Volume 5- issue 1

Vol. 8 - Issue 1 2012 - ISSN 1504-4831

Volume 5 - issue 1 - 2009

Volume 5- issue 1 - 2009

Recently the largest university in the world, the Indira Gandhi National Open University registered more than 2 million students. The University raised its numbers of local study centres with more than 300 just in 2008. About 81 million Indians have access to Internet, which gives a penetration of about 7% nationally. In this context it gives a lot of sense to establish study centres as hubs of learning with the newest technologies available. Other Asian countries have a higher level of penetration, Japan, being the highest, with 74%, - Malaysia, Singapore and the other rapidly growing economies will soon reach the same level. According to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, China had 290 million Internet users in November 2008, while the US had about 220 million users. But also smaller Asian countries are escalating as major Internet users. Twenty of Vietnam’s 86 million inhabitants have access to the Internet, a number that equals a major European country like Poland. Worldwide, almost 1,6 billion people have access, and 41% of the world’s users live in Asia-[i]

- A Pleading Based on Experiences from Denmark

Creativity is the topic in the first article of this issue. Dr. Heidi Philipsen of the University of Southern Denmark asks what sparks off creativity for young filmmakers. Her topic of investigation is the use of “creative constraints”. Building on what looks like a Nordic, and in particular Danish tradition of creativity enhancement, offering students of filmmaking distinct frames or borders for the creativity process, has proven its feasibility over a number of years, Philipsen analyses the core ideas and principles of this tradition and takes a close look on how those principles succeed in other contexts of filmmaking. What does the use of constraints offer filmmakers? One might ask if methods described here democratize the video production and establish a standard that might make videos even more tangible in future lifelong learning.

The second article, by Rita Jentoft, Associate Professor of University of Tromsø, Norway, presents issues from a study on occupational therapy. Practical skills constitute essential knowledge in occupational therapy. She describes the knowledge students develop in this area as situation- and experience-based, generated from within the situation. She shows how facilitating such knowledge proved to be difficult in a particular program for educating Palestinian Occupational Therapists in Gaza. The use of Educational communication technology (ECT) like videoconferences, internet and videos became necessary tools, not only for distribution of a flexible learning programme, but also for developing critical and reflective thinking as student learn the subjects of occupational therapy.

Dr. Muhammad Javed Iqbal, assistant professor at the Allama Iqbal Open University in Islamabad, Pakistan presents a paper that deals with the nature of a concept of lifelong education. He suggests that Lifelong education can be provided through informal, formal and non-formal education processes. Hence, lifelong education can be defined as a process of both deliberate and unintentional opportunities influencing learning throughout one’s life span, he claims. He discusses issues around integration, flexibility and diversity related to lifelong education. (Link to powerpoint used in the introduction video: javed__iqbal_powerpoint 131.66 Kb )

Article list vol 8. - issue 1

1. Thommy Eriksson & Inge Ejbye Sørensen - Reflections on academic video

2. Theo Hug - Storytelling – EDU: Educational - Digital – Unlimited?

3. Alexander Porshnev & Hartmut Giest - University Students’ Use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in Russia: A Focus on Learning and Everyday Life *

4. Edda Johansen, Thomas Harding & Tone Marte Ljosaa - Norwegian Nurses’ Experiences with Blended Learning: An Evaluation Study

5. Heidi Philipsen - Scaffolded filmmaking in PlayOFF: A playground for worldwide film experiments

Call for papers

Seminar.net welcomes papers and reviews for upcoming issues, and you find guidelines for authors here. Our scope is to publish refereed articles dealing with research into theoretical or practical aspects related to the learning of adolescents, adults and elderly. A vital field of interest for seminar.net is the use of media technology in lifelong learning.

Digital Storytelling, Mediatized Stories: Self-Representations in New Media

Knut Lundby (red.)

Publisher: Peter Lang Publishing, New York, 2008.

Reviewed by
Jill Walker Rettberg
Associate Professor of Digital Culture
University of Bergen
http://jilltxt.net

We live in an age in which more and more of us are creating our own "digital stories". In 2008, 18% of Norwegian 16-24 year olds were recorded as being active bloggers over the previous three months (Statistics Norway, "ICT in households", 2^nd quarter 2008) while more than 2/3 of American teenagers have uploaded self-produced material to the Internet, in the form of YouTube videos, photographs, blogs, stories, remixes etc. (Pew Internet). The numbers of these "user-made" cultural productions are growing year by year and spreading from the younger generation to us adults, who are now the group most increasingly represented on Facebook. In blogs and on Facebook the distinction between amateur and professional is largely meaningless.

John Hartley and Kelly McWilliam (eds.)

Publisher: Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009

Reviewed by
Birte Hatlehol
PhD student in Media Education
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Email: birthe.hatlehol@svt.ntnu.no

The anthology Story Circle is an international study of digital storytelling that discusses the phenomenon in a global context. The book contains 20 articles with contributions from a number of key specialists with wide-ranging experience in the field of DST.

Edited by Heidi Philipsen and Lars Qvortrup

Publisher: Samfundslitteratur Press: Frederiksberg Press, 2007.

Reviewed by
Stephen Dobson
Professor
Lillehammer University College
Email: stephen.dobson@hil.no

Introduction
Two questions can be asked: firstly, not do we need another book on remediation, but why? And secondly, if this is the case, what kind of book should it be? This review spirals around these questions.

Global perspectives on E-learning.

Rhetoric and reality by A. A. Carr-Chellman (Ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2005

Reviewed by

Dr. J. Ola Lindberg

Department of Education, Mid Sweden University
Email: Ola.Lindberg@miun.se

Dr. Anders D. Olofsson
Department of Education, Umeå University
Email: Anders.D.Olofsson@educ.umu.se

It seems suitable to begin this review by giving a brief description of the context in which the texts of this book are produced. If it fails to be regarded as a description, then we hope at least it can be regarded as one possible understanding of the context. When contextualizing a book, a good idea seems to be to start with a few words about the editor, Alison A. Carr-Chellman.

by George Lakoff, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006

Reviewed by
Geir Haugsbakk
Ph.D.-candidate in Education
Lillehammer University College

Email: Geir.Haugsbakk@hil.no

“To lose freedom is awful; to lose the idea of freedom is even worse.” This statement by George Lakoff is at the core of his attention in his last book. And his opinion is that the loss of the concept of freedom is a tragic incident that has struck a large part of the American people, not least since September 11, 2001.

Reviewed by Stephen Dobson, professor, Lillehammer University College.

7 years have passed since the publication of Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin’s Remediation. Understanding New Media (1999). It has already in the space of this short time attained the status of a classic.

Adult Learning in the Digital Age

Information Technology and the Learning Society by Selwyn, N., Gorard, S. and Furlong, J. London: Routledge, 2006.

Reviewed by Stephen Dobson, Senior lecturer in Education, Lillehammer University College, Norway.

Published by Routledge (London), 2003, p196.

Reviewed by Stephen Dobson, Senior lecturer in education, Lillehammer University College.