Greetings from Korea

TAMK participated in the e-Learning Korea 2011: Expo in Seoul. Finland was represented well in the expo: Finpro had arranged an exhibition for 7 Finnish organisations and companies. The participants from TAMK were Henri Annala and Marianna Leikomaa.

We mainly promoted TAMK’s new on-line vocational teacher education program, but naturally also replied to a lot of questions about our English degree programs as well. People also seemed interested in Finland in general, and a few people we met had even visited Tampere!

Seoul is a bustling city with lots of sights and it would’ve been great to be able to see a bit more of it! This just means that we will have to come back soon again, and enjoy even more of what this great city has to offer! (And to eat some more of the fabulous food served here!)

FIRST study trip to St. Petersburg 10.-18.4 2010

St. Petersburg is a city full of history, culture and people. St. Petersburg is located at the delta of Neva River. All in all, it’s a home for more than 5 million people. The city was founded by Peter the Great. He had the city built with precise plan and style. Nowadays the historical center of St. Petersburg is one of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

St. Petersburg offered an unforgettable week for us 15 Finnish students that were chosen to participate in FIRST Russian study trip. Our aim was to explore Russian culture, business and nightlife.


We Finnish participants were from several universities and university of applied sciences in Finland for example from TAMK, TuAMK, SAMK, HAMK, UTA and TTY. From TAMK we had two participants from IB this year. Our group was completed when 17 Russian students from different universities from St. Petersburg joined us. The teachers were Mikel Garant , Anasse Bouhlal, Jussi Okkonen, Oksana Yevseeva, Heikki Holma, Aleksander Polyakov, Taina Huhtinen, Ekaterina Tulugurova and Tatiana Khvatova. The program was held at St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University and was coordinated by Daria Kozlova and Tiina Vuorio from Tampere University of Technology.

During the week we got to know each other as well as Russian business culture in general. We had guest lecturers from InnoPartnership,Finpro, the Finnish-Russian Chamber of Commerce, Nokian renkaat, Rumpu Consulting, the St Pedtersburg Currency Exchange, Handelsbanken and Promaco. The lecturers were kind to share their knowledge of Russian business today. We heard success stories of companies that had entered the Russian market and also their difficulties when facing a new culture. The lectures raised interesting discussions of various topics. We also went to visit The Stock Exchange and Sokos Hotel Vasilievsky. At the Sokos Hotel we also got an inside peek to the rooms.


Besides the lectures we were amazed by various sites around St. Petersburg. On our second day in Russia we went for a city tour and heard about the history of St. Petersburg. We saw the Peter & Paul Fortress, The Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood and the outstanding Hermitage. Some of us also visited The Kunstkamera which is established in 1714 by Peter the Great who was fascinated by questionable items from all over the world.



On Sunday 18th of April 2010 our group came back to Finland. We all had been enriched by this unforgettable experience to the spectacular city of St. Petersburg – not to mention all the international contacts we made!
By: Maija Peltola

Postcard from DETVET meeting, Östra Grevie

The second DETVET (Development of Educational Techniques in Vocational Education and Training) project meeting was today and yesterday in Östra Grevie, Skåne, southern Sweden.

The winter has been like in the good old times here as well. Yesterday we experienced a heavy snow storm. Good we had a working day and could stay indoors. Today it's bright sunshine, thats good, because I'm going to fly home tonight.

The meeting has learned more about pedagogical methods and techniques in the participating countries and prepared a questionnaire DETVET uses to collect data from VET teachers.

DETVET is an EU funded project with participants from Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Lithuania and Sweden. Tampere University of Applied Sciences is the Finnish partner.

The next project meeting will be in April in Sant'Angelo, Italy.

DETVET Project

Pictured: Östra Grevie Folkhögskola, the venue of the meeting

Good day from chilly but sunny Oita-city!

Exchange students doing zazen, a Zen Buddhist meditation practice.

Because of nation-wide entrance exams, all the lectures are cancelled, and I have unusual spare time to report to TAMK's blog about my exchange.


