Inside View

Green Paper on Mobile Phones

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I BELIEVE THE 2020 WORKPLACE will be filled at the top with people who can effectively leverage mobile communications technologies. I think Kevin O'Rourke (speaking to me at left) also thinks that too. I hope that Kevin can steer me in developing a Green Paper that includes an audit of the mobile phones currently carried by creative third level students as well as an audit of current smart phone capabilities. Not all smart phones are created the same and some phones claim to be multimedia when they cannot handle all forms of rich media typically pushed out through the internet to third level students during their coursework. I believe knowing how to leverage a smart phone is important because using a complex phone well means you have conceptual tacit skills. I see this already in the problem-solving behaviour of sharp students when they use good judgment to listen to instructions and then figure out how to accomplish tasks that often lack a clearly-defined set of steps. I'm thinking about how to push off and get things started and I believe a Green Paper suitable for use by the Irish Learning Technology Association and the Computer Education Society of Ireland is an appropriate first step.

Mobile Phone Green Paper

 

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Jeanne Meister and Karie Willyerd -- The 2020 Workplace ISBN 9780061763274

 

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Basic Video Diary

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ALTHOUGH AUDIOBOO MAKES EASY WORK of tapping and talking your way through a diary, there's also a lot of reach and purpose to the same type of easy process for shareable video clips. I really like Qik.com and may push through the 1000-clip mark before the end of the year. The only issues I have with Qik relate to over-burdened phones when too many applications clog their main memories. I use Qik on my oldest handsets (Nokia E90 and Nokia N86) instead of my newer SonyEricsson Xperia X10 because I want push-button controls when wearing gloves. I shoot a lot of clips outside, in the rain and at night. Feeling a button gives me greater confidence than tapping a screen (something you can't do well with gloves).

On Video Diaries

Splines in my life

AS A YOUNG BOY, I used to decorate lovely homes for holiday events. Some of those grand homes had books from floor to ceiling. My grandfather had a large bookcase in the family living room too. He once told me that books were like bricks. I heard those words before I was 10 years old and they stuck with me. Whenever I visit the homes of friends, I'm often depressed by the lack of books. No books on tables, no books on shelves. No books. The home interiors seem painfully incomplete. Today, books are under attack by those who think e-books should replace the real thing. Those e-readers are so disposable. Their minimalism conveys content without physicality and sometimes I feel as though when you switch them off, they leave no trace of the cultural objects that they contain. So I'm resolute in my goal to make or buy more bookshelves and to present the books and bound papers of parts of my learning for people to see as they walk through our home. And if they stop and look at the shelves, they may see e-books tucked alongside the leather splines.

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I like BookBook too.

 

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Scratch Work from Media Trip

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STUDENTS FROM Tipperary Institute's creative multimedia programme take several media trips every semester. Yesterday's trip to Dublin involved a short stop at the Dylan Hotel for a hands-on look at new Sony Ericsson products. On the return leg from Dublin, some of the media crew listened to Steve Jobs rant during an Apple earnings call. That rant is part of the clip attached from Buzz Out Loud. This scratch video work and audio short will be used for critical evaluation of several aspects concerning the creation of video documentary products.

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Direct link to Blip.tv video short.

Buzz Out Loud #1332

 

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Musings from a Mature Student

Editor's Note: Here is a blog post from Steven M. P. Gill, a new creative multimedia student in LIT-Clonmel. Steven wrote his thoughts about being a mature student on the same day that several mature students took a Media Trip to Dublin (at right).

Remember the days when you could get your mum to do your washing and there would be home cooked meal waiting for you when you got home from school?

For some of us this is a distant past, as some of us are now the parent and are there tending to our own children’s washing and evening meals. This is in fact a common feature of many of the mature students I have encountered in my time. All of them are hardworking, organised, and experienced individuals trying to better themselves in what is primarily a youngster’s world. What do you mean? Well...the average student fresh out of Leaving Cert trying to discover life, versus, the mature student who is merely trying to improve it. Two almost completely different cultures, or generations coming together in one place all with the same objective: Education!

