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PSJM - KHODORKOVSKY - DAVIS MUSEUM - BARCELONA
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DAVIS MUSEUMAntropophagic Davis Lisboa Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona PRESENTS JULY 1 - SEPTEMBER 30, 2009 Hidden Brands. Khodorkovskyby PSJM Digital animation Video-spot 52'' 2006 PSJM IN YOUTUBE
PSJMDAVIS MUSEUM BARCELONADAVIS LISBOAPSJM"Khodorkovsky", 2006, video-spot, 52’’. This work belongs to the series "Hidden Brands" that makes use of suggestion mechanisms normally used in the exercise of power, but in this case to show the dangers of globalised capitalism. It involves advertising those who do not wish it. "Hidden Brands" criticises hidden power, which is really aimed at all of us. In globalised post modernity, states are controlled by the interests of large multinationals and the people who govern them. PSJM has chosen four predators and proposes to draw a portrait of them. The image of corporations reflects their identity, their policy. To represent these new global prophets, this same procedure was followed, creating four brands and representing each of them with a logo and a spot which emphasises their qualities, although critically. After the fall of the USSR, the soviet oil company Yukos was privatised and purchased at a ridiculous price by Mikhail Khodorkovsky. When Khodorkovsky was arrested in Russia and his oil holdings in Yukos were confiscated, the process was much more than just a turn of the screw against the most powerful Jewish Zionist in Moscow. In a single blow, Russia’s strong arm President Vladimir Putin ensured the future of Russian oil operations and blocked the efforts of Israel, which was using free oil from Yukos, among others, to move its machinery of war throughout the Middle East.* *www.redvoltaire.net
PSJM is an artistic team conformed by Pablo San José (Mieres, 1969) and Cynthia Viera (Las Palmas, 1973) and operating in Berlín. PSJM acts as a commercial brand of cutting edge art posing questions about the work of art on the market, communication with consumers and the function as artistic quality, making use of the communicative resources of entertainment capitalism to highlight the paradoxes issuing from its chaotic development. PSJM has had shows in places like New York ("The Real Royal Trip… by the Arts", PS1-MOMA. In collaboration with El Perro and Aitor Méndez. DIVA NY 07, Blanca Soto Gallery), Basel (Volta 07, Riflemaker Gallery), Miami (Pulse 08, Galería Espacio Líquido), Berlin (Scala e.V., Zagreus Projekt), Sao Paulo (Baró Cruz Gallery), Stockholm (WIP:sthlm) or London (Riflemaker Gallery) and many solo and group shows in Spain, among them “Trial Balloons” in MUSAC and MARX® in Laboral and CAAM.
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Más de 200 personalidades han firmado el manifiesto por el cierre de Garoña.
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 El manifiesto ha sido respaldado por personalidades del mundo de la cultura como Víctor Erice, Bernando Atxaga, Fernando Colomo, Manuel Rivas o Kiko Veneno; del ámbito político como Hugo Morán o Gaspar Llamazares; Jorge Riechmann o Javier Benayas del Alamo, del sector universitario ; Alfons Banda, Joaquín Nieto o Miguel López Sierra, de las organizaciones sociales y sindicales; del ámbito científico y ecologista, como Ignasi Carreras, Francisco Castejón o Joaquín Araujo; y todas las organizaciones ecologistas relevantes de España. Con su firman han mostrado su apoyo al cierre de la central nuclear de Garoña (Burgos), cuyo permiso de explotación finaliza el próximo 5 de julio, puesto que no existe ningún obstáculo que impida su cierre. Piden al Gobierno que cumpla su compromiso electoral y ordene el cierre inmediato y definitivo de la central nuclear de Garoña.
más» Únete al Manifiesto por el cierre de Garoña» 
Fuente: Newsletter Junio Greenpeace 
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Working Session on Open Social Learning (II). Rubén Díaz: Diagnosis and Perspective
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Notes from the the Working Session on Open Social Learning, organized by UOC UNESCO Chair in E-Learning and held in Barcelona, Spain, on June 30th, 2009. More notes on this event: uocunescoosl.
Open Social Learning en España: Diagnosis and Perspective
Rubén Díaz
Rubén Díaz. Photo by Carlos Albaladejo Expanded education: Search for new ways of education that embed and adapt social and communicational processes that the Internet made possible.
