MindTrek picture diary

MindTrek Conference is one of the highlights of the year of many students and staff members at TAMK. The conference is the most important annual digital media and business event in northern Europe since 1997. TAMK is one of the key actors and founding member of MindTrek Association. MindTrek Conference was this year arranged October 7-8.

  Some 70 students and 20 lecturers from different TAMK degree programmes took part in the conference that attracted over 500 participants from 30 countries.

MindTrek is the meeting point of digital media producers, researchers and students. Here we have Mark Sorsa-Leslie, Hammerkit Managing Director discussing with Antti Kareinen, second year TAMK-student. Antti did a project using Hammerkit application in the summer.

Also professional organisations ar a vital part of the MindTrek community. Here Jonna Asikainen, Union for Professionals in Communications, Marketing Research and New Media, MaMa ry, invites first year TAMK student Aino Yrjänä to join.

Korash Sanjideh, Chew TV (UK) taught our students on Wednesday and gave a presentation at MindTrek. He was fan number 1500 of TAMK fan page on Facebook, so he was awarded with This is Finland Comic book and TAMK bag during a conference break.

Taina Rajanti, Aalto University, Christian Fonnesbech, The Quantum Room (DK) and Korash Sanjideh planning their session "Social Moving Pictures" at the MindTrek VIP reception  hosted by the City of Tampere at Old Town Hall.

First year media students Emma Kiiski, Heidi Mäenpää and Anna Narinen exploring the exhibition during a conference break. Useful information and tasty lollipops!

Nokia Ubimedia MindTrek Award is the global MindTrek competition. TAMK is one of the contest organisers. Read about the three winning projects.

 The MindTrek Conference has plenaries and sessions in several tracks running in parallel. This is the "Social Moving Pictures" session produced by TAMK.

 Also a group of our exchange students took part in MindTrek. Here at MindTrek Party Thursday evening (from left) Lucas Raßbach, Ostfalia University of Applied Sciences, Eeva-Kaisa Ahlamo, second year TAMK student and Georg Frömelt, Bauhaus Universität Weimar.

The WSA Finland competition chose the Finnish nominees for World Summit Award and World Summit Award Mobile. The certificates were handed out by WSA Excecutive Board member Jak Boumans (right). Here Timo Koskinen, Newelo Ltd. is awarded.
WSA Finland is organised by TAMK in cooperation with MindTrek Association.
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MindTrek
WSA Finland
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The Joint Symposium of Tampere University of Applied Sciences and Miyagi University

Challenges to Integrate Nursing Knowledge and Practice

Date and time

Friday 3rd September 2010, 9.00-16.00
Venue: Tampere, Finland
Tampere University of Applied Sciences, Kuntokatu 3, A3-27.

Sub themes of the symposium include

- The Future of the Partnership Between TAMK and MY
- Overview of Nursing Education System in Finland and TAMK
- Overview of Nursing Education System in Japan and MY
- Issues Involved in Linking Nursing Education and Clinical Practice

Program

Moderators: Prof. H. Nagasawa MD. Miyagi University and PhD, Vice President Marja Sutela, TAMK

9.00-9.30
Opening Markku Lahtinen, President, TAMK

The Future of the Partnership between TAMK and MYU
Shoken Mawatari, President, Miyagi University

9.30-10.00
Overview of Nursing Education System in Finland and TAMK
Päivi Karttunen PhD Vice President

10.00-10.30
Overview of Nursing Education System in Japan and MYU
Yoshiko Sekito Ed.D., Professor, School of Nursing, Miyagi University

10.30-10.45 Coffee break


10.45-12.45 Session 1
Issues Involved in Linking Nursing Education and Clinical Practice

Chairpersons: Prof. Yoshiko Sekito Ed.D., Miyagi University and Principal lecturer Jouni Tuomi, RN, PhD, TAMK

1) A Clinical Role and Issue for Cardiovascular Nursing in Japan - from the Aspect of Self Care Sup-ports
Toshiko Yoshida, RN, PHN, PhD, Professor, School of Nursing, Miyagi University

