In Working Group 1, Wey-han, Arie, Antti, Ville, Lynda, and myself, with Martti’s assistance, had the pleasure of engaging and brainstorming the topic titled, “Envisioning new interfaces in cooperative media culture”.

Arie introduced an interface problem encountered by the medieval scholars when operating the new interface of the “Book” (as presented in the short sketch Medieval Helpdesk on the Norwegian show “Øystein og jeg”).

We developed a stronger understanding for what an interface is and potential problems surrounding the interface, as presented in the brainstorming map linked to the image at the right. Most importantly we identified that when engaging the topic of interfaces there are a number of visual, conceptual and metaphorical aspects which need consideration. During discussion in the working group and following our presentation we identified that there may be two approaches to considering this topic, from the perspective of the physical interface (buttons, keyboards, mouse, etc) and also the virtual interface (windows, browsers, web interface etc).

We identified and presented our research proposal, however we understand that it will require further discussion and fine-tuning in the coming weeks:

“To consider the visual, conceptual and metaphorical elements of interfaces in a learning context for inexperienced user groups.”

Anyhow my name is Gerard Brady. I’m Australian by nationality and an environmental planner by education and early professional experience. However, for the best part of the last three years I’ve been working with a team of designers, academics, and educational technologists (and all sorts of creative-types) at the United Nations University Media Studio in Tokyo, Japan.

We’ve been trying to work out a way to develop open educational resources utilising the opportunities presented by information society so that partnering universities in developing countries can build, share and use educational content (mainly on environmental subjects, for starters). And to cut a long story short, I have kind of realised that, in such a dynamic world with everchanging tools, playing fields and rules, there is no magical “one way”. That said, I’m pretty keen to study the options available though and where they might lead us.

I won’t waste too much more space and time (if you’ve read this far), but to say that I’m really looking forward to starting the course and also meeting everyone in Hamburg in October.

Gerard