Education can take place at every moment, in every place . Inside and outside the walls of the academic institution.
We can virtually access all the information that the whole World generates (and has generated), but: Will we have the need for that much information? (Nam June Paik, 1977). And we need to take control over the technologies that make possible the access to all that information and apply them to, for instance, Education (Noam Chomsky, 1998). Education is not, is being (Paulo Freire). Nobody knows it all, everyone knows something, all the knowledge lays on the whole humankind (Pierre Lévy). Today, the voice you speak with could not be your own voice (DJ Spooky).
Margaret Meads (Culture and Compromise) stresses the fact of the non-linearity of knowledge and how we are stuck to the books. Jesús Martín Barbero states the importance of oral and visual culture nowadays (i.e. cyberculture) in opposition with the traditional written culture of education during the last centuries.
Knowledge is delocalized. Everyone’s interested in education, and everyone’s capable of learning.
Learning takes place when solving problems by going through them using creativity. But how and why are people creative? And how can the environment negatively affect the learning environment? Is the actual educational system a learning environment that fosters creativity?
The learning environment is the source of knowledge. Active and collaborative learning environments enable learning by doing. We need to disclose communication channels so that motivation happens. We need to develop a pedagogy of the question. We are used to a pedagogy of the answer, where the teacher answers questions that the students never put (Paulo Freire).
We have to move towards the educommunication, avoiding the education of silence. Oriented self-education, expanded education. Expanded education is the communicative link between memory and remix to build the self from the world we speak from.
An adult assimilates:
- 20% of information heard
- 30% of observed
- 50% of observed and listened
- 70% of expressed by oneself
- 90% of elaborated by oneself
Experience: Platoniq’s Bank of Common Knowledge in the 3000 viviendas de Sevilla.
Q&A
Enric Senabre: What about expanded assessment? A: The problem is not only assessment, but the whole system. And we should begin with youngsters and schools, and later on with the University.
Q: what about beyond formal education? A: At Zemos98 we schedule a yearly Festival, where different people can meet different kinds of knowledge.
Silvia Bravo: If all these approaches and technologies are so evidently good, why aren’t they more pervasive? Where are we failing? A: The blame is maybe on the moral majority of the mainstream, the socioeconomic system where education is business. A second aspect is contextualization: how to use technology to work locally.
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Working Session on Open Social Learning (I). Marc Alier: Open Social Learning?
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Notes from the the Working Session on Open Social Learning, organized by UOC UNESCO Chair in E-Learning and held in Barcelona, Spain, on June 30th, 2009. More notes on this event: uocunescoosl.
Open Social Learning?
Marc Alier
Open Learning: We use to define problems so that some structured learning outcomes happen, but problems do not usually have unique solutions, as life. If we open education, we have to be aware that problems and solutions have to be open too.
Social Learning: If we do not do nothing as a society, we do not learn as a group. The interesting thing is to participate and be engaged within the community. Social Learning is learning as a group. But it is also about learning how to be social, is about education training people to socialize and, at the same time, to define the society as is: education shapes society.
Learn in Community: Moodle as the flagship of community learning. Related with hacker ethics: passion for what you do; freedom; value and social recognition; information and knowledge accessibility; activism; social commitment.
Marc Alier. Photo by Enric Senabre Hidalgo Open, social and hacker ethics lead us to Learning in community by doing and sharing openly .
When students are given control begin to feel confident on what they do. And things happen. People self-organize; new “solutions” or “answers” to pre-established problems/questions arise; and new knowledge emerges.
Some examples:
- Work on specific subjects but without constraints, being the output a collaborative text on a wiki + a presentation. Students take divergent directions from what one would expect, but with high quality output and high engagement.
- Collaborative (massive: circa 30 students) project management subject where the whole classroom defines a single project. Rules? Only traceability of work. Students would use all kind of web 2.0 applications to distribute roles and tasks, to schedule milestones, to distribute workload, etc. The teacher then becomes a mentor whose “sole” work is to monitor and guide the autonomous work of the students.
To be able to perform such a monitoring activity, the software needs to be prepared to do that monitoring. Tracing is a must and interoperability between applications another need so that different tools can be integrated and used during the learning (and teaching) process.