We, the exchange students, began our semester in Oita University in the 1st of October, at the same time as all Japanese university students start their school year. That is quite late in comparison to Finland.



For the past two months, despite the variety of fields offered by Oita University, the selected exchange studies have concentrated in two subjects: economics and Japanese language. And for my good, both have proven to be extremely informative.



In my view, Oita University is a fruitful choice for anyone with a desire to learn business economics, Japanese management, social studies or even chemistry alongside of Japanese language. Japanese language classes are divided into six levels, allowing everyone from no prior knowledge to extremely advanced to receive suitable teaching.



To give a quick coordinates, Oita University locates in the Oita-city. City of Oita then again is a prefectural capital of Oita prefecture and Oita prefecture is in the north-west of Kyushu island, in the southern Japan. Hmm... it might be better to look it up from a map.



The main reason why I wanted to come to Japan, besides learning the language, is its peculiarity. Japan has been subject to countless studies, doubtlessly because there is no culture alike. For myself, the time here is an unique chance to receive firsthand knowledge of the distinctiveness of Japan. And I am grateful for both TAMK University of Applied Sciences and Oita University for giving this opportunity!


Lauri Aho, Oita University, Japan

Greetings from Canada!

I have spent my autumn semester as an exchange student in Toronto, Ontario College of Art & Design on The Faculty of Art. Studying in another country has been an eye-opening experience that has helped me to concentrate to develop the content of my artistic work as much as improve technical part of artistic process.

Best part in my exchange has been interaction with the people from different cultures. An exchange has enriched my ways to express myself on the field of photography and refresh my perception through interesting conversations with other students and faculty members.

I have been also lucky enough to get some custom-works to do. That has really improved my financial situation.

Besides working in here I have continued my studies in Finland with art project Route Couture, which was part of AVO – Cotton Wool Revolution in Tampere 24.10- 22.11.09. Route Couture presented a fur-fashion collection made of the fur and skin of the Finnish roadkill. By showing the skin of a roadkill as an expensive piece of high fashion, Route Couture questioned general opinions on beauty, luxury, marketing values and truths, and justification of the use of “common” space.

Karoliina Paappa

Read more about the exhibition:

Route Couture (in English)
Article on Fifi (in Finnish)

Picture: Series: Tyttö on kova suustaan, untitled, 2009.

Greetings from Wales!

Greetings from rainy but beautiful Wales! I’m in the University of Glamorgan, in the Pontypridd campus!

I’ve been here for over 3 weeks now (time certainly flies!), doing research about e-learning and group work, both in e-learning environments as well as in more “traditional” learning contexts. I’ve interviewed several local teachers who use group work in their teaching, both on-line and in classroom situations. I’ve also given a questionnaire for a group of students, and the aim is to have the same questionnaire completed by a group of TAMK students next year as well, so we can see if there are any cultural differences in the way students do group work. In addition, I’ve shared my own experiences in e-learning with the local staff, and have learned a lot from their experiences.

So, I’ve spent my time here writing research and just getting to know the life in Wales and living in the campus. Although it has rained quite a bit, there have been several beautiful days here as well! The month has gone by really quickly, so it’s really hard to imagine I’ll be coming back home in about a week or so! I really need to come here again, in order to continue my research and to meet the wonderful people again!

Hello from EUROPRIX Festival, Graz

EUROPRIX Multimedia Festival, now third time in ever so wonderful and hospitable Graz, was once again unforgettable. Populated by members of the 20 nominee teams, digital media industry representatives, lecturers and students the three days were filled with energy and creativity plus all other fun stuff.

On Thursday the festival was opened at the regional TV-station with an exhibition of nominee projects and get-together. Friday morning I participated in a project consortium meeting, and then moderated the Academic Lounge with my friend Jak Boumans, secretary general of European Academy of Digital Media. We had most awarding discussion and networking with colleagues from universities cross Europe.

