The sixth student professor class: passion gives wings

Professors Bo Kim, Ziga Pavlovic, Jonas Janssen

I thought I'd never really appreciate a presentation of film art not going deep into Russian avant-garde, Italian Neorealism, French and Czech New Waves, the Polish Film School and other holy film phenomena essential for Europe centric '60s radicals like myself. But this class really changed my mind. I think the professors didn't even mention Truffaut, Godard or Kaurismäki, but still (or because of that?) it was a wonderful and highly informative presentation of the most powerful (in my mind) form of the fine arts.

A very original and creative solution indeed to introduce film it was - not trough directors or actors or genres or schools - but relying on the magic of film art itself.

The session had two very important qualities: passion and interactivity. Both helped to make the show most captivating and attracting to interaction.

Feedback to team 1

Was this team 1 too? Did I fail to catch team 2 output?

Team 3

Team4

The team assignments were entertaining like always, but were more educational than the previous. It is a pity there was not more time for the analysis and feedback on the tasks.

The professors triggered many discussions that unfortunately had to be cut short, but I hope they continue online.

The feedback team

The written feedback of the feedback team is not posted when writing this, but they did a good job and I remember I agreed with them.

Teleporting

I have many times experienced the use of video conferencing to have a visiting expert contribute to a class. But this was the first time I participated in my own course from abroad. It was a good experience; it was almost like I would have teleported myself to Spede. The video was good quality (much better than in the snapshots illustrating this story) when there was not much movement. (The students coming late were really annoying this time.) The biggest problems I had with audio. Most of the time I could hear the speakers, but when a number of people were whispering, talking or moving the audio was useless. So silence in the class next time, please!

Thank you Róbert for helping me to be a part of this brilliant class!

Róbert - the Teleport Operator!

Professor teleported from Berlin. Photo by Ziga Pavlovc (copied
from a tweet by @zigaizcelja

The fifth student professor class - stable performance

After two good classes with the problem of doing everything in 90 mins + a break the television team was smaller and well prepared and met no difficulties in keeping the schedule.

The professors had geared up their pieces well and the coordination was pro. The team assignments were again funny but challenged the students to strive for creativity.

Some relevant topics were excluded, but the professor team offered depth in the chosen issues instead. Can't blame the team for that, now we got excellent coverage of history of TV, watching habits and factors determining the future of TV. In addition we got a hilarious overview of television culture around the world.

If the team should have tried to cover other relevant topics like the discussion of public service vs private, funding of broadcasting or citizen TV all sections would have given only a scratch on the surface.

Thank you very much, Krista, Dita and Ryoko.

***
The feedback team made some very clever observations and suggestions, but like I already commented their feedback post on this blog the feedback should not focus so much on individual professors but on the team and its performance.

Connected - The Movie

Today we have watched a film that with no doubt had a message to convey and hopefully made us stop for a moment and think. The film indeed sparked a discussion with many opinions and points of views. Unfortunately I feel that many people got upset about an unexpected twist in the movie and ignored the message altogether. I didn't comment much during the class, because movies usually make a big impression to me, and I need to ponder them properly, sort my thoughts and make some sense of the emotions I get from those experiences. And usually, when the film works it leaves me stunned for several hours or even day. And this one worked.

I believe the form of the movie and the point went hand to hand with each other and the director's choice to include the autobiographical story made perfect sense. It is important to remember it did never claim to be documentary, it titled itself in rather jovial way - "An Autoblogography" and as such it had the deepest rights to be subjective, idealist and bold. And it also perfectly explains the heavy use of personal "family" material. Secondly, besides all the carefully researched and portrayed facts a great part of the story was based on books written by one man and therefore opinions and views. It would be rather ignorant to expect anything else but personality and individuality.

Those strong negative impressions based on the form and storyline of the movie may have darkened minds of some of us, and so I suggest, let's forget about it and focus on the message. And to the person who jokingly said "And what if he died in the end? Then it would be a film only about him." I suggest you to watch the whole movie again, because the old man did die and the last five minutes were about his funeral and its consequences.

And to all those who felt mislead by the trailer, I suggest watching it again:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbU4wrKVxUo

"And then I had this year that turned my world upside down,... and forced me to rethink everything I thought I understood about the ways we are connected. We as humans have accumulated so much knowledge, why only do we have such a hard time seeing the bigger picture?"


PS: I wrote this blogpost because there is no space to discuss today lesson online. So discuss it here! :)

PSS: It was nice to see Maria joining us! Cheers! (:

The future of TV is on the internet.

Since it is alright to post on the blog I would like to add some insights and relevant information to shatter the concerns about future of our culture and consumer habits.

While I agree the traditional TV program is getting worse and worse everyday, arguably everywhere around the world, I can also see that there is much more improvement in the independent creator's waters - the internet. From simple trolling, gifs, cam records and cat videos, the capacity of those services has increased greatly, allowing for scheduled, periodical and meaningful quality contents. Of course cat videos aren't going anywhere anytime soon. ;)

One thing to ask ourselves before I get into it. Is the content on TV getting worse because of the increasing commercialism and competition, or is it because consumers are more accustomed to this contents and demand it more and more? I don't feel entitled to answer this question, but if you do, please go ahead.

Feedback notes for television group

Overall the presentation was really well done and it covered the subject well. The group was small, so they each had to work hard for this, but on the other hand that helped them to stay in the time-frame and give out a cohesive presentation, that was interesting and fun to watch.

