Edu-tainment!

I think my favorite part of class today was the extra credit presentation: The Medici Effect. The idea of being innovative and trying new things is a great idea in theory, but from what I've done thus far in my minimal, meager, PH career, innovation isn't so highly regarded. In 666 we were told to not "reinvent the wheel" because granting agencies want to see best practices and know that their money will produce results. Sheila even acknowledged this a bit after the presentation. In terms of research and academia, it seems that the idea of innovation is more widely accepted and people are willing to take a risk with it. For everyday, "normal" purposes, though, it seems like we should stick with the "tried and true".

In the presentation, it was mentioned that by merging two disparate ideas you may create some unlikely connections which lead to innovative ideas. To do this, we need to break through barriers which are normalized associations between words and certain thoughts, etc. I wonder, though, if the author presented ways to workshop through our "barriers". If we are so imbued by culture and society, without certain prompts, we might not be able to break through barriers. Without this sort of guidance, we might stumble along the lines of innovation and it would remain theoretical rather than applicable.

The rest of the class focused on education-entertainment. It was unfortunate that I wasn't able to present today due to other demands. Anyways, I like the idea of "edu-tainment" and as was seen in the individual presentations and class readings it can play a very positive role in changing opinions and attitudes in the audience. What are the changes in actual outcomes like behavior? Does EE actually lead to behavior change? Also, it is a very expensive way to reach audiences. Large audiences can be reached and it can be underwritten by corporations (they can turn a profit as I will address in my presentation next week) but I think that can get politically murky given certain topics. If you can coordinate with an already established program like ER or Grey's, then that could be extremely beneficial and inexpensive. I think for our project, though, EE isn't the most applicable or wise.

Lastly, we discussed the Internet and its extreme pro's and con's. While there are some huge barriers to overcome, I think this is something that we MUST do because younger generations (in developed worlds) practically live off on the Internet and as they age, they will still probably frequent the Internet (plus they are comfortable and familiar with it). I think while we focus on Internet, though, we can't forget about those populations who still do not or cannot access it. As in terms of our project, we've already discussed the use of Internet and it seems that this presentation is a little late in the game for the class. I think it would have been more beneficial to have had it a little bit earlier.