2) About Possibilities to Go over Problems to Integrate Nursing Education and Practice in Curriculum Level
Jouni Tuomi PhD, Principal Lecturer

3) Ways to Integrate Clinical Practice with Theory
Pia Keiski, MNSc, Education Manager (Adults nursing education)

4) Alternative Medicine concerning Music Therapy in Japan - Possibilities and Problems
Akiko Kitaoka, Associate Professor, School of Nursing, Miyagi University

12.45-13.45 Lunch


13.45-15.45 Session 2
Nursing Demands for the Elderly in the Aging Society

Chairpersons: Prof. Toshiko Yoshida, RN, PHN, PhD and Principal lecturer Varpu Lipponen, RN, PhD, TAMK

1) Aging and Elderly Care - Welfare Strategies and Practices in Japan
Haruo Nagasawa MD. Professor, School of Nursing Miyagi University

2) Ederly Care - Challenges to Nursing and Nursing Education
Kaarina And, Lecturer

3) Kinaesthetics in Elderly Health Care Setting
Hiroko Tadaura, Associate Professor, School of Nursing, Miyagi University

4) Active Ageing in Tampere Region: Joint Project between TAMK and Elderly Care Service Providers
Tarja Heinonen, Program Manager, Wellbeing Services and Technology, R&D

Closing

This symposium is open to all. Welcome!

Please register here before 31.8.2010.

For further information concerning the event, contact Liisa Marttila, liisa.marttila (at) tamk.fi.

EuroITV conference today at TAMK

The eight edition of the annual conference  on Interactive TV & Video EuroITV started today with the pre-conference workshop day in the premises of TAMK School of Art and Media in the Finlayson.area. The theme of the conference is “web.sharing.TV.content”, reflecting the increasing connections between TV and web services.

EuroITV is attended by academia and professionals from all over the world to discuss latest advances and research of media technology, HCI, media studies, and the content creation community. The conference is organized by the EMMi Lab., Department of Business Information Management & Logistics, Tampere Univ. of Technology (TUT) , Tampere University of Applied Sciences (TAMK), and the School of Science and Technology, Aalto University in cooperation with major players in the field of TV and video in Finland.

Professor Artur Lugmayr as general chair of the conference is expecting more than 170 attendees from over 30 countries worldwide:
– We have organized the largest EuroITV conference ever. We also have re-invented the conference by adding a global competition – the EuroITV Grand Challenge – with a price sum of 3000 Euro, new themes such as art & content, and a visionary club gathering leading researchers in a think tank to develop the future vision of video and television in the age of Web3.0. 

The conference will continue tomorrow and on Friday in Hotel Holiday Club Tampere.

EuroITV2010.org

Pictured: Pertti Näränen (TAMK) and Artur Lugmayr (TUT), two happy organisers and chairs of the conference

MSc dissertation Vivas and Poster Conference at Tampere University of Applied Science at 18th. May 2010

The first joint programme Sustainable Business Risk Management Master of Science students had their dissertation Vivas last Tuesday 18th - and after that there was Poster Conference organized at Foyer.

Marja Sutela, Vice Headmaster for Tampere University of Applied Science addressed welcome the Vivas and Poster Conference and assigned certificates of Specialisation Studies in Sustainable Business Risk Management.

Now after one and a half years of hard studies, approved dissertation, viva and Poster presentation student will be awarded Master of Science (SBRM) by University of Glamorgan.

Pose of students and teachers at Foyer.
From right: Steve Lloyd (UoG) Jiali Koski, Inga Vinciunaite, Dawn Story (UoG), Riitta Välimäki, Petri Tiihonen, Peter Evans (UoG), Esa Packalén (TAMK) and Kati Hinkkanen. Participants also included Marjukka Dyer (who took the picture)

Riitta (left) and Inga with well-earned certificates in their hands standing besides one of the posters.


Best Regards
Esa Packalén

Tampere Innovation Experience @ Demola 25 May

Tampere Innovation Experience @ Demola Tuesday 25 May 2010 at 10:00-16:30 is a meeting of minds.

