https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T50iRaGG_bA

What is a prosumer?

Commonly known in marketing, a prosumer is a new kind of participant in the market, that one that consumes but produces at the same time: not only consumes, but chooses how and when to consume. While opposite to traditional consumers, the prosumer has power thanks to the internet: he can control videos, pictures, texts and information. In a pre-internet era, the producers herld the power: they chose how to dristribute their music, films, books, news, tv shows, sport events, and information. They could choose how to sell it, who to sell it and how to. Now every one of those features can be found easily and legally on a small device on our pockets, and information is always available, anywhere and anytime. This information, however, is produced by the prosumers: the ones that consume the intormation but also contribute to it. Now, anyone can upload a video, a picture, a news report, and the access to the information is easier than ever.

This new power holds significant consequences for the e-learning era: while in traditional education exists a sort of piramidal relationship where the teacher provides the information and knowledge to be learn, this changes with a prosumer generation. In a room with a large group of students, each can look for the information easily and individually and they can contribute to it too, sometime with real world implications, as the video shows it. Wikipedia is the biggest example of them all: information not contributed only by scientists and experts of diverse areas, but enthusiast and amateur investigators, and students as well. Also, the student chooses what kind of information he or she decides to research for, what kind of knowledge he or she decides to consume.

With these kind of online resources to post information, news, videos and pictures (like Youtube and Wikipedia), the information and knowledge is in the power – and resposability –of all.

Sources:

Palacios Domínguez, Martha Lizbeth (2013)- "El prosumer y el surgimiento de espacios alternativos de comunicación para la difusión de contenidos noticiosos".

http://www.bib.uia.mx/tesis/pdf/015721/015721.pdf