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The keynote today was from Scott Higgins, a film historian from Wesleyan University, New England. He gave a fascinating talk on the importance of colour as part of a film narrative, using illustrations from the history of film – including an example from the beginnings of cinema (The Sealed Room, 1909), the age of technicolor from the 1930s to the 1950s and a brief mention of contempory techniques for post-production alteration of colour composition.

After coffee we were told about plans for a media portal, which the producers hope will enable a market place in reusable video and film – anything from commercially produced material from organisations such as the BBC to film produced by individual teachers. Unfortunately the supplied laptop failed the presenters and they were unable to show us a demo!

The third session of the day was from Gerald Cannon of Dublin City University who talked about their very impressive integrated system for recording everything and everyone within their Nursing Studies school. The system comprises of 36 cameras linked to various capture stations which also link to a central video server. Recording is controlled using touchscreens by the staff and students and so doesn’t require intervention from a technician. Video is encoded as MPEG 2 and 4 and is fully retrievable as each user has a personal account on the video server. The system is used for reflection on nursing practice, peer to peer assessment and also delivery of pre-prepared material. The system did sound fairly expensive though so a pressing need would probably have to exist before such an investment could be made.

The conference ended with closing remarks from Chris O’Hagan, who’s message was essentially that we must use our imaginations and try to raise the ‘lowest common denimonator’. And finally the handover to Lillehammer, Norway for DIVERSE 2007!

This final instalment is a bit rushed as I’m off to catch a plane back to London, so I might come back and add to this later.

Cheers,

Kris.

Well after chatting to some Finnish colleagues I’ve already found one other person writing a blog from this conference, so I guess, unsurprisingly, I’m not the only one.

The first session of the day was the usual introduction to the conference accompanied by some sponsor presentations. The first of which was by Video 3 technologies limited who are another provider of web based presentations – similar to Horizon Live. The product looked fairly easy to use but they failed the print a URL in the conference program, so I’ll come back and edit this if I find one! The other sponsor presentation was by Marratech who provide multipoint video conferencing software.

For the parallel sessions I generally found myself at the teaching practice and theory related talks – the main theme was ‘how can the use of video relate to these?’. The best of these showed how video production by students can help them develop an understanding of different learning theories. e.g. students to make a short film illustrating a particular theory. Others looked at different models of lecture presentation and which students felt enhanced their learning the most. Finally, one presenter hoped to harvest video lectures from different institutions so that they can be re-used. Of course a number of intellectual property and copyright hurdles were raised during this session.

The final session I attended today was a panel discussion on the advantages and pitfalls of reusing lectures. This raised a number of interesting points, such as the balance between production values and the quality of the learning content. Whether students are interested in lectures from other universities. Also covered were issues such as why teaching staff may sometimes be reluctant to produce video content, e.g. some may be averse to having a public record of their lectures (warts and all) for all to see, and what incentives would encourage them to invest their time in producing video lectures, e.g. promotion related recognition for their teaching efforts.

So, apologies as this is the equivalent of a rapid scribbling of notes, maybe I’ll come back and edit or add to them tomorrow after some reflection. And of course I’ve only captured a random sample of the sessions today. I may get around to posting some (irrelevant) photos too.

Now I’m off to watch the second world cup semi final – allez les bleues!!

Kris.