics.
Parliament TV Stars
I have also had cause to point out how live televising of Parliamentary proceedings for instance, impact and influence the quality, value and nature of debates. And I have called for more circumspect uses of the Parliament Channel, other Government media and indeed the media as a whole.
This requires a complete overhaul and retraining of not just parliamentarians and decision-makers all now avid distributors of media content via social media, but also the media fraternity itself on this new open landscape where media, education and entertainment meet and that is totally aside from the need to retrain teachers to function in the new media world.
All of this also set the prerequisite for rethinking how we reposition education, develop learning materials and use the channels of communications more consciously and conscientiously. And that, while the now overwhelming thrust into Artificial Intelligence is on us, when we hardly understand our AuthenThink Intelligence.
I do not think that when the Government Information Service asked me to share some thoughts on Republic Day it would have led to this closer look at how sharing such information may reach or be received.
The channels it is being shared on are primarily local one. I changing the form of the presentation, into audio-visual form and into sharing on my channels – changes both character and reach and evoke new considerations of how we use and present information in our world today.
I thank Ms Hiliare Murray Jeremiah who interviewed, prepared and narrated the pieces for the Government Information Service and thrust that together with these musings we open a new page forwards towards better understanding how we function within larger global dynamics.
Happy Republic Day!
Retuning the Caribbean Knowledge Sector
About Dr Kris Rampersad
Did you know that Dr Kris Rampersad composed the song Smarter than a Smart Phone. Here are some other startling facts:
See Link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtyvLsjkYI4
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