Crossmedial teaching: the university's interface

By Jelke de Boer on 7 July 2009

When looking at new developments in technology and the possibilities to apply new ideas the educational system seems to be a popular field for opinions and experiments. The introduction of the computer into schools not only had a big impact within the classroom it also opened a wide range of discussions on classic education versus newer ways of teaching. We should off-course keep looking at educational strategies and learning styles continuously and try to improve them where possible. Many influential thinkers have interesting and appealing new ideas on the impact of the internet on our lives, or even broader, on life, the universe and everything. I think its great to discuss those ideas at conferences, but we should not turn our school system into some lab setup using a generation of students as our lab rats. Many ideas seem plausible at first sight but actually only apply to a very small group of top students. Or to no students at all. In fact most of the world changing new ideas on education are driven by an ideology, in this case the ideology of technology. Is our youth fundamentally different from previous generations? Do we need to change the way students and teachers interact now we have this great interactive thing called internet? Here’s a reality check from my teaching experience.

tagged with: crossmedial teaching, education

Tweet

By Kees Winkel on 29 June 2009

And then there was Twitter. Not less than three years ago nobody had ever heard of this typical social medium. Twitter started in 2006 and is currently enjoying unprecedented success. I have no clue how many people use this micro blog to tell their followers where they are, what they do or what they think. But reading the (printed version of a Dutch) newspaper about Twitter’s overload due to the death of Michael Jackson, it must be a huge crowd. Twitter, in its core, is truly crossmedial. You may use your mobile or your Twitter account. You might want to embed Twitter in your Facebook pages. You name it. It is a fine piece of modern communication tooling which allows us to tell the world what you’re up to. Ever since I was confronted with Twitter, I have asked myself why people – including me – actually use Twitter. Personally I’m not the type to tell the world what I am doing all the time. Maybe I’m too old for this but it requires a lot of handling, both handling of my followers and handling of my micro blogs. I have followers who send Tweets every 10 to 15 minutes and quite frankly, I don’t give a damn.

tagged with: hyves, micro blog, facebook, crossmedia, twitter

Communities and Events

By Joshua Hazelaar on 23 June 2009

Nearly two months ago I posted a blog on my research and that research now is finished! It was on the subject of experiencing events and the influence an online community can have on that experience. At that time I was busy building an online community for the Highlands blues festival, which is now a fact; blueslife.nl. We wanted to have a solid theory to give structure to the online community. So we based that online community on the theory that experience consists of four vital aspects; socialisation, fun, education and signification. We tried to represent those assets in the form of a wiki page, a forum and the possibility to make a profile and to communicate with each other throughout the whole community. We launched this community a month for the festival took place, and that may have been a bit too late for a community to fully flourish. On May 16th, the date of the actual festival, blueslife.nl had a member count of 60.

tagged with: communities, events, experience

International, interactive, integrated communication

By Harry Smals on 18 June 2009

Many of my students are writing their thesis now – or they just finished it. Some of them are about international communication. Striking: ‘’international’’ in most cases also means that is about applying interactive media! One research- and advice-project was for an international culture network. A Dutch theatre offers its stage to artists from Africa, Asia and Latin America. This resulted in a successful network maintained mainly by email and Facebook. My student’s task was to expand this network to more stages throughout Europe. She distributed a Google Docs questionnaire. I received drafts of her report by email and I commented them with the ‘’comment’’ function in Word. The international paperless office in practice. Strange that eventually she had to hand in a hardcopy! Her advice was to reduce the focus on Facebook as internet is not as omnipresent in Africa, Asia and Latin America as it is in Europe (hey, this is international communication, media-use varies across cultures!), furthermore she suggests to improve the application of the good old website and to expand the network within Europe by networking during a designated fair. Yes, physically meet people and talk with them, maybe exchange a business-card and a leaflet! This is an example of international, interactive, integrated communication: communication across borders and cultures, using a mix of digital and analogue media plus events – and there is interaction, online and offline.

tagged with: international, interaction

Just call me 3,141,592,653 of 7,851,455,000

By Erik Hekman on 15 June 2009

In the American science fiction show Star Trek there is a species called the Borg. The Borg manifest as cybernetically enhanced humanoid drones of multiple species, organized as an interconnected collective. Within the interconnected collective, every drone shares what it sees and does and decisions are made by a hive mind. They operate solely toward the fulfilling of one purpose: to “add the biological and technological distinctiveness of other species to their own” in pursuit of perfection. This is achieved through forced assimilation, a process which transforms individuals and technology into Borg, enhancing, and simultaneously controlling, individuals by implanting or appending synthetic components. In Star Trek, attempts to resist the Borg became one of the central themes, with many examples of successful resistance to the collective. Every now and then drones can escape the collective (most notably Seven of Nine), and become individuals once again.

tagged with: internet, collective, star trek, social media

Don does

By Harry van Vliet on 12 June 2009

With the publication of Don Tapscott’s new book on the Net Generation (“Grown up Digital”), I could write “Go and read this book”, but it might end up as a quote on the Dutch edition of this book (which I don’t aspire!), while leaving out the second part of the quote “...because it is flawed in so many ways that it serves as a good textbook on how NOT to present your arguments in a (scientific) debate.”

tagged with: netgeneration, methodology

The fun begins

By Niniane Veldhoen on 9 June 2009

The research on mentality has lasted for a year now. After reading lots of papers, trying to find out what mentality really is and trying to determine six basic mentalities to come up with a segmentation tool to name one’s mentality, for me the fun part really begins now. We’re going to do some experiments. The gut feeling we have is that the mentality of a person is kind of similar to the mentality of the brand he or she prefers. So now we’re going to put that gut feeling to the test with a few experiments.

tagged with: mentalities, research, branding

Building cross-medial grammar

By Wendy van der Steen on 5 June 2009

This school year is almost finished. This is the time to look into which subjects will have to be reviewed. I am now working on the subject of web content. Traditionally a very text focused subject, in which the students have to write articles for an e-zine We are now aiming to broaden the subject to include other forms of content. I then started wondering if there is something like cross-medial writing. The Amsterdam college offers a module with such a name. It is, however, focused on writing a cross-medial concept, instead producing one. Do you need to be taught to produce cross-medial content? Do you need separate rules? Wouldn’t you agree that every media has got its own rules? What is so special about cross-media? Has it got its own ‘grammar’? I do not have a ready-made answer. But I think we should start to look at the theory about (digital) storytelling. In cross-media it also all about the story. Searching You Tube of found these movies by Ira Glass, host and producer of the well known radio and television show This American Life.

tagged with: cross-medial, storytelling, grammar

Experience? Yes, with milk and sugar please

By Jelke de Boer on 28 May 2009

Product experience is hot. Experience is what makes the difference; nobody wants just another piece of soap when we can have an experience of a fresh sensation every morning instead. We’re moving from a product economy towards an experience economy. Take a look at this statement from Nivea when introducing new (European) products on the American market:

tagged with: starbucks, nivea, experience

The future of the television set

By Rogier Brussee on 20 May 2009

This post is an exercise in futurology. Anyone who has been in the CELL lab (especially the old lab) notices the large TV screen. Indeed the development of HD TV is one of the focus areas of the Cross media lectorate, see for example Harry’s convergence and the future is now posts.  Some of my colleagues at Novay  in particular Christian Hesselman, are also deeply involved in next generation TV through the iNEM4U project. And of course Harry and I have in long gone days both been involved in the Giga Port Next generation TV project, which came up with a model for TV that is not all that different from what I will propose here.

tagged with: itv, apple, prediction, future, television