Digital Content Expanding

A couple of recent articles about the amount of Digital Content in the world caught my eye…

• Study: Digital Information Ballooning; Source – CNN Technology, March 6, 2007
• A Deluge of Digital Content; Source – The Chronicle of Higher Education, Wired Campus, March 6, 2007

According to the sources above, in 2003, 5 exabytes of digital content was produced in the world [1 exabyte equals 1 billion gigabytes]. The amount of digital content (unduplicated) produced last year jumped to 40 exabytes. If duplicated content were included, 161 exabytes was produced. To put this into perspective, 161 exabytes is like “12 stacks of books that each reach from the earth to the sun. ” (CNN Technology) Who is producing this content? Not Hollywood. The average consumer is creating a lot of this content and publishing via sites such as YouTube.

What are the implications for us as educators? Creation of digital content will be more and more natural for our students as time goes on. They will be creating videos and uploading them to YouTube long before they get to college. Can we use their experience with digital content to our (and their) advantage in the classroom? Any ideas as to how this can be done? Anyone have some experiences to share? We’d love to hear from you.