This Thursday's column will try to gauge the significance of the World Journalism Education Congress held in Singapore recently.

Some folk at WJEC-AMIC are focussing on how to prep students for a world of Web 2.0 and Journ 2.0 – but what about Journ-Ed 2.0?

Rosental Alves says students’ cognitive processes are changing, and so should journ-ed. “We should and must change the ways we teach and absorb in classroom, and pay attention to the new languages.” In addition, “E-learning will become a very important component, regardless of distance.” What he could have added is using ICT to harness global potential in learning.

J-students at the Institut Pratique de Journalisme (IPJ) are learning for jobs that don’t yet exist. Addressing WJEC & AMIC, School head Pascal Guenee says this means:

• Replacing old specialisations of radio, print, TV with education in sound, text and image.
• Learning about sound means interviews, recording, editing – for radio, web and podcasts.
• Same applies to images and text.

Rosental Alves, a self-confessed revolutionary, says he will have to act like a machinegun – “Drrr! Drrr!”, he performs.

It’s because he only has 15 mins to present on the impact digital journalism has on j-education. And indeed, he blasts his audience at WJEC - Amic – with high quality insight. But, woe, there’s not enough time to finish the volley. Probably lots of myths still survive.

The man behind the amazing annual online journ symposium at Univ of Texas made these points:

There are about 100 j-schools spread across 18 Arab countries, according to Prof Ali Al-karni (pictured below) presenting at the WJEC - AMIC conferences. Data shows that almost half of these are colleges rather than universities.

But most interesting is that j-students spend almost 90% of their time taking courses within the j-school itself. Al-karni says that he and some peers would prefer a system closer to the US model so that students spend more time learning subjects that are not media-related.