Q&A
Ismael Peña-López: what competences need teachers to become “open social learning monitors or mentors”? A: First step is accepting that the outcomes of open collaborative work is an open and unexpected outcome. And this is not a competence but an attitude. Once the teacher gives control away, they will bring in technology: the teacher does not need the technology to give it to the students, but to follow (and catch up with) them. The attitude is the key: what outcomes are you renouncing to in exchange of implication and satisfaction?
Dolors Reig: How to monitor? How to evaluate? How to make quantify performance? A: The important thing in technology is how you are going to evaluate, and then design the software. If the evaluation model is clear, technology should not be an issue… provided it is free software and you can edit its code and add new features.
Ismael Peña-López: Can we really always renounce to part of our syllabus, of our planned content? A: Are exams a real way to assess learning? Or are we teaching students to pass exams? If we want to transform the society we don’t need knowledge, we need abilities and competences. We need not to teach knowledge but to teach how to acquire new knowledge and to have a critical attitude towards the knowledge we reach.
Jesús Martínez: How do we cope with competition (in education and in society at large)? With inertias? A: The educational system is at stake, so inertias can be broken down in pieces if this is the general will or the general trend.
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IRAN. DETENCIONES Y TORTURAS
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No hay manera de saber que ocurre… de ello se ha ocupado el régimen iraní aislando la información sobre los abusos y atentados contra las libertades civiles y los derechos humanos más básicos. Dentro de este clima de opacidad hemos conocido ahora, por un comunicado de acción urgente de Amnistía Internacional, que se ignora el paradero de más de 38 periodistas iraníes , y se teme que todos sufran tortura u otros malos tratos. Pese a la prohibición universal de la tortura, en más del 50 por ciento de los países del mundo se sigue recurriendo a estas prácticas. Una cifra que se sitúa en casi el 80% cuando nos referimos a los países que integran el G-20. (Datos: Amnistía Internacional. Informe Anual 2009) En su Informe Anual 2009, publicado el pasado 28 de mayo, Amnistía Internacional ha constatado cómo los casos de tortura y malos tratos durante el año 2008 y los primeros meses de 2009 se produjeron de forma generalizada en todas la regiones del mundo. 107 países, de los 157 que analiza la organización han practicado tortura y malos tratos a manos de las fuerzas de seguridad, la policía y otras autoridades del Estado. “Con demasiada frecuencia, las víctimas siguen indefensas porque sufren un sistema de justicia que no exige rendición de cuentas a los responsables, y no cuentan con acceso inmediato a representación letrada. En muchas ocasiones, los fiscales no emprenden investigaciones, las víctimas tienen miedo a ser objeto de represalia si denuncian, y las penas que se imponen a los agentes declarados culpables son muy leves. El resultado es que en muchos lugares se ha perpetuado una cultura de impunidad”, señaló Esteban Beltrán, director de Amnistía Internacional España. - Informes:
 Los_Estados_tienen_que_rendir_cuentas._Informe.pdf- CASOS_tortura_260609.pdf
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2009 Digital Art L.A - International Call for Artists - LACDA - Los Angeles Center for Digital Arts
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Formatted announcement and complete prospectus: http://lacda.com/juried/juriedshow.html Direct link for registration: http://www.acteva.com/booking.cfm?bevaid=185494 DigitalArt.LA 2009 International Call for Artists Jurors: Rita Gonzalez, Curator of Contemporary Art, L.A. County Museum of Art (LACMA) Rex Bruce, Director, Los Angeles Center for Digital Art The L.A. Center for Digital Art announces an international call to artists. All styles of artwork and photography where digital processes of any kind were integral to their creation are acceptable: digital art stills of any kind, digital photogaphy, short experimental time based video, video loops, mobile media, interactive media, and internet art. Selected winners will be exhibited as the central focus of the "DigitalArt.LA" expo (http://DigitalArt.LA) in a large group exhibit at the LACDA gallery, August 13 - September 5, 2009. Video winners will also be screened at the Downtown Film Festival Los Angeles. The show will be widely promoted and will include a reception for the artists. Deadline: