preparation for multimedia

[G.J.Tielemans at dinkel.utwente.nl]

Well,
I am not that pessimistic:

For years I was head of the multimedialab of the faculty for educational
sciences and technology.
In this faculty good old professors teach multimedia theory with books.
As counter part all the students met in workshops my staff of graphical
designers, video-experts with a art-school background but also technical
programmers and had to create at least once in their life a complete
(educational) multimedia project: slides, video, radio-commercial a website
etc...and that was hard work!

It makes that our students are very beloved by the educational industry:
they could design educational stuff in a metodical way AND can speak the
language of the artists who have to create the stuff. (Some students did
create their own art-studio, but to be honoust: that are the exceptions. Do
not try to make artists of them all...)

What most of them learn is to recognise when they need to hire a good
artist..(like I as psychologist learned in my psychometrica classes to
recognize when I needed to hire a real statistical expert during research..)

I do not think that the difference is the background in art classes, but
more a difference in personal attitude in your students: we gave the same
workshops to students from communication studies.. it was a disaster: they
were constantly looking for assistants to do the job, instead of trying and
feeling and struggling with the problem like our educational students did:
they missed completely the experience and only learned to hate these
workshops....

I think that the kernel thought in our approach is an attempt to create a
paradigm shift by bringing them in another (thinking)world: the theorist
versus the artist. The difficulty is to find the right dosis of distraction:
not to much, not to little (Vigotsky zone etc..)  

Our University does this in more then one discipline: we reintroduced the
Major Minor model in academic study: A technical major student must follow a
minor study in a complete different discipline: for example psychology or
even arts... (Nothing new, When I was a student in the seventies My
University(Amesterdam) offered the same.. 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Steinmetz [mailto:johns at cogent.net]
> Sent: woensdag 6 maart 2002 17:32
> To: squeakland at squeakland.org
> Subject: preparation for multimedia
> 
> 
> In the recent discussion of education and multimedia, something Thom 
> Gillespie said really got my attention. I've never heard anybody say 
> this before. Has anyone else noticed this phenomenon?
> 
> 	John
> 
> 
> >I also teach interactive media at Indiana University. I have 
> noticed that
> I have two kinds of students. I have students who have strong 
> background
> in art, music and storytelling who pick up the technology and 
> totally fly.
> I also have students who do not have strong backgrounds in 
> art, music and
> storytelling but have a great interest in interactive media 
> design (Flash,
> Web, Games); they can pick up the technology but they can not 
> fly because
> they are hampered by years of no art, music and/or 
> storytelling (writing)
> and this will impact them their entire life long. You can see 
> the total
> paralysis in the class when they have to demo before or after 
> anyone in
> the first group.
>