Dang, I have no clue how to classify this post, but somehow Consumer Generated Media fits. Darren Herman offers a wonderful slice of life on his blog, describing how he engaged in content creation with a couple adorable youngsters over New Year’s weekend.
You should read the whole story. One excerpt:
According to Dictionary.com, content can be described as: something
that is to be expressed through some medium, as speech, writing, or any
of various arts: a poetic form adequate to a poetic content. Since I’ve
been wrapped up in reading about all the content creators on YouTube,
MySpace, and any other content harvesting website/service, I
neglectfully forget that in its’ rawest form, content is created
offline. Who still creates content offline? Well, apparently there is a
whole world that does… and these girls are the tip of the iceberg. It’s
very easy to get wrapped up in the web world but we must also keep in
mind that the entire world doesn’t exist online all the time… at least,
not yet.
So it brings me back to consumer generated media – this isn’t new for the internet age, even if it’s only applied to online content. Blocks are always going to outsell Leapfrog toys.
As an aside, I’m no stranger to working with kids. As a camp counselor for eight summers, a substitute teacher for brief periods over several years, and an uncle for nearly sixteen years (now an uncle four times over), keeping up with the younguns is the hardest job there is, both mentally and physically. Give children the tools to create, and they’re gods. It’s why Darren was so awestruck over his experience.
We do need to keep that bigger picture view of content. Every budding Picasso, Beethoven, Einstein, Edison, and Franklin is dabbling in it, and while there will now almost always be some digital record of it (an online patent filing, a digital photo, an MP3 file), much of the true genius of creation happens offline, and we can’t forget to keep tapping into that.
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