July 20, 2009. Entry fee: $30. Online registration only: http://lacda.com/juried/juriedshow.html DigitalArt.LA Participants Include: UCR | California Museum of Photography · Laznia Centre for Contemporary Art (Danzig, Poland) · Davis Museum (Barcelona) · Downtown Film Festival - Los Angeles · Downtown Art Walk Los Angeles · Grammy Museum · Orange County Center for Contemporary Art · Rowan Gallery · Julie Rico Gallery · Niche.LA Video Art · Deborah Martin Gallery · Phyllis Stein Gallery · Pharmaka Gallery · Todd Browning Gallery· El Nopal Press Gallery · Annex Gallery L.A. · Artillery Magazine · Coagula Art Journal · THE Magazine Citizen L.A. · AbsoluteArts.com · compactspace · Phyllis Stein Art · Edgar Varela Fine Arts · Rita Gonzalez, LACMA Contact: lacda@lacda.com No phone calls please! L.A. Center For Digital Art 107 West Fifth Street Los Angeles, CA 90013 http://lacda.com http://DigitalArt.LA The Los Angeles Center For Digital Art is dedicated to the propagation of all forms of digital art, new media, digital video art, net art, digital sculpture, interactive multimedia, and the vast panorama of hybrid forms of art and technology that constitute our moment in culture. We are committed to supporting local, international, emerging and established artists through exposure in our gallery. We have an ongoing schedule of exhibits and competitions, produce editions of wide format archival prints, and collaborate in the production of digital artworks in our studio. As well, we are involved with curating digital exhibits at institutions and festivals outside of the LACDA gallery schedule. © 2009 Los Angeles Center For Digital Art All International Rights Reserved
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La Movilidad Sostenible no es un sueño...
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.jpg) Comienza su andadura el Proyecto ir2M. Que aportará soluciones para el transporte del futuro, un sistema que adapta las rutas a las necesidades reales de los pasajeros... Un proyecto que permitirá que la Movilidad Sostenible sea una opción inteligente para quienes son reticentes a abandonar el coche.
ir2M pone su foco en aportar soluciones de movilidad que reducen la congestión del tráfico y el impacto ambiental del transporte, mejorando la percepción y la calidad de vida de los ciudadanos. Entre sus objetivos a medio plazo están: -
La reducción de un 25% la emisión de los gases contaminantes asociados al transporte en las granes áreas metropolitanas. -
Desplazar del vehículo privado a más del 16% de sus usuarios. -
Reducir el consumo anual de miles de toneladas de combustible. -
Mejorar la productividad, reduciendo algunos de los millones de horas de trabajo perdidas en atascos. -
La creación de empleo prevista en España para el período 2010-2016 es de 30.000 nuevos puestos de trabajo. -
Exportar este modelo de transporte a gran parte de las ciudades del mundo con poblaciones superiores a 5 millones de habitantes. El proyecto está reuniendo a un equipo de colaboradores para darle formato a su presentación en sociedad, prevista para los primeros meses del 2010. Colaboradores que creen que algunos sueños no son imposibles. Más información y admisión de colaboradores en: ir2M - Espacio de Presentación del Proyecto para Colaboradores
Vídeo de Beatriz Martínez Cruz, de la 3ª edición del Concurso de Cortos por la Sostenibilidad publicado por el canal de la Fundación Ecología y Desarrollo ECODES 
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Mantengamos viva la luz. Homenaje virtual a Vicente Ferrer.
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Este espacio está abierto a todo el mundo que quiera participar, y ofrece la posibilidad de encender una luz dejando un mensaje. La idea es formar entre todos una imagen de Vicente Ferrer, compuesta a partir de infinidad de partículas de luz. 
La Fundación Vicente Ferrer, ante la gran cantidad de muestras de apoyo que ha recibido en los últimos días, ha creado: www.mantengamosvivalaluz.org. El objetivo de este Website es recoger, en forma de mensajes, todos los gestos de cariño y afecto hacia la figura de Vicente Ferrer. Con www.mantengamosvivalaluz.org la Fundación Vicente Ferrer, además de mostrar su agradecimiento, quiere transmitir que mantiene el compromiso adquirido por Vicente Ferrer en su lucha por la erradicación de la pobreza. 
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Vicente Ferrer ha fallecido, un luchador contra la pobreza
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 Vicente Ferrer, una de las figuras más relevantes de nuestro siglo en el ámbito de la Cooperación, ha fallecido en Anantapur, India, donde trabajó los últimos 40 años de su vida.
