Jaroslav Azhnyuk on education 2.0 in Ukrain

Jaroslav is 19 years old, lives in Ukrain, and started an NGO called Internet Initiatives. Is also a founder of Semantica Company.

What's education 2.0. Education + web2.0= education 2.0?? It is not as simple as that. First we need to educate people how to use the internet. A sixth of the population use internet, but mainly browsing and email. They don't use web2.0 tools, RSS feeds etc. Primary skills are using email; secondary skills are use of RSS feeds, slideshare, blogs, social networking, etc. How to use this, not only for fun, but also for business.

Hence Internet Initiatives organises:

- Barcamps where everyone can give presentations of about 30 minutes, a very open format. It's cool and fun. Barcamps were very inspiring and successful, starting a barcamp virus- 12 barcamps en monthly minicamps organized in a cafe. Lots of fun, beer and snacks. See blogcampCEE for an impression.

- New technologies on the Internet with 18 seminars on universities sponsored by EJC and Apple IMC. 6 topics, social networks, blogs, RSS feeds, search. Found out level of knowledge highly varies. Some students are deeply engaged, other don't know about it.

- Educamp in Kyiv on 8-9 november 2008. First day with prescheduled sessions, the second day with asked questions. For more information contact Jaroslav, he answers all his mails!

Heike Sperling on visual music and limerence

My second life-blogging blogpost! Heike Sperling works for the Institute for Music and Media. (IMM) She teaches visual music.

She talks about 3 subjects:

1. Her institute IMM

2. Visual Music

3. Current research project: music and limerence (?)

When she studied there were no computers. MTV started when she was in her 20's. Then works as a creative director. In the 90's she worked with clips and invested in experimental music videos. Now Managing Music Director of IMM.

1. IMM- based in Germany

Evolved from training sound engineers. Since a decade the IMM has incorporated video, which is unique in Germany. Sounds and visuals have different languages, so there is mutual learning between the students and herself. In October two new bachelor will be launched: program music and media, the other sound and media. The idea is to bring the two cultures together to inspire each other. Students enhance their personalities on the basis of an instrument.

2. Visual Music

Term is 90 years old. Visual music refers to the use fo musical structures in visual imagery. Many aspect of music are visual, think of the covers etc. From experimental films. Audio and visuals are considered as equally important. This is not common. They take a close look at the coherence between technical innovation, new artistic languages and contents. this requires constant dialogue and reflection. She learns a new language from the musicians. Audio and visuals together should be more than the sum. She shows a visual music clip called light/speed by Maurice Braun one of their students. The clip won a the visual music award. (she didn't tell us this, but I saw it when googling!). In visual music the musician and visual person need to communicate because they can not understand each other. the goal is to develop assertiveness, self awareness and communication skills, so visual music is rather the stepping stone, not the goal.

3. The next project: Limerence

Limerence is an involuntary coginitive and emotional state in which a person feels an intense romantic desire for another person (Dorothy Tennov). (in English: to have a crush)...

She is the only female teacher, all 40 students are male. So she thought to study a cliche topic for a woman: romantic love. It is a sort of tabu in the scientific world to talk about it. Limerence involves acute longing for reciprocation, and a general intensity of feeling that leaves other concerns in the background, amongst others. Love has been called a madness, which implies loss of control and inspires fear. Limerence hence conflicts with the idea that human beings are free and rational creatures. 85% of populair music concerns love and limerence. Limerence as an ideal is financially profitable. She will cook up a question for a project, whose ingredients will be identity, society and interface. Interface looking at the connection between limerence and music. Why is it so connected? Falling in love has the same effect as cocaine. Have you seen Stanley Kubric's films? If not, you have to see them as soon as possible.

I ask her whether she encounter a lot of conflicts between the two world, audio and visuals. She does encounter conflict all the time, but sees conflict not as something negative, but the reason to dialogue. Musicians sometimes say she doesn't understand at all. Especially when both are equal, you need to work through your conflicts. That's exactly what makes her so interested in it.

Paul Keller about Creative Commons

This is my first attempt at live blogging, I've never been in a conference or workshop where it's allowed to sit and type during a presentation.. I'm at the European Bloggers Lab of Picnic 2008 and Paul Keller from Knowledgeland is going to talk about Creative Commons. He has a t-shirt of Che Guevara, who wrote the motor cycle diaries, which is in a way one of the first weblogs...

The revolution of the internet is that it enabled small organisation and individuals to publish like all the big players leading to a more level playing field. No technical barriers left from getting your message across if you have a message and can write well- you can blog. Previously specialists in publishing were publishing and had access to lawyers etc to deal with copyrights. Copyright law had evolved as a complex system over the 19th and 20th century. Now come the internet where every body can copy, and suddenly these regulations apply to ordinary citizens.

Copyright basics: it is an exclusive right to interdict any uses of the copyrighted work. It arisen when a work of sufficient originality is created. Expires 70 years after the death of the author. It protects authors, artists, etc. Technical protection measures (DRM) forms a protective layer on top of it. Copyrights protect people to stimulate them to create.

Two types of copyrights:

• Right to reproduce, modify or broadcast
• Moral rights- to protect the integrity of her personality

Exceptions: the right to make quotations with proper attribution, educational exceptions and private copying, public interest, reuse of press materials by the press.

Now- there's an explosion of creativity for other motivations than rent seeking that's not really recognised by the copyrights. For most people the problem is not being copied, the problem is not being read/seen/ copied enough.. it limits authors and access to orphan works.

Creative commons was set up in 2002 by US non-profit corporation (by Prof. Lawrence Lessig) similar to open source licenses. As long as you adhere to certain principles, you can use it freely. Now in 44 countries though the concept of national licenses may be outdated. There are now more than 250 million CC licensed objects available on the internet, like good quality pictures on flickr. There are 6 different licenses that allow sharing, or transfer the work into another format. Give proper attribution to original author. licensor can choose if she wants to limit this to non-commercial uses of the work or include commercial purposes as well. You can choose to allow performance of derivative works. See the 6 core licenses here. Important is that they do not limit the 'fair use' rights and do not exclude the use of other licenses simultaneously.

Good news: Adam Curry has a flickr account with a creative commons account! Which the tabloids took to use in an article. Adam sued them and won (because it was commercially used), which was the first court case involving a creative commons license.

- By the way life blogging doesn't distract me it keeps me quite focused! though during boring parts you start to do other things on your computer and that's really distracting.. I wonder why the topic of copyright always seems slightly boring to me whereas it seems important enough.