Creating media with an uncooperative mind

This is the first of two parts on media creation. I’ll update this post with a link when the second one is out. “The students already come with an understanding of the grammar of visual storytelling, but not of writing or audio.” This was one of the lecturers on audio and radio production at the university where I was teaching. Back then, in the early 2000s, I was a postgrad student with teaching duties in the Art, Media, and Design faculty’s Media Practice program and, as always, “kids these days” was a perennial topic among the lecturers. Not in the way you think. These were, mostly, a bunch of idealists. They believed in the job of teaching and were constantly trying to figure out what they needed to adapt. Times change – they always change – and people who care about teaching try to work with an awareness of the new, a care for younger generations, and subsequently get rewarded with constant burnout and mental health crises. One observation was that newer students needed more…