The event will bring together the Tampere research community to unleash resources and accelerate idea sharing in the spirit of open innovation.

The one-day program will feature short technology presentations by experts during which researchers, students and professors can engage old and new colleagues in conversation, challenge each other with ideas and come up with new ways to combine technologies. What?s more, we will have over 40 (TBD) demos on display representing cutting-edge technology in the ubiquitous digital society.

Read more about the event and register by 17 May:
http://research.nokia.com/innovation_experience_tampere

TAF – How can universities give students a kick to go global?

The international seminar "How Universities give students a kick to go global?" was kicked off in Demola by Jukka Siltanen and Taru Söderlund. Jukka invited the audience to ponder: "What can I learn?" and "How is it important to me personally?"

As Jukka pointed out, most importantly, TAF seminar is a day to celebrate TAMK students and their achievements! The speakers spoke of art and internationalism from different perspectives.

Andrea Zapata Girau showed a trailer of her up-coming Flamenco Movie, and Pekka Saari spoke about his film Memory of tomorrow, especially about combining the production with postproduction. Pekka Niskanen told the audience of the exhibition his students are having first at Werstas in Tampere and then in Dortmund. He also shared his experiences in the international art world. Then Robert Niva and Martti Sirkkola demonstrated their 3D animation project, in which they had learned the entire process of doing a 3D animation by doing it together, in a group, instead of relying on traditional lecture-based education. They explained the importance of using the wisdom of crowds and social media application in learning and producing art.


After the break it was time for Jukka Siltanen to take the stage again. Jukka talked about Hub Tampere and entrepreneurship. Hub Tampere is all about joint entrepreneurship and sharing both skills, ideas and resources. Hub Tampere has already had some excellent success, and Jukka sounded very optimistic about its future. The Proacademy students presented their projects: a Tampere guidebook for exchange students, a football tournament and its afterparty. Then producer Timo Vierimaa, spoke about his film, the "Steam of Life" ("Miesten vuoro") and how he succeeded in making his film truly international. According to Vierimaa, the keys to success are good presentation and communication skills along with patience.

The final speaker of the event was Juho Hartikainen from Score game development club, who explained how the Score game club came to be. Hartikainen emphasised the fact that the students who have the enthusism and drive to do new, innovative things, should be supported and encouraged. The students should feel like they are working for the school instead of just in the school. Siltanen, Vierimaa, Niva and Sirkkola as well as the highly interesting Proacademy projects, all highlighted the fact that so much of today's learning takes place outside the traditional classroom environment. This type of learning must be supported and nurtured, for it is the key to national and international success.


Andrea Zapata Girau final thesis work at TAMK

Links:
http://www.memoryoftomorrow.com
http://tamk-artmedia.blogspot.com/2010/04/promoting-changes-exhibition-to-inter.html
http://3danimationproject.wordpress.com
http://hubtampere.wordpress.com
http://www.proakatemia.fi
http://score.igda.fi/

ACA Academic Cooperation Association

Taking care of the ‘brains’ – Principles and practice in international student support

Seminar in Brussels 19.3.2010

The student services offered are becoming an increasingly important factor for international students when they select a place to study. The seminar addressed the needs and wants of international degree students and gave tips how to meet the challenges higher education institutions are facing in their efforts to internationalize. We heard interesting research results and motivating cases from UK and Denmark.

UK has a long tradition of having tuition paying students. With the increased funding through these students also the student services are given more emphasis than in countries offering free education. Denmark has already started charging tuition from students coming from outside EU, Sweden will follow already in 2011 and gradually Finland will take the same path. All countries that have started charging tuition have experienced a decline in the number of international student for some years. In the UK this decline lasted for three years.

The new strategy for Tampere University of Applied Sciences emphasizes the well-being of students. We are set to improve in this area. Through social media, a university will nowadays quickly gain a reputation based on how students are welcomed and cared for during their studies.