In the afternoon we joined other festival participants for the "4 SCREENS 4 YOU CREATING CONTENTS" event with inspiring keynotes by Alois Ferscha (Research Studio Pervasive Computing), Juha Kaario (Nokia Research Centre), Charly Pall (Google) and Madanmohan Rao (Mobile Monday Global), moderated by Latif Ladid (IPV6 Forum) and tasted with excellent discussion.

Friday evening we opened another nominee project exhibition at Kunsthaus Graz, then young people disappeared to Graz by night and elderly gentlemen like me went to hotel.

Saturday was the most important part of the festival. All day long we saw the nominee teams present their projects. This has always been the most giving content for me; after having seen all the entries already during the jury work and having fell in love with a number of them it is a hilarious experience to see the young talents showing them alive.

Saturday evening witnessed the most exiting part of the festival: The EUROPRIX Awards gala. The winners this year are:

• Online/Web projects: Donkeypedia, Netherlands
• Mobile applications: Showtime!, Austria
• Games: Swords & Soldiers, Netherlands
• Category Interactive Computer Graphics: Vuvox, Israel
• Content Tools & Interface Design: Flow-er, Israel
• Interactive installations: Akustisch, Switserland
• Digital Video & Animations: Desconstruct, a stereoscopic experiment, Germany

Overall winner: Swords & Soldiers, Netherlands

The Special Award for the project with the best business potential went to Moogo.com (Finland), and The Adventures of Tinger (Germany) got the Special Jury Mention for a game with a high level of interactive storytelling.

Donkeypedia also won the Nokia Ubimedia MindTrek Award in October.

More info about winners and nominees (europrix.org)
More about EUROPRIX in the School of Art and Media blog

During the festival it was also agreed that the cooperation between EUROPRIX and TAMK School of Art and Media will be continued in many ways. EUROPRIX will be present at our International Week and Tampere Art Factory Festival in May.

Pictured: The Moogo.com team (Finland) was awarded with The Best Business Potential Award, from left to right Antti Ala-Ilkka, Mikko Nurminen, Kimmo Pekari

Workshop in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands

The lecturers and the students of our partner Hanze University Academy of Popculture in northern Netherlands have given already two workshops at TAMK School of Art and Media.
Now it was finally time for the return visit. We are happy to present a photo gallery and below it the report, both made by Veera Niemi.

Wall art at Academie voor Popcultuur

Planning the installation

Installation "Brick by Brick"

Installation "Brick by Brick"

Jussi Autio, Satu Leskinen, Joonas Tikkanen, Veera Niemi and Jori Kemppi, part of the installation

We arrived in Leeuwarden Monday last week after travelling roughly 6 hours. We took lodgings at our hosts and got acquainted with the city.

On Tuesday our workshop started with brief introductions although most of us had already met in Tampere in May during the VJ-workshop arranged in connection to our Tampere Art Factory Festival.

We started reflecting the similarities and differences between Holland and Finland, searched exemplary materials on the Internet. Finally - inspired by our city tour the previous night - we ended up with the installation "Brick by Brick".

In the installation we would use materials filmed and recorded in advance in Finland and new stuff from Leeuwarden, additionally photos and music from both countries.

Our group members found easily the different roles: Jori mixed a mash up of the music, I made sound scapes, Jussi illuminated, Joonas and Satu joined their forces with Academy of Popculture students Richard, Gerrald and Willemijn for projections.

The installation was presented on Saturday on the Academy of Popculture open doors day. We got good feedback and lots of brilliant ideas for the future.

The participants of the workshop were School of Art and Media theatre and event audio-visual design students Satu Leskinen, Jussi Autio, Joonas Tikkanen and Jori Kemppi and sound design student Veera Niemi, Academy of Popculture students Richard Toepoel, Gerrald van der Kolk, Willemijn van Arnhem, Bea Grootscholten and Jamila Faber.

With tired but happy regards

Veera Niemi (Sound Design 06)

RetAiL meeting in Reykjavik

Marianna and Hanna visiting the Barnafossar waterfalls

For the past two years, TAMK has participated in project RetAiL – Retail Management for Adults in Lifelong Learning. Unfortunately all good things come to an end, and the project had its final meeting in Reykjavik in 6.-8.10.2009. The project is now almost complete and the next step is to start disseminating it and to offer the course created during the project for learners to use.