NOMASTE VICENTE!!! (La luz de Dios en mí saluda a la luz de Dios en ti) “He declarado la guerra al dolor y al sufrimiento y he firmado un compromiso de paz: Contribuir a la unidad entre las naciones y los pueblos” – Vicente Ferrer “Tengo muy claro que ninguna acción buena se pierde en este mundo. En algún lugar quedará para siempre.” – Vicente Ferrer. Vicente Ferre, la bendición de los pobres. Desde su llegada a la India hace 40 años, Vicente Ferrer trabajó incansablemente en un programa de desarrollo rural que actualmente beneficia a más de 2.200 pueblos. A través de la Fundación que presidió hasta el día de su muerte, Vicente Ferrer articuló en Anantapur (estado de Andhra Pradesh, India) un pionero sistema de proyectos de desarrollo integral basado en seis áreas de trabajo: educación, vivienda, mujer, sanidad, ecología y personas con discapacidad. En la actualidad, este proyecto se extiende entre 2.287pueblos y beneficia a dos millones y medio de personas de las comunidades dálits o intocables y de los grupos tribales y otras castas desfavorecidas del país. Biografía || Fundación Vicente Ferrer || Álbum Fotográfico ¿Tienes cuenta en Facebook? apoya esta Cuasa: PREMIO NOBEL DE LA PAZ PARA LA FUNDACION VICENTE FERRER 
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Vicente Ferrer ha fallecido
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Vicente Ferrer, una de las figuras más relevantes de nuestro siglo en el ámbito de la Cooperación, ha fallecido en Anantapur, India, donde trabajó los últimos 40 años de su vida. NOMASTE VICENTE!!! (La luz de Dios en mí saluda a la luz de Dios en ti) “He declarado la guerra al dolor y al sufrimiento y he firmado un compromiso de paz: Contribuir a la unidad entre las naciones y los pueblos” – Vicente Ferrer Vicente Ferre, la bendición de los pobres. Desde su llegada a la India hace 40 años, Vicente Ferrer trabajó incansablemente en un programa de desarrollo rural que actualmente beneficia a más de 2.200 pueblos. Biografía || Fundación Vicente Ferrer || Álbum Fotográfico ¿Tienes cuenta en Facebook? apoya esta Cuasa: PREMIO NOBEL DE LA PAZ PARA LA FUNDACION VICENTE FERRER
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Educator, or the pros and cons of video-lecturing
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The possibility to tape a lecture — e.g. an academic lecture from a professor and belonging to an undergrad course — and upload it to a web server is not new. But as a lecture is not only a speech, but a lot more — questions and answers, teamwork, a blackboard or a beamer with complementary materials and/or further explanations, etc. — we have usually been seeing lecture recording like a by-product of master-classes in the best of scenarios.
But the fact that the web is increasingly (a) providing best connectivity, access, searchability/findability, ease of use and capabilities of storage, and (b) more social tools so that people can collaborate, has made the debate around video-lectures worth revisiting.
A simple search provides a good bunch of articles worth giving them a look:
The results from the previous papers can be summarized as follows:
- If the recorded lecture is just a substitute for the live thing, it might not make a difference or, in other words, the impact might be null.
- But the recorded lecture can be more engaging than the live lecture, as it allows for stops and fast-forwards, pauses to check other information, etc.
- The video-lecture can also enable people to attend lectures they would or could not attend, and even make them more efficient in their attendance (see previous point)
- The taped lecture can also be a trigger for teamwork, collaboration and other social learning methodologies, methodologies that, indeed, are normally not used in live lectures because of their (a) unidirectionality (b) time constraints and (c) crowded classrooms — let alone shyness from some attendees that just cannot speak/interact in public
- If students are more engaged, comfortable and willing to collaborate, the impact of having recorded lectures either as supporting materials or as a substitute for the “real thing” can end up having a positive impact and increasing academic performance in relationship with students not using taped lectures but attending classes
Educator.com
With this in mind, I happened to meet online Eric Hung and David Fan from Educator.com and had the chance to have a guest access.
Educator.com is a collection of academic lectures [...] helping students that do not have ready access to great education because of geographic location or socioeconomic status. Educator’s instructors are all experienced college professors and guide students through an innovative two video interface that simulates a one-to-one learning environment . In other words, people at Educator.com have put together good professors in front of the camera and taped their lectures, including their slides, whiteboard notes, syllabuses, readings, etc.