Aura Loikkanen

The annual Autumn Symposium of the Finnish Association of Applied Linguistic

The annual Autumn Symposium of the Finnish Association of Applied Linguistics (AFinLA) was held at the University of Applied Sciences, in Tampere, Finland on November 12-13. Welcome speeches were given by Conference Chair Mirja Kinnunen, Co-Chair Mike Garant, and the Head of International Cooperation and Languages Tarja Haukijärvi. Anna Mauranen from the University of Helsinki delivered an excellent plenary on "Speaking a lingua Franca - Redefining relations of language and culture".




Keith Richards from the University of Warwick, England who spoke about "Getting personal in academic argument"



Balázs Heidrich from the Budapest Business School, Hungary who spoke about "Kiss the Prince and Find the Frog - Dreams and reality about effectiveness of multicultural student groups".

In addition, the conference had over 150 participants from 15 different countries and there were over 60 papers and workshops given. The focus areas of the conference included professional communication, education, and (culture and how they all come together. The schedule included lunch and coffee breaks, intellectual discussions and much shared knowledge. Over 50 students participated actively in organizing the conference.

We hope everyone enjoyed the symposium!

What's TAMK got to do with Russian timber duties?

Picture: Prime ministers Putin and Vanhanen and minister Pekkarinen opening the summit

Almost 400 people were present in the third Russian-Finnish forestry summit in St. Petersburg, Russia last Sunday, 25th October. The Finnish delegation consisted of 140 invited directors, managers, researchers and experts from all forestry branches. TAMK was one of the three Finnish higher education institutions present in the summit and the only Finnish university of applied sciences who participated, represented by Aura Loikkanen and Ari Vanamo.

The summit concentrated on actual problems of forestry co-operation between Finland and Russia. Both countries had put a high priority on the meeting. The prime Minister of Russia, Vladimir Putin opened the seminar and also the Finnish Prime Minister, Matti Vanhanen gave his speech. Altogether five Finnish ministers were present in the summit.

The main problem between Finnish-Russian forestry co-operation has for some year now been the export duties on timber which have strongly affected forest industry in Finland but maybe even more logging operations and employment on the Russian side. According to the original plan the duties on birch pulpwood would have been at least 50 €/m3 from 1st January 2010, but Russia has now twice postponed the decision. Some of the Finnish big forest industry companies have however already reacted and withdrawn their operations from Russia almost completely.

But the timber duties are hopefully just a minor exception in the forestry co-operation between Russia and Finland. The fact remains that Russia has the world´s largest forest resources, about 40 times the amount of Finland´s. The need for the development of forestry sector is great and Finnish know-how in forestry is wanted in many areas. In the summit Finnish and Russian delegations agreed on the further development of both economic and scientific-technical co-operation. It will include for example research on forestry legislation, development and application of bioenergy technologies, creating new forest industry products e.g. by using nanotechnology, basic and further training of forestry researchers, engineers and workers.

So what did TAMK get out of the summit? The forestry degree programme of TAMK, partly together with TAOKK, has for over 5 years been involved in forestry training co-operation in Russia. The projects have been financed by EU and lately by the Finnish Foreign Ministry. These projects were actually the reason why TAMK was invited to St. Petersburg on Sunday. The summit offered the chance for TAMK to see and to be seen. New contacts were formed and old ones refreshed. We´re quite sure that also in the future there will be a need for TAMK´s services in Russian forestry sector,

Ari Vanamo

Score at Nordic Game!

Nordic Game is a two-day conference event focused on the game industry on the Nordic countries. Game Development Club Score, which is operating under TAMK, got sponsored tickets to the event from Neogames, the Finnish Center of Game Business, Research & Development. This year's event followed and almost coincided with Tampere Art Factory, so Score had their hands full of work. Fortunately, we got our business cards ready and organised our traveling schedule with TAMK's travel secretary Sirkku Teikari, big thanks to her. Nordic Game has now passed, and we would like to share some of our thoughts regarding the event and the trip in general.