The product created during the project is a programme aimed at adults already working in the retailing sector, who need to improve their skills in retail management. The materials are meant for flexible, on-line studying and have been created especially by taking the adult learners’ learning strategies into account.

Barnafossar waterfalls

The partners in the project are Verzlunarskoli Islands (the coordinator, Iceland), Fræðslumiðstöð atvinnulífsins (Iceland) and North Highland College (Scotland).

http://leoretail.com/index.htm

Greetings from Bemidji!

Hello!


Three weeks of teaching at Bemidji State University (www.bemidjistate.edu) are now over. I have nice students: they are always present and do their homework. I’ve also attached a picture of them. On Friday, we learned about a Bio-Haus (http://www.waldseebiohaus.typepad.com/) in German. It is in a German village Waldesee, which forms a special part of the language school: Concordia Language Villages (www.concordialanguagevillages.org). They also have a Finnish Village. The weather here is sunny and warm, the autumn colors are beginning and we are looking forward to an extremely beautiful Indian summer.

I will still be here for 4 more weeks teaching. I teach each group for 50 minutes on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and for 1 hour 15 minutes on Tuesdays and Fridays. This makes up the 42 hours required!

Best wishes,
Claudia Daems

Postcard from EUROPRIX Jury, Salzburg

EUROPRIX Multimedia Awards is a contest in nine categories for young talents (under 30) who create digital contents. EUROPRIX has been arranged since 1998 and has had participants from 34 European countries.

The Jury, with 14 members this year, met from Thursday until today at ICNM (International Centre for New Media) headquarters in Salzburg, Austria. During four days the jury had to identify the nominees and winners of the categories and the overall winner + the best business potential special price winner among the 333 entries. It was a hard job, but finally we made it after hard but friendly debates and lots of votings.


TAMK has been very active in the EUROPRIX network. It has had a member in the jury since 1999. A lot of cooperation, joint conferences and workshops have been arranged as a part of MindTrek several years. The EUROPRIX gala was arranged during MindTrek in Tampere 1999.

The nominated EUROPRIX teams are invited to and celebrated at the EUROPRIX multimedia Festival in Graz November 12-14. The highlight of the festival is the EUROPRIX Gala. Parallell to the festival there will also be the Academic Network Conference for digital media lecturers from all over Europe.

EUROPRIX
EUROPRIX in the TAMK School of Art and Media blog

Photos: Debating and voting

Lep pozdrav iz Slovenije!

Greetings from Slovenia, Ljubljana. I have been here four months as an exchange student. For once I have had a good chance to enjoy a Real summer. It has been nearly +30 decrees almost every day. So you can gain a really nice tan.

I have paid attention that these middle Europeans like making out on a bench in the park. People are really hospitable, considerate and generous. And they all wear slippers inside the house.

Dober dan! = Good afternoon!
Nasvidenje! = Goodbye!
Hvala = Thank you
Glava me boli. = My head hurts.
Ti si umazan. = You are dirty.

You'll get a long well with these phrases.

regards: Merja Laine, visual arts-06This is a postcard from Merja Laine, Degree Programme in Fine Arts student. Merja has done her student exchange this spring in the Faculty of Fine Arts at University of Ljubljana.

One of the best of the good sides of TAMK UAS is encouraging everybody to internationalise. All students who have progressed properly with their studies, can do an international exchange period. It is most practical to choose one of the TAMK international partner institutions in 40 countries, but it is possible to make an exchange elsewhere as well.

University of Ljublajana
TAMK partner institutions

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)!

Hanna's greetings from Dublin

Hello and greetings from Dublin, Ireland. My name is Hanna Lind and this is my sixth year studying computer science. In this picture is my friend Silja and me standing outside our work place, Ballycoolin IBM. I work here as a customer service representative so basically I answer the phone and try to solve the customer's problem. More pictures and updates coming later.

