Educator as DJ

James Cridland gave a good presentation today at the OU's internal curriculum and technology conference, talking about the Virgin radio site, and more significantly about the changing nature of broadcast. I'm presenting tomorrow on the broadcast strategy and so his talk had a lot of resonance with me. What struck me when listening to James was that radio now has to compete with the likes of LastFM, and indeed Virgin has a similar social networking site (which I must admit I was unaware of). Given that you can find the music you like and listen to a much greater range of stuff through the likes of LastFM, what makes people want to listen to broadcast radio? The answer is, I guess, the DJ. I wonder if there is an analogy between the tension between radio and LastFM and education and open educational resources here. Just as LastFM provides free content, but some people like a DJ to put context around it, so OER provides free educational content but the educator (or academic institution) puts it into context and provides guidance. So, educators are like DJs, but without so many annoying catchphrases.

Comments

[Tony Hirst]

An old meme Martin ;-)
http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/227

[Steven Verjans]

Good point, but will 'customers' remain willing to pay for the DJ???