Music 2.0

On Friday, December 11, I delivered a lecture to Alan McCusker-Thompson’s 3rd year students undertaking a BA in Commercial Music at UWS in Ayr. The module in which this lecture was included focuses on Popular Culture and Music. My talk therefore had to show how the internet and Web 2.0 in particular has enabled, through open sourcing etc, the democratisation of cultural construction.

I chose to concentrate in the presentation on the development of web and its influence on a)distribution of music and b) communication of established and emerging artists. I chose two case studies as a pretext for debate about how the web and its feature is currently used by artists to promote their work.

More than 40 students have attended the talk and judging from their questions and reactions, they have enjoyed the presentation but also found it intriguing and thought-challenging.

The slides are below:

#smcedu – Social Media Education Chat 3

Yong C Lee, the organizer of the weekly Social Media Education Chat on twitter has invited me today to talk about my Katho New Media class. Since it’s only a couple of days since the course resumed and the official course evaluation was not yet sent to the students, I was honored by such an invitation. To bring in something new and make the chat more dynamic, Yong C Lee and I connected via TokBox and shared the URL of our chat on Twitter.

Unfortunately, our connection was really poor and our video call was constantly dropped. This makes me think that using TokBox for cross-Atlantic conversations has more technical challenges than when utilizing it from within the same continent. Nevertheless, our connection, even brief, emphasized once again TokBox’s versatility.

The questions I received were about the differences I make between new media and social media, my approach of the subjects during class, the students’ assignments, their response to the course.

I thank again SMCEDU for having me as their guest today! It feels great to know that what I do with this course is perceived as inspiring and ground-breaking.

Katho New Media Course Wrap-Up

Today is the final day of my New Media course that I teach to Erasmus students attending courses at Katho-Hantal. It is a day dedicated to a company visit during which students can see live what they’ve heard about while in class. This was the third semester when I taught the course and due to good prior evaluations (available here and here) it was the first time when I delivered it in its extended form: from one intensive week (3 hours of teaching/day) to two.

I have therefore maintained the number of theoretical lectures and the academic writing assignment. I introduced two practice days, one oriented towards journalism/citizen journalism/blogging and one towards research. For this purpose I have created three similar yet different spaces where students could upload their assignments:

• Posterous
• WordPress
• Wiki

Students also used these spaces to upload the results of their in-class research oriented project when they were given an online entity to study and come up with recommendations for improving their online presence. The course also featured a surprise online live video guest lecture.

There was also a final team project for which students had to come up with a new media product, using new media platforms and applications that could be easily shared online. Two videos they produced are embedded below. The third one can be found here. For more info on each team project, please visit the course media spaces (posterous, wordpress, and wiki linked above).

PR 2.0

A guest lecture to HoWest in Kortrijk, Belgium.

I have joined today a group second year students specializing in PR at HoWest in Kortrijk, Belgium. This lecture was the result of an invitation I have received from Pieter Soete, Lecturer in Communication Management. As with all the presentations I do, this was also a customized one. Pieter wanted me to talk about social media and public relations as a way to integrate a new media perspective in the students’ curricula.

I have enjoyed the students’ interaction, their good examples and witty questions.

The powerpoint is below and can be accessed as usual on slideshare as well.

Introduction to mass communication research

A live video guest lecture to KathoNewMedia students by Dr Mugur Geana.

Photo: Peter Budai

I have started teaching my New Media course at Katho last week. This is the third edition, or better-said, the third semester when I am teaching it. Like with previous semesters, I am trying to continuously update the course and bring projects and speakers that can inspire the students.

Today was the time for me to be the host of a guest lecture. Dr Mugur Geana, whose classes I joined several times before as a guest lecturer, was our guest. While students today had to experiment with online research tools, Dr Geana spoke about traditional research methods and gave students a crash course into qualitative and quantitative research methods of mass communication.

Judging from the students’ reactions, attention and engagement with the content and Dr Geana, the lecture was a succes. After the lecture some even indicated that the presentation managed to clarify questions that their courses at home  weren’t able to do. For this, many thanks to Dr Geana.

Unfortunately, we have encountered many technical difficulties all due to the weak internet connection available in the classroom. Soon after we started we had to abandon TokBox since both the video and audio connection were interrupted. After switching to Skype we encountered similar problems. We started with live synchronous video, then had only our class stream video and finished by relying solely on the audio connection provided by Skype running the powerpoint presentation from the computer’s hard-drive. Even when using a cabled rather than wi-fi the sound quality was fluctuating from poor to fair and only sometimes to good.

The experience from today confirms once more that introducing live video guest lectures into the daily teaching process is a simple and affordable way to enable students to have international contacts and examples. It also emphasizes once more the necessity of investments in internet infrastructure of schools, which could later lead to a change in the teaching process: more fluid, more open, less space confined.