Krista started the day with a introduction video. We thought the introduction video was more effective than someone talking through it. It had all the main points you would expect to hear in the beginning of a presentation and it was a really nice pick. The Follow up slides were concise and relevant- no repetition of what was in the video but still maybe a little long. Visually the slides were really good. It was good that it was summarised by decade in general, it helped us listeners to see the main points. Krista did a great job! Presentations like this are a very difficult thing to do. Krista also gave a good presentation to the audience- wasn’t scripting.

After Krista, Dita continued with her part of the presentation. She also had good, clear presentation slides and she was a very good speaker. Her interactiveness with audience- question and answer, discussion was great and kept people awake the whole time. At some point she rushed through the slides a little too fast, but the information was all valid and still clear to the audience. Dita had very nice use of video and slides and discussion in her part. We would like to have discussed more genres and target audiences (even though they were in the game task). Sometimes she had hard time getting people involved, but that's the audience's fault. But, if you have a problem where people aren’t paying attention- you could start to single people out so that they participate!

Ryoko had the last part of this presentation. She showed us what television is like in different cultures. We really liked the way it was presented visually with world map and video links. Video links were fun and illustrated the different television cultures fairly well, but it's difficult to illustrate ALL the different broadcast types across the cultures. We thought that maybe a comparison of genres in different countries would also be effective next time- comparing tv advertisements/ drama in different countries for example to illustrate the differences. But altogether, Ryoko did a really nice job with this.Maybe fewer videos would have been just as effective, and Ryoko could've asked the audience of their opinion on the videos for additional interaction. But otherwise, good!

Generally this presentation was well-informed, well presented, no irrelevant information, it was kept ‘to the point.’ Only thing we felt was a bit lacking, was the coverage of non-commercial  broadcasting. Less reality tv etc which is the same in most countries, and more about other kinds of television too. The task they gave us was quite a challenging thing to do with only a ten-minute time preparation but it worked well and was fun- it was the wake up people needed. In the end it was nice that they had a conclusion, but maybe it was a little brief, maybe room for short discussion at the end could've also been nice. Anyways, great job for a small group!

FEEDBACK fo radio

Feedback radio

The old radio decoration was a cool bonus.
Dylan presented what was coming up in the lesson very well. The video was funny and engaging.Elizaveta

Prezi presentation of the history radio was great and looked nice and the prezi didnt take the focus out from the presentation. There were lots of interesting content on the history part. It was good that Lisa had more info on the paper than just the one on the presentation. There were no eye-contact on her part at all. the presenation was really concentrated and well prepared.
Videos were great.
Riikka

Riikka’s presentation about what radio broadcasting is today was really understandable and the eyecontact was great.

Different ways to listen to the radio, presentation was really good and had lots of really good information. The presentation was well shortened and concentrated.

There was also a video about people’s opinions about radio, which was fun and the kitten was the cutest thing ever! <3

Radio interview was funny and entertaining, buuuut maybe a little bit too long. It seems like people actually listen to the radio. The lady was maybe a bit subjective in her opinions, but it was nice to see how everything works when someone is broadcasting a radio show.
Dylan
Good presentation, very good that he started with the interview to make this more interactive.
The task was really good, because it forced you to think stuff. The questions were really good.
Students had really good points, therefore I might say this really worked out. The internet question wasn’t that good because it is hard to see the difference. The only problem was that there was not enough time to discuss the subject.
Sindy
Really good idea to go out there and interview this yle lady. We would’ve liked to hear a presentation from Sindy and Iina as well.
Alberto
Good that he was in front of the class. The presentation was a bit too fast and the information was a bit too long on slides. There would’ve nice to have a timeline of some sort so that it would have been easier to follow.
Caro

Caro talked about the ways to record music and the presentation was well concentrated and divided into three parts. The videos were also nice and explained the subject in a fun way.

Riikka
Very good information and she knows what she’s talking about. The time for discussion wasn’t enough, but the information was very well presented and short.

The whole presentation was very good even though the time limit was this small for such a big subject. The group managed very well to cover all the interesting areas of radio and recorded music.

The fourth student professor session - new ideas!

After the previous session I commented we have a pattern - the classes follow more or less the same structure. But the classes have shown good quality, so nothing wrong with that.

The radio team took a big and giant step out of the box by inviting a guest expert speaker. Or actually inviting the team to the working environment of the expert.

It was brilliant! Not only that we made a virtual visit to a real radio studio, but also that a passionate media professional shared her insight with the class. So far the visit to YLE was to me the absolute single expression of principal use of brains on this course. A very creative team this was!

The written feedback from the feedback team is so far missing, but if I remember correctly they did a very good job again. You can always discuss about the appropriate extent of the history part, but the length of individual parts of the class is not the key issue. Quality is the key and quality we again witnessed.

One more thing I that I found especially good and hilarious in this class was the section with the history of recording techniques. I have seldom seen such captivating illumination of technology! An exemplary demonstration of smart research and use of YouTube resources.

There are many details to praise and some to discuss in this class. But I really regret that I mentioned DXing as a very important  subtopic missing. No, it is not so important students should include it in a 90 minute presentation covering radio and recorded music. The thing is, that for an elderly professor it is important to mention it as a pre-internet that it in fact was.
You see, for us, the representatives of pre-internet era it is important to communicate to you that amazing things were done already before the net. That is why I also had to tell you, that radio was the medium for sharing computer games before internet.

I began the very first session of this course  (before the exchange students arrived) by playing the ever awesome "Friday on my Mind" with the Easybeats hoping that our joint Friday mornings would be worth waiting for. My wish is becoming true.