At first glance — which sticks at second and further “glances” — the quality of the materials is impressive, treated with most taste and sensitivity: content is good and is meticulously presented. Most materials include a video of the professor plus his slides and/or whiteboard, while keeping navigation very easy along the syllabus which features subtitles and time codes. Videos add up some quick notes and the possibility to comment them.
That said, and going back to what we stated before about video lectures, Educator.com makes a very good companion to either reinforce or to (maybe) substitute traditional lectures, and I see a lot of potentials in models like Educator.com’s.
Cons of video-lectures?
In my opinion, the cons — necessarily — go in the same line as the “accompanying measures” that the afore mentioned researchers already stated in their papers: while content can constitute a core and a good one, it is context and enablers what will make of a video-lecture a (potential) success — besides the incontestable fact of being able to reach a content you wouldn’t otherwise if not being able to attend live lectures, of course.
A first aspect is exercises, so that oneself can test a specific level of knowledge acquisition. This is something that’s already planned (though not still implemented) in Educator.com and that just seldom is seen in other academic lectures’ repositories.
Related to this, possibility of feedback or guidance should naturally follow. Being myself a professor teaching online, once content is made available, our added value is, simply stated, (a) guidance through path setting and (b) provision of specific feedback.
Which leads me to the third aspect: in distance learning, syllabuses, learning paths, etc. are a must. Much is done in this sense at Educator.com and much more is likely to be found there would their project work, reach a critical mass and enable them to put as many courses as possible.
Of course, it is not only a matter of setting up a learning path, but also help in blueprinting one’s own curriculum. Being able to create one’s own “playlists” (something that other content — not lectures — repositories allow) or be able to go offline by feeding your mp4 player would be interesting add ons to the project and to the freedom of the student.
In the end, sites like Educator.com should enable the student to create their own e-portfolios or, to follow the actual trend, their own personal learning environments.
These personal learning environments would, of course, interact with other students so that a learning community can emerge, be it to share hints, materials, doubts or, in the best scenario, to build together their own learning.
Summing up: initiatives like Educator.com take the best of technology to capture live lectures and make them available to a very broad public. I don’t think just taped lectures are “education”, but:
- They can be complemented with more content, context, guidance, classmates, etc. so that the resulting mix is a real and richest learning experience
- They definitely stress the weaknesses of the traditional lecturing style, challenging the suitability of such methods, and asking them for an urgent update… maybe a blended model were lectures can be supplied by someone like Educator.com and leave live meetings for debates, seminars or something were face-to-face makes more sense and ads real value.
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Educator.com, or the pros and cons of video-lecturing
|
The possibility to tape a lecture — e.g. an academic lecture from a professor and belonging to an undergrad course — and upload it to a web server is not new. But as a lecture is not only a speech, but a lot more — questions and answers, teamwork, a blackboard or a beamer with complementary materials and/or further explanations, etc. — we have usually been seeing lecture recording like a by-product of master-classes in the best of scenarios.
But the fact that the web is increasingly (a) providing best connectivity, access, searchability/findability, ease of use and capabilities of storage, and (b) more social tools so that people can collaborate, has made the debate around video-lectures worth revisiting.
A simple search provides a good bunch of articles worth giving them a look:
The results from the previous papers can be summarized as follows:
- If the recorded lecture is just a substitute for the live thing, it might not make a difference or, in other words, the impact might be null.
- But the recorded lecture can be more engaging than the live lecture, as it allows for stops and fast-forwards, pauses to check other information, etc.
- The video-lecture can also enable people to attend lectures they would or could not attend, and even make them more efficient in their attendance (see previous point)
- The taped lecture can also be a trigger for teamwork, collaboration and other social learning methodologies, methodologies that, indeed, are normally not used in live lectures because of their (a) unidirectionality (b) time constraints and (c) crowded classrooms — let alone shyness from some attendees that just cannot speak/interact in public
- If students are more engaged, comfortable and willing to collaborate, the impact of having recorded lectures either as supporting materials or as a substitute for the “real thing” can end up having a positive impact and increasing academic performance in relationship with students not using taped lectures but attending classes
Educator.com
With this in mind, I happened to meet online Eric Hung and David Fan from Educator.com and had the chance to have a guest access.