Listening in Dublin

HALF OF OUR Labour Market Activation Programme students head to Dublin from South Tipperary today, hoping to listen and learn from few twitterati they will meet in Milk & Honey and in two other venues in the city. I hope they hear messages of self-empowerment after they chat with Brian Greene, Peter Donegan, Kevin O'Rourke, Frank Fitzgibbon and a team of Sony Ericsson technologists. I believe there's an empowerment that arises when like-minded people connect in virtual and physical spaces and I hope that part of today's media trip results in a tighter connection between the written word, spoken snippets and pocket-sized ideas that might be powered by what's in your handbag. I'll have an Audioboo online after today's activities, stitching together commentary from various sources.

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Zuck Talks to Start-up School

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ALONG WITH THOUSANDS of others, I found this guy Mark Zuckerberg on Justin.tv during a Startup School video link and think he'd be an excellent guest speaker for an upcoming Barcamp in Ireland. His Facebook idea seems like it might be a Master Plan for online social networking. He shares his thoughts on stage during the first 22 minutes of the video.

Zuck

 

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Direct link to the 80-minute video: http://www.justin.tv/startupschool/b/272007200. Listen to 20 minutes of Mark Zuckerberg on Audioboo.

 

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Sunday News on a Frosty Morning

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BOTH THE SUNDAY TIMES and the Sunday Business Post offer little rumblings about the most savage national budget ever offered to the Irish people. The Irish government is risk-averse but with the European Union insisting upon fiscal prudence and international bond markets examining how costs will be cut, the Minister for Finance is left with little flexibility. He has to cut back on line items in the national budget. He knows that will uncork days of national unrest. But when those days arrive, several journalists in today's papers think the protests will validate the strategy used by the government to put Ireland back onto the road of recovery. Complex issues lione. e ahead, along with a public murmuring for a national election to ensure those who swing the knife actually have mandate to cut close to the bone. I talk about a few of those issues in today's 10-second video, wondering how my household would survive with another 10 per cent reduction in monthly wages.

17 October 2010 Sunday News

 

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View on YouTube.

Last Week: "Sunday News on my Bench", 10 October 10.

Last Month: "Sunday Times Recessionary Times", 12 September 2010.

Last Year: "Irish Sunday Papers", 12 October 2009.

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Heavenly Trips for Spiritual Tourists

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ALONG WITH FAILTE IRELAND, I think there's promise in pulling people towards Ireland to look at gravesites. It's not hard to find people my age on Facebook who are looking for their roots in the old country. In the case of many of my American friends, they don't want to be told they don't originate in Ireland. They want to find the name of a great grandparent on a headstone in Ireland and they want to walk the earth around the site. I've walked some very rugged and natural land next to unkempt graveyards and thought it was rather uplifting. The stories arising from the grounds of graveyards might help reverse the dramatic drop in overseas visitors to midwest Ireland (down 27% since last year). Ireland has the kind of culture and heritage that would appeal to religious tourists in Germany, America and the UK. It's worth trying to focus the efforts and deliver pilgrims to graveyards.

 

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Photo of the oldest gravestones in Golden, County Tipperary, Ireland.

Dead Can Dance - The Host Of Seraphim

 

 

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Nokia N8 Powered Up

FRESH OUT OF ITS BOX, my new Nokia N8 fired up with two bars of power then kept running while I played around with its interface. I ignored all the helpful tips about getting to use the phone because I wanted to see how much my previous knowledge of the Symbian User Interface worked in my favour. I was able to install Gravity, SIC-FTP, Facebook, Foursquare and the Mobanode widget before the phone politely went into its power-saving mode. I'll have to pay for Gravity when it reaches the end of its demo mode but since I consider that application to be the best in the Ovi Store, I'm happy to oblige.