*It's a blog!*

That’s the WordPress default title for the sample post that comes published with every new WordPress account. On the surface it’s a rather generic, upbeat greeting. Underneath the surface it’s an open invitation to allow yourself to run wild and to unleash your inner blogging beast all over your brand new, endless white canvas.

If you scroll down you’ll come to realize that this is not my first post. And yet it is.

What used to be “Andi Narvaez: Down and Across” is now “Andi Narvaez: Re-learning PR.” Welcome to my refreshed blog.

I lost a couple of hours of sleep here and there thinking about my new life in Maryland (Although I just call it D.C.) as a public relations graduate student at University of Maryland and how I wanted the content of my blog to reflect that new life. And one night it hit me (and then I hit myself again when I realized how simple it was).

It’s no secret that the Web, technology and – to a very significant extent – social media are changing the way we used to do pretty much anything – business, education, religion, media, family… On “Re-learning PR” I will reflect on how much or how little communications and public relations theories and concepts written in ancient textbooks (I’m talking 2008 editions) and taught in the classroom differ from what professionals are currently putting into practice. My personal theory is that what I’ll be re-learning in class and from blogs, research, books, professors, colleagues, etc. will be the kind of stuff that would make Edward L. Bernays’ eyes jump out of his sockets.

Get it?

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Flick user andycarvin

I have a great passion for education and, especially when it comes to communications, I believe there is nothing better than when scholars’ work goes hand-in-hand with that of those who pratice the profession in order to improve best practices.

As an undergraduate I read my share of public relations and marketing text books, sat through lectures and took tests to eventually earn the degree that now lets others know that I probably know something about the Uses and Gratifications theory and the four P’s of Marketing. But theory is best learned when put into practice. My interships allowed me to truly see what I was getting myself into in context.

I know about social media because Facebook launched when I was a freshman in college and ever since then it has been second nature to me (also I am very curious). But what I think we are coming to, finally, is the inevitable – the writing of social media textbooks and the acknowledgement of social media as not only a field in communications but perhaps an industry in and of itself.

My alma mater taught courses on Web design and virtual reality games while I was still in school, Syracuse University managed to establish a New Media Studies graduate program but ended up dissolving it last semester (the courses are still available as electives) and more universities are offering new and social media courses to complement existing communications programs. Here is a description of Birmingham City University’s social media M.A. program.

Here are my questions:

1. If or when degrees in social media become widespread and standard, how will universities ensure that students get the amount of hands-on experience that this field requires?
2. Where does a master’s degree in social media leave the self-taught?
3. If social media is best learned through practice, how do we even out the playing field for future generations?
4. Will social media also lead to the reinvention of academic curricula (I must admit that’s the first time I’ve used the word curricula) with less time spent in class and on theory and more time spent “out there” and on practice?
5. Will social media degrees only be offered at the graduate level so that students can first learn a more traditional trade?
6. Can we think of the books, blogs and analytics that are already out there as the first pages of the new social media textbooks? Will they only be available to students on Kindles?
7. If Edward L. Bernays is known as the father of public relations, who is the father of social media?
8. Who is the mother?
9. And, generally speaking, shouldn’t it be mother instead of father seeing as how the mother literally births and nurtures the child? Just a thought.

If you wish you were back in school raise your hand.

Flickr image user, 100 watt dream