Task 14: final reflections

First of all I would like to say this was quiet a new experience of studying for me, because of two reasons, I have never taken an online course, and I have never been studying things like that as my major is film.

For me this course was rather hard, as I had to follow it weekly try to manage home works and readings on time, and find time for it. As well as I am not IMKE student, but a BA student from Baltic Film and Media school, it took me a while to adjust to topics and read some more background information to understand things completely.

In the end of the day, I would like I could have more time to spend on this course, because it was something completely new and interesting for me. Working trough internet, but still being like a real course with team jobs, discussions even inside jokes was great!

Thank you for opportunity !

Task 10: Applying activity theory in practice

To compare NIE (New interactive environments 2010) and PLENK (Personal learning environments networks and knowledge 2010) the main differences and similarities between these two courses from the activity theory point of view can be used.

The subjects in both cases are students. By looking closely at both courses we can see that the content of them is quite similar, so the object and outcome also are the same in both cases – knowledge about interactive environments and networks.

Both courses use many tools for the student to help to obtain the knowledge. These tools can be seen as instruments from activity theory point of view. Both courses are web based and most of the tools as well, so the instruments are similar. However, there are some minor differences between the choices of them, for example, PLENK uses mostly Wiki, Forums and Newsletters, but NIE uses blogs and Voip. This difference can be explained by very different course sizes – PLENK has nearly 900 students, but NIE has only 27. So the choice of the best tools is different in both cases.

The rules a student needs to follow also vary across both courses. NIE has more individual approach and has such rules as assignment deadlines, demands of active participation, and general rules, for example, internet protocol rules when posting a blog entry and ethical norms. PLENK’s approach is more distanced. The rules are to attend the sessions, read all the newsletters and assigned readings on time. The creators of the course also stress out the need for the student to be interested in the course and willing to participate.

The main difference between the students and faculties communities are the countries both courses take place – Canada and Estonia. Otherwise both communities can be seen as almost identical.

The division of labour in both cases is also very similar and follows the grid of the faculty.

The main conclusion of this analysis is that by applying activity theory to two cases that may seem very different at the beginning we can structure our thoughts better and also see many similarities between them. Thus the activity theory is a useful and powerful analytical tool in many fields of study.

Task 13: redesigning action

The action I chose to redesign is storyboarding.

I chose this action, because I am a film student and mostly I am doing work of director of photography so storyboarding is important and very time consuming part of my job.

Nowadays there are some softwares made for this purpose, but I find them too complicated and detailed. The closest software to my ideal is Storyboard quick 6, but still I don't find it easy to work with.

First of all, I would like to explain how I and director do the storyboarding now.

Though nowadays many directors and DOPs use softwares to create storyboards, me and my team are still doing it old fashion way - by drawing shot after shot on paper. ( The example is shown above).

This activity has a lot of minuses, but there are still many reasons why I chose it over softwares.

The main problems of the drawn storyboard are the quality and ability to send it, copy it fast to other crew members.

I am not the best artist when it comes to drawing, so sometimes my storyboards are hard to understand for other crew members. They don't have clear lines, perspective etc. , the other issue is delivering it to other people. I have to scan it or copy it before giving it to other people which is time consuming.

On the other hand drawing story boards by hand is still more effective for me, because of many reasons.

One of them is the fast way of doing it. Imagine, director and director of photography sitting down to do a storyboard. Each of them have their ideas and suggestions, during storyboarding they come to agreement of how the film will look visually, so it is a lot of brainstorming, arguing, changing things, fast sketches on the paper almost don't interrupt the flow of conversation while working on the storyboard with softwares available now can distract people. Because there are too many tools, ways and drop down menus to choose from. Even if a person behind computer is professional, he can get confused and lost between too many options. The software looks more like a Sims game than real working tool.

In my opinion it would be great if there was a simple storyboarding software, with basic menu and tools, to create fast sketches on the way of brainstorming. It would make the work much more easier for everybody, because it is fast, understandable, easy to deliver to others, easy to change and people responsible for it could do it trough internet conferences ( like Skype). It would save a lot of time and nerves.

So to say, lets keep things simple. Till now there is no way for me to re-design or re-instrumentalize this action, but I hope in near future there will be technologies which will help me to make it more easy and effective.

And only afterwards when the main idea of shots is done, if it is necesary there can be a person developing story board into more complicated and detailed thing.

Task 12: tool or medium?

There have been so many opinions, ways how to define what exactly new media is to us nowadays. What is its use now and where is it going in future.

In the article Tool or Medium? Ruckriem points out new question. Is new media a 'tool' or a 'medium'. For me this is just making more questions and creating more mess in my understanding ( or trying to understand) of new media as a concept.

The main thing that author points out is a question is new media, technologies are 'tools' or 'medium'.

And the answer is both, it just depends on one's perspective. But the problem rises if we want to put technology in the frame of one or another or both. As author pointed out, in the beginning we have to look at this all from the higher point of view - its importance in whole human kind and communication . ('' There is no medium with a broader range of impact.'')

We have to understand with what we are dealing and how much it is changing society.

Talking about ''Guns don't kill people, people kill people'' dilemma, this question considering new media and technologies as bad or good has been talked trough a lot lately. And I think most of us agree that its nor god or bad. It all starts with a human and its means. Making good or bad decisions is always been human responsibility. It can be just one more ( very dangerous though) weapon, but it does not have to be. If there would be no weapons the war would be fought anyway.

Task 11: our components versus components of activity theory

What describes activity and how it is managed?

In my opinion the list of components which was made before is very wide and messy. Some components are too detailed, of course they are a part of 'activity' as a whole, but if we include those we have to include hundreds of others as 'activity' is very flexible term and defined different in different studies.

