eLearning

Yesterday we heard another example of "what to do after studies".
This time, Shane Cronin from the DEIS department. For all non-irish: DEIS is the irish word for "oportunity". The DEIS department does research in the area of elearning and is founded by the 7th European Union Framework Programme. At the moment it is staffed by 4 persons. 
After a short introduction of his career Shane told us about his daily work. Shane studied Mutlimedia App Development (dipl.), then made his Bachelor of Arts Honor at the CIT in Multimedia. After 2 years working experience as freelancer for Food's kool at the West Cork Leader and Safe Food Ireland he came back to the CIT to work as app developer for the elearning department.

The elearning department works for both, commercial project and European research projects.
As we already heard a lot about research projects Shane focused his presentation more at the commercial projects and showed us examples, how such projects work.
The projects usually have 6 steps:

1. Brief from client
2. Quotation
3. Contract
4. Project work begins
5. Client Review
6. Sign Off

Elearning is not just distance learning for further education. It can also mean to explain a product to customers. Those explanation videos are often seen on homepages where start-ups explain there services (e.g. dropbox, prezi)
Shane gave us an example of the AIB Merchant Services system, which AIB offers in cooperation with zapatag. Zapatag is a bonus point system (an RFID chip on the customer's mobile), which brings customers discounts and the store owners detailed data about their customers and their shopping habbits. But why should I explain it when the DEIS department created a video. But before watching it, Shane explained us the steps before, showed us the storyboard, the voice over, so it was quite interesting to see the finished product, which is now embedded at the AIBms.com homepage. But also in my blog:



Another example which was more elearning in the classical sense was the production of elearning videos for the staff of the postbank, to teach them in new products.
The videos are mainly made in flash, in case of the postbank example there was also real video, shooted in a studio in a bluescreen.
But the production of the videos/animation is the last step. Im comparision to normal video production much more effort is neseccary to put in the concept, that the viewers really understand and learn, what the video wants to teach.

University kills free economy?
After those examples we had a lively discussion, lead by the freelancers of our masters course, if the trend, that the CITs do commercial project weaks the small companies and freelancers. CITs get their equipement by the government to do research. When doing commercial projects, the can perform much cheaper and efficient then a normal company, which is a damage for the normal economy, especially small media companies.

Again I enjoyed the input, because I never thought about working in such an area.

Ambient Knowledge & Boundary Work 1

The following blogentry is splitted in two topics.
First I want to introduce Alan Meany's project Ambiant Knowledge and then, in the second chapter write about the current exebition Boundary Work 1 in the Wandersford Gallery in Cork, where the Ambiant Knowledge project is presented.

Ambiant Knowledge

Ambiant Knowledge in the Boundary Work 1 exebition

This week Alan Meany presented his master project called ambiant knowledge. The project is ambiant display, in this case a colorchanging LED lamp, which shows the current use of electricity in a house or flat.
This allows the user to recognize, how much energy he uses right now without reading a display, but just have a nice looking accessior in the flat.
Much more interesting then the project as such was the way to get to the project. Alan told in a very interesting speech, without using any powerpoint or other tools, how he went to the project, how he managed the different steps which we still have in front of us.  One of the useful tips was to use versioning of our project proposal, that means write a very rough first version to have a basis and improve this then step by step.
Another useful tool is is workflow Design-Build-Evalute, which goes in a similar direction. It's very important to leave the own thinking and ask others, what the think about the product/paper/project.
He showed us in all details, how he went to which decisions and that you have to proof everything. This report was really useful in regard of the coming month.But he also encouraged us to build something physical, which people can see, and not only writing a paper which maybe 10 lectures read.
His project didn't end with his master degree, still he is exebititing in different European countries including Ireland, Cork with the Boundary Work 1 exebition.


Boundary Work 1

Wandersford Gallery in Cork

The exebition boundary work 1, located in the Wandersford Gallery in Cork shows current works of students from different universities and institute of technology.The mixture between art, research and science makes the exebition kind of special.

Most of the works are presented in form of pictures. On the first view the look like normal prints, paintings or landscape fotographs. But in most cases the are build out of new research or science way to lead normal people into the research topics of the certain areas.

Beside different kind of pictures there where two installations. One is, as already mentioned, Alan Meany's "Ambiant Knowledge". 
The other one makes terrible sound, which is ok for a visitor, but if I would be staff there I would go crazy... The installation is recording micro organizms per webcam. If they move, a sound is played, the tone is depending from where the organizm is right now. The more different sounds you here, the better the water quality is. 

Installation to measure the water quality in watching micro organizms moving

Summerized I think this kind of exebition is interesting, but especially at many pictures I wasn't motivated to read all the texts for every single picture to get an idea of the background. A better presentation of the background of the artwork (e.g. pictures, grafics, video) could help to catch the neseccary information in a more lifely way. 
In terms of industry context I can hardly image that this is my way of working or creating something later. I'm really more into economy and media management than in media design and art.
But it's interessting to get and overview and see the different possibilities for later profession.
 

doing a PhD

Yesterday we visited again the nexus-centre to listen to Kevin O’Mahony, who's doing his PhD in Digital Media Design.

After a short introduction of the nexus-centre in general Kevin told us about his work and his CV.

After having graduated at the CIT as Master Kevin started to go on with his Master project and doing research for a PhD.

The project is about a multi-touch table which supports group meetings in one room, but also in different rooms, which goes in the field of virtual teamwork.

After talking about the project as such he showed us his 5-D model to do research, which is very interesting in terms of the project proposal.

To open our minds to the possibility of doing a PhD after graduating he showed us on the one hand his work, and the nexus centre as such, and on the other hand he gave us some useful tips what to think about before apply for a PhD.

To research 3 years in a field requires a strong interest in that area. The next point is, that you can't do research for fun but for industrie who can earn money with your ideas. If you are clear with those 2 points you can start with the research proposal and finally apply for the PhD:

1. Interests in researching and developing further in this area 
   
2. Research and Development where there are opportunities to work on industry related projects 
3. Research Proposal - Objectives, Innovation, Technical Challenge
4. Application Process  

The meeting was very interesting, nothing better then get in contact with former students who did the same course and see what they do today.

More about Kevin and his project can be seen at http://multitouchmeetingroomtable.blogspot.com/

 

Foundation for Media Research

Today we heard a lecture about the possibility of making career in research.
To be honest, the referee Stephen O'Reilly presented more the work of the Framework Programm of the European Union, but it showed up an intesting field for later jobs.
When doing media studies you wouldn't thing, that there is much classical academic research, developements are more made by companies like google or apple, or even small companies, starting with just one product like twitter.

The target group of Mr. O'Reilly's presentations were young researches, who want to apply for research foundation. The European Union founded the Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development back in the 80s, and midwhile it's the 7th round of it. The budget is 50billion euro, "spent on grants to research actors all over Europe and beyond, in order to co-finance research, technological development and demonstration projects." (European Union, 2010)

The foundation is set in three categories, FET Proactive, FET Flagship and FET Open. The Proactive-Programm should build something really new, Flagship is the massive foundation of one huge project and FET Open, which is the most interesting for us Masterstudents is an very open foundation, where several smaller project were support with amounts between 1-2 Mio. €. In comparism to the other foundation there are no strict guidelines, what the outcome should be about. Although it's easy to apply for it.

Conclusion
Summerized I think this program is not really relevant for our studies or master projects right now, but it's worth to think about the possibility to start the profession in research.