TAMK business students have enjoyed their stay in Amsterdam

On a day three of TAMK delegation trip to the Netherlands Aura Loikkanen and Kirsi Tolvanen visited the HES School of Economics and Management which is part of Hogeschool van Amsterdam. During the visit Aura and Kirsi met the staff of the International Office and discussed about future cooperation between TAMK and HES. They were hosted by Judith Rijpstra and André Resing. Student exchange cooperation between TAMK and HES have worked well both ways for many years and in the future both parties wish to do also teacher and staff exchanges.

The HES building is modern and has good facilities for studying. There are many international students every year at HES and the students from abroad can study in English. The school is only about 15 minutes from the city centre of Amsterdam by train or metro.

During the meeting the TAMK delegation had a change to discuss with TAMK business students who are studying at the moment in HES. Henna Kuivalainen, Perttu Noppari and Juha-Pekka Ropo told that they have enjoyed their stay in Amsterdam and have learned a lot during their study exchange period abroad. Henna, Perttu and Juha-Pekka will return back to Finland by Christmas but all of them hope to come back to Amsterdam soon (at least for a holiday!).

There was also a change for Aura, Kirsi and the TAMK students to meet the three students from HES who will come to TAMK International Business programme for the spring term 2009. The HES students Renee, Michael and Frank are looking forward to study at TAMK and to have good time in Finland!

Story: Kirsi Tolvanen, International Coordinator and Aura Loikkanen, Development Director
Photo: TAMK student helped HES students to select studies from the TAMK International Business programme

Fine Arts Academie Minerva and Academie voor Popcultuur

On day two of TAMK University of Applied Sciences delegation's tour in Northern Holland Leena Mäkelä and Cai Melakoski, TAMK School of Art and Media and Kirsi Tolvanen, TAMK International Office, paid a visit to two art schools of Hanze University of Applied Sciences.

Most of Hanze University 18 schools are at the main campus area 5 kilometres from the centre of Groningen. Academie Minerva, which is the oldest of Hanze schools, lies in the heart of the city.

Academie Minerva is a classical fine arts school, where you can study painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, photography and media art. The resources are excellent, the students may use all traditional techniques and tools, but there is also an impressive set of digital instruments.

The atmosphere is truly international, so Minerva is a good choice for exchange studies. The Academie Minerva Frank Mohr Institut also offers MA programmes in Painting and Interactive Media.

The Academy of Popculture (Academie voor Popcultuur) is not in Groningen, but 40 minutes away in Leeuwarden, the capital of Friesland.

The Academy has a very modern approach to education. It is not based on traditional courses in various topics, but the skills are learned and knowledge acquired in hands on projects. The education is not about classes, it is about competences coaching the creative processes. You first create an unique idea, implement it, and sell it. The idea is to educate pop artists who are able to independently make their living. Business and revenue models are a central issue here unlike in most art schools.

The School of Art and Media has had exchange with both art schools, but after this visit the cooperation will be more intense. We are looking forward to see representatives of Akademie Minerva and Academie voor Popcultuur at our International Week and Tampere Art Factory in May 2009

Photos: Upper from Akademie Minerva, lower from Akademie voor Popcultuur

Academie Minerva
Academie voor Popcultuur

Tampere Art Factory

Work Shadowing at Hanze UAS Groningen

A delegation representing mostly the heads of degree programmes at TAMK University of Applied Sciences is on a visit to Hanzehogeschool Groningen, Hanze University of Applied Sciences in Groningen, Netherlands.

The purpose of the trip is to benchmark Hanze University and to develop closer links. There is already some staff and student exchanges between the institutions but there is also a strong will for further development of mobility and project cooperation. During the first day of the visit TAMK delegation got an introduction to the university and it's international policy. Also the applied research activities, the system of accreditation of prior learning and the educational development and assessment were part of the programme.

During the second day of the visit the delegation split up into two groups. One group visiting the institute of technology, the other group visiting Akademie Minerva and Akademia voor Popkultuur. Reports on these trips are published soon in this blog.

