Filed Under (General) by elearning4bradford on 28-09-2009
It was a great honour to return to Belgrade and attend this important conference on ethical aspects of research. I was warmly welcomed by my colleague Prof. Dr. Aleksandra Vranes organiser of the conference and also by Prof. Dr. Ljiljana Markovic vice-dean of the Faculty of Philology. I was honoured to be asked to chair the Friday afternoon session, having only just arrived from the airport minutes before, this was rather challenging but thanks to the excelent translation skills of the conference team and the wonders of technology, I think I did a good job. The session had its focus on intellectual property rights and copyright generally. Of particular interest was the discussion of Google’s role in the digitisation of materials. The venue – the Hall of Heroes – being a large-scale auditorium made an excellent space for discussion.
On the following day I presented my own paper on the Ethical issues associated with the development of the Bradford College virtual research environment. It was well received and there was a lot of interest in the technology and in the organisation of the research process. A fuller version will be published in the conference proceedings.
Prof. Markovic’s presentation raised some important issues concerning the ethics of recording cultural heritage. The conference was closed by Prof. Vranes who provided an excellent interpretation of the wider ethical implications of increased use of technology, the rising force of globalisation and the perceived diminishing importance of local heritage, she did this through the lens of information literacy and librarianship and received much support from the audience and the closing plenary.
I have learned a lot and there is much to consider from the papers presented.
Filed Under (General, Research) by elearning4bradford on 28-09-2009
Wednesday saw our colleagues Saluka and Manisha delivering an excellent presentation to a small group about the direction of the Academy of Design. Noting their focus on ethical manufacturing processes within the textile industry I asked Dr Khosro Jahdi from our Masters in International Marketing team to join us for the morning session. There was much discussion about the event in Colombo the big Fashion Show planned for the last week in November. Dr Jahdi was keen to be involved and, from his perspective of an expert in corporate social responsibility, felt that there was a common interest amongst all parties. Colleagues from our art and design school provided further support. This looks like an exciting strand to the future work.
On Tuesday I spent time hosting two visitors from the Academy of Design in Colombo, Sri Lanka; Saluka Kotagama Principal and Manisha Gunawardane – Head of the Centre for Creative Enterprise. I gave a brief outline of my role and that of learning resources before we made our way to visit the VLE team in their office at Grove Library’s Victory room, for a demonstration of our Second Life and OpenSim activity. The project that is being set up has a focus on fashion design a real strength of the Academy of Design. We were particularly interested in merging the fashion design aspects with the use of live avatars in the virtual world. We were also intersted in how Moodle might be used to support collaborative learning between our two institutions. To set the ball rolling Tim gave a wonderful account of the history of Second Life, tracing the context and explaining some of the important detail. He then demonstrated an animated cat-walk along with lighting and effects. This served to ignite the discussion and a number of ideas were identified as possible ways forward. Richard took us through the latest developments with Moodle and there were some areas where collaboration with Srinreth the moodle support person at the AoD could be taken further. This work promises much for the future. Many thanks to Tim for the work he put in to making his get off to a great start.