Educator.com is a collection of academic lectures [...] helping students that do not have ready access to great education because of geographic location or socioeconomic status. Educator’s instructors are all experienced college professors and guide students through an innovative two video interface that simulates a one-to-one learning environment . In other words, people at Educator.com have put together good professors in front of the camera and taped their lectures, including their slides, whiteboard notes, syllabuses, readings, etc.
At first glance — which sticks at second and further “glances” — the quality of the materials is impressive (see, for instance, what’s being prepared to learn chemistry or Calculus BC), treated with most taste and sensitivity: content is good and is meticulously presented. Most materials include a video of the professor plus his slides and/or whiteboard, while keeping navigation very easy along the syllabus which features subtitles and time codes. Videos add up some quick notes and the possibility to comment them.
That said, and going back to what we stated before about video lectures, Educator.com makes a very good companion to either reinforce or to (maybe) substitute traditional lectures, and I see a lot of potentials in models like Educator.com’s.
Cons of video-lectures?
In my opinion, the cons — necessarily — go in the same line as the “accompanying measures” that the afore mentioned researchers already stated in their papers: while content can constitute a core and a good one, it is context and enablers what will make of a video-lecture a (potential) success — besides the incontestable fact of being able to reach a content you wouldn’t otherwise if not being able to attend live lectures, of course.
A first aspect is exercises, so that oneself can test a specific level of knowledge acquisition. This is something that’s already planned (though not still implemented) in Educator.com and that just seldom is seen in other academic lectures’ repositories.
Related to this, possibility of feedback or guidance should naturally follow. Being myself a professor teaching online, once content is made available, our added value is, simply stated, (a) guidance through path setting and (b) provision of specific feedback.
Which leads me to the third aspect: in distance learning, syllabuses, learning paths, etc. are a must. Much is done in this sense at Educator.com and much more is likely to be found there would their project work, reach a critical mass and enable them to put as many courses as possible.
Of course, it is not only a matter of setting up a learning path, but also help in blueprinting one’s own curriculum. Being able to create one’s own “playlists” (something that other content — not lectures — repositories allow) or be able to go offline by feeding your mp4 player would be interesting add ons to the project and to the freedom of the student.
In the end, sites like Educator.com should enable the student to create their own e-portfolios or, to follow the actual trend, their own personal learning environments.
These personal learning environments would, of course, interact with other students so that a learning community can emerge, be it to share hints, materials, doubts or, in the best scenario, to build together their own learning.
Summing up: initiatives like Educator.com take the best of technology to capture live lectures and make them available to a very broad public. I don’t think just taped lectures are “education”, but:
- They can be complemented with more content, context, guidance, classmates, etc. so that the resulting mix is a real and richest learning experience
- They definitely stress the weaknesses of the traditional lecturing style, challenging the suitability of such methods, and asking them for an urgent update… maybe a blended model were lectures can be supplied by someone like Educator.com and leave live meetings for debates, seminars or something were face-to-face makes more sense and ads real value.
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No es fácil seguir luchando, pero no voy a cambiar ahora de opinión...
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Dedicado a las personas que dan soporte a otros, la familia, los amigos y amigas, los que no se quejan cuando no se les atiende, los que siguen dando aunque siempre esperan… Limelight - The Alan Parsons Project Puedo ver el resplandor del un Sol distante
y sentirlo dentro de mi.
Quizás este sea el gran día. Puedo oír a distancia el rugido de la multitud,
están esperando por mí, llamándome por mi nombre,
gritando en voz alta ... No es fácil seguir luchando,
pero no voy a cambiar ahora de opinión... Ilumíname!!! Eres quien he estado esperando,
Ilumíname!!! Brillando sobre mí, diciéndole al mundo quién soy.
Ilumíname!!! No me sueltes las manos, ni me dejes caer
al profundo abismo. Después de esperar mucho tiempo, voy a mostrarme a todos... Puedo ver el mundo… bajo una luz diferente.
Ahora es fácil decir, dónde me equivoqué
y qué hice bien... Puedo escuchar el latido de un tambor diferente;
tomando lo que ocurre con calma.
Manteniendo mi cabeza bien en alto,
sin ser ignorado por la gente... No es fácil seguir luchando,
no voy a cambiar ahora de opinión... Tal vez mi labor no sea fácil, tal vez el premio sea pequeño.
Pero, tras años de espera, voy a mostrarme a todos... 
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