Photo, from left to right: Maija Tikkala, student at TAMK, doing her exchange programme at Hanze, Jarkko Lehtonen, Kirsi Tolvanen, Reijo Rasmus, Aura Loikkanen, Lammert Tiesinga (Hanze), Kaarlo Koivisto, Hannu Kauranen, and behind the camera Cai Melakoski.

Story: Kirsi Tolvanen, Cai Melakoski

Hanze University of Applied Sciences

Hello from Europrix, Graz!

The Operaatio Hurrikaani women team headed off to Graz, Austria 27.-30.11.2008 to present the project and TAMK University of Applied Sciences School of Art and Media.

The festival took place for the most part at Kunsthaus Graz, a modern art centre located in the heart of the city. Graz was full of Christmas atmosphere and we fell in love with it totally!

During the festival, the Kunsthaus was full of seminars and nominees from all across the Europe. All 23 Top Talent nominee projects presented their work on Saturday afternoon, and in the evening the winners from all categories were celebrated at the Multimedia Awards Gala 2009.

The overall winner of the Europrix 2009 was a French project called mü. It’s an fairytale based interactive multimedia device targeted to kindergarten kids. Pretty cool!

The winner of our category, Interactive TV was Kika & Bob from the Netherlands. We were even more happy to be nominees, and will still keep on working hard with Operaatio Hurrikaani. The production will continue and we will make the new series even better and bigger.

During the festival we heard that Tampere is almost the capital of Finland, at least when it comes to multimedia & culture. Maybe it has something to do with MindTrek? The new TAF festival’09 is also awaited.

So, stay tuned….

Greetings,
Riikka & Kaisa
aka The Hurricane Angels

Pictures:

Picture 1: The Exhibition of the projects took place in the Kunsthaus’s ”Needle”. Kaisa is checking out some cool project.
Picture 2: Riikka is testing some touch-screen technology by Amigos from Germany.
Picture 3: RoboVox has a little brother, RoboVoice who made it to Graz. The Robot speaks based on SMS messages you send to it. 8 meters heigh installation can be spotted for example at the marketplaces.

See all Europrix nominees
mü-project
Robovox

Operaatio Hurrikaani
Operaatio Hurrikaani (In English)

MindTrek
Tampere Art Factory (TAF)

Riikka Hiekkaniemi studies Media Production, Kaisa Hakala has completed interaction design studies at TAMK School of Art and Media. Both work with the Operaatio Hurrikaani, Riikka is assistant producer and Kaisa web-designer at YLE, the Finnish Broadcasting Company.

Academic Network Conference in Graz

The Academic Network of the European Academy of Digital Media (EADiM) had the annual conference in Graz, Austria, end of last week. This year the conference was titled "Design, Develop, Deliver - Multimedia and e-content trends".

The sessions covered actual topics like

• Smart Interfaces – intuitive use of augmented and mixed realities
• Mega trends in e-content – what do they mean for education?
• Learning and Teaching Methods – innovations that raise the learning curve
• Students and Social Networks
• Teaching Interactive Story Authoring

I made a presentation about Demola, the New innovation environment in ICT and Media education in Tampere. It was good to see many of the partners of TAMK School of Art and Media again, also making new friends. All participants of the conference were welcomed to attend our International Week and Tampere Art Factory in May.

The Conference was arranged at FH Joanneum, which also is a TAMK partner university. On day 3 the conference joined an parallel event, the EUROPRIX Multimedia Festival. You will find a story about that soon in this blog.

EADiM Academic Network
EUROPRIX

Demola
Tampere Art Factory

Photo: Advent was celebrated in snowy Graz on Saturday. Trams were free of charge, and people enjoyed the Christmas Market in the old town. The picture was taken from the Needle of Kunsthaus Graz, venue of the EUROPRIX Multimedia Festival

Visitors from Sapporo, Japan

Two visitors from Hokkaido University

TAMK hosted two professors from Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan last week. During the visit, student and staff mobility were discussed, as well as best practices and principles of practical training were shared.

Hokkaido University