Therefore, I broke down the list to basics and devided it into subtopics. ( To prove that all the components written in Public Pad can be put under main components in my updated list you can find them under main components marked in red)

Core components (e.g. what describes an activity and how to manage activity):

• Subject ( who does activity, who controles it, actors, participants etc. )

• Motive, aim/ goal ( the reason, motivated effort )

• Task ( a quantified/defined assigment with adefinite purpose. role, plan)

• tools/symbols ( language, software, methodology, resource)

• collaboration ( relations)

• restrictions ( schedule, budget, norms and rules)

• timeframe ( beginning and end of the task, schedule, time management)

• control ( a process/task/activity is always controlled at some level. project manager)

• location

• Object, process (happening of the activity, outcome under development)

• outcome, result ( the objective realization of what has been acomplished. feedback, effect)

  
  

This is just my idea of list, obviously as activity theory is more as a framework as theory and shows complexity of real life action the list could be never ending and very complex, but in my opinion it is better to have a easy to see trough, flexible list and idea of components that everybody can use and widen depending on specific case.

Ethics and Law in New Media : Week 10

What could the software licensing landscape look like in 2015?

Write a short predictive analysis

The development of software licensing and software market in general has been growing exponentially over the last decade, so I might say that it is hard to precisely predict its development in 5 years. However, there are some undeniable trends in the market that cannot be ignored. There are various types of software and the licensing landscape would look different for each of them.

There are big players in the software market, mainly professional well known software such as AutoCad, MathCad, Adobe Photoshop and CorelDraw. This kind software is well known for its superior quality, good brand name (reputation), they are leaders in the sphere the program in operating in. The licensing for this kind of software wouldn’t change much in five years, because the users (mostly corporate clients) wouldn’t be able to give up the benefits they can get obtain by using it. Substituting this king of software with its freeware equivalents would need an investment to educate company’s employees how to work with the new software and also would significantly ruin company’s brand name.

Well known and widely used software, for example, Microsoft Office, would even more than now suffer from many cheaper or free substitutes entering the market. Microsoft has already started the best possible strategy and will probably continue it – provide its existing and potential clients with different types of program bundling. Microsoft currently offers several Microsoft Office versions, starting from a relatively cheap one that is meant for students and has only the basic features and ending with a huge and expensive Microsoft Office Professional edition for business clients. In order to cope with the expanding competition Microsoft would probably offer the basic edition of this package for free after 5 years.

In my opinion, the market for small and non-business oriented software will be completely overwhelmed by proprietary software in 2015. People won’t be willing to buy such software, and, if we assume that the illegal software downloading will be reduced by that time, we will all be using legally downloaded free software.

Write a short analysis about applicability of copying restrictions - whether you consider them useful, in which cases exceptions should be made etc.

The idea of copying restrictions is in line with the concept of copyright. Copyright is used to protect original creative works, published editions, sound recordings, films and broadcasts. It exists independently of the recording medium, so buying a copy does not confer the right to copy. Limited copying (photocopying, scanning, downloading) without permission is possible is some cases, e.g. for research. Publication of excerpts or quotes needs acknowledgement. Copyright is not registrable because it arises automatically on creation.

If we put the formal definition aside and look at the real cases, we can see that the wonderful idea of copying restrictions doesn’t work in many cases. A perfect example for that is a software market. The illegal downloading of all kinds of software has become a part of the society already and it might be very hard to change this habit. The access of illegal software is amazingly easy. Even a person with basic computer knowledge can dig a bit deeper into the results Google gives him/her after typing “ProgramWhatever crack” or similar phrases and get the copyright protected software for free.

Of course, one can argue that there exist free alternatives similar the software we need to pay for. But again – why to download less fancy software if I can just download a desired one illegally and don’t be punished for it? It might sound inadequate now, but to my mind the only solution for this problem had been preventing it before the illegal downloading even started. Currently fighting with this problem seems like a fight against windmill, because the change in people behavior in such big issue requires changing people’s thinking and beliefs.

There are many attempts where illegal using of software is tried to be reduced, for example, there exists software that is available free of charge for academic, non-commercial and educational purposes. I think this idea is really valuable, because it helps the society as well as improves the software company’s brand image. Also there are new forms of licensing such as Copyleft and ShareAlike (used in Creative Commons), where author can give bigger freedom to the users of his/her than as Copyright protection was used. In this case the author himself can determine the extent to which the creative work is protected. I personally consider flexible licenses like this to be a future image of different kinds of intellectual property protection.

Task 9: exploring activity theory as a framework for describing activity systems

Put out a post summarizing your understanding of activity theory and its potential for describing activity systems

Cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT), further here named just as activity theory, is a theoretically-based conceptual framework that helps to understand the relationship between one’s mind and actions, and other relevant factors that influence one’s actions. It was firstly introduced by Soviet developmental psychologists Alexei N. Leont'ev and Sergei Rubinshtein. Afterwards, this study was expanded and adapted in different fields, for example a study of human computer interaction in Scandinavia, also called as Scandinavian Activity theory.

To see how the activity theory works we need to build up the activity system:

Figure 1. Activity theory graphic explanation. Source: http://www.quasar.ualberta.ca/edpy597mappin/images/bigtri.gif

The subject is a group or an individual person that performs and examines the activity to the object. Instruments (also named as mediating artefacts) are the catalysts of the activity. Rules set and regulate the possible framework for the action, community helps the subject to carry out the action and division of labour corresponds to the horizontal (between equal members) and vertical (power division) communication in the society.

The theory of activity systems can be broadly used in the real life. This powerful tool just needs to be transformed and adjusted to the particular circumstances, for example, to design a business model, test a new computer technology, help human resource managers to monitor their departments, or explain a complicated social process.