One group of students traveled by plane (Niko Korhonen, Janne Jaakkola, Pasi Perkiö, Teemu Haila), while others decided to save money and the environment by using a ship (Juhani Hujala, Mikko Kähäri, Tuomas Järvensivu, Juho Hartikainen, Antti Salomaa). Even though the cruise path was consecutively longer and for example we journeyed the trip from Stockholm to Malmö in a bus for over 12 hours, this didn't demoralise any of us. The trip back to Stockholm went on smoothly as we got to ride the bus from Outokumpu Pelitalo, i.e. other game development students from Finland who conveniently stayed in the same hostel as we did.

Nordic Game in itself was really worth attending to. The speakers were cutting edge, so as listeners we just had to find our ways to topics that were most relevant to our interests, for there were a number of speakers and as such most of the seminars were being held simultaneously. Another key component of the event was networking among the game developers. Though we might have not gotten invitations to Norway this time, time will tell if the socializing sparks something concrete, either for the club or its members. At the very least, the coverage won't be hurting us the least bit.

The presentation from Unity 3D showed off their middleware game development platform and convinced many of us to lob it inside the School of Art and Media. The Degree Programme in Business Information Systems at Teiskontie Campus has already ordered 20 Unity licenses, so our wishes just might not be all that utopistic. Alex Evans, the developer of LittleBigPlanet shared some precious hints on how to structure a game development pipeline, and in turn, Bionic Commando Rearmed's development studio GRIN told their experiences with working on a remake from a classic game title. Besides these keynotes, the audience got to witness a vast number of different viewpoints concerning the future of game development, as well as other topics that were very relevant to us as students.

The overall supply that the conference offered got us thinking outside the box. All in all, we are very pleased that we got the chance to be part of an event like this, with little to no cost. During the journey, we also figured that in order to help the Nordic game community we must actively focus on enhancing the Finnish national game industry. It is somewhat ironic to go all the way to Malmö just to grasp this idea, but apparently this is turning into an annual trend, if we're to examine last year's trip to Nordic Game. Hopefully we can improve the matter until the next event!

Author: Juho Hartikainen, President of Score Game Development Club

The TAMK School of Art and Media students of the Score delegation. Juho Hartikainen on left side.
Photo: Teemu Haila

Find the Animal - Win a Two-Day Ticket to MindTrek

MindTrek is the most important annual digital media award, conference and festival in Nordic countries. It has been arranged since 1997, when cd-roms where the multimedia platform and webmedia young and innocent.

We are happy to announce the MindTrek Conference 2009 will be arranged October 1-2 with the pre-conference workshop day September 30. Last year MindTrek Conference had 900 participants from 30 countries.

You can ensure your free seat at the conference by proposing the best theme animal of the conference:

"MindTrek will have a theme animal of the year, and you can be the one that suggests the perfect animal to us. What animal represents MindTrek best and why? Last time it was the geese. We somehow felt they represented well what was going on in the world of the internet and social media. What animal would do that job this year? The person who has the best idea will win a two day conference ticket to the MindTrek 2009 Conference. Fire away! Send your suggestions to info (at) mindtrek.org"

TAMK has been one of the key organisers of MindTrek from the very beginning.

MindTrek

Photo: MindTrek Conference 2008 flyer with the MindTrek 2008 animal

Greetings from Charleston, SC!

Two of TAMK’s teachers, Hanna Torp and Marianna Leikomaa, travelled all the way to Charleston, South Carolina, to participate and present a paper at the SITE conference (Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education).

Charleston turned out to be a beautiful old city with a lot of history and lovely buildings (as well as food). The conference has been extremely interesting so far! Things got off to a bit of rough start, with the first keynote speaker being absent altogether (because of the horrible weather East coast). Luckily she had Skype and was able to attend after all…

Hanna and Marianna did their presentation on Collaborative Knowledge Construction in an On-line Vocational Teacher Education on Tuesday afternoon and while the audience wasn’t very large, the presentation was received well. Tuesday evening the SITE conference

celebrated its 20^th birthday with a Hawaiian theme party! Unfortunately the weather wasn’t quite up to Hawaiian temperatures…

Charleston is certainly a fabulous place and the SITE conference one of the most interesting and important teacher education conferences all around! We’ll definitely have to come back (both to Charleston and to the next SITE conference)!