Seminar Change of Media (SoSe 2008), Hypertext and database

From Mmswiki

Groupwork as part of the seminar "Change of media - change of educational settings" (SoSe 2008) University Hamburg
Lecturer: Christina Ferner
Group: Julia Lichte, Julian Vester, Stephanie Faase

“In a computerised society the world appears to us as an endless and unstructured collection of images, texts, and other data records” (Lev Manovich). In order to give this collection a structure we are - according to Manovich - modelling it as a database. This strategy helps to find an orientation in this unstructured overload of data.

The following questions shall be put into the centre of this topic:

• What implications do the changing ways of representing knowledge and information have on the handling of knowledge within educational institutions?
• How does the concept of knowledge change in a computerised, networked society?

After exploring this material you should be able to answer the following questions:

• What is hypertext?
• When was it introduced?

Contents 1 Structure 2 Final Report 2.1 Realization 2.2 Evaluation

Structure

Please follow these links to navigate through the student-module:

• Manovich - Database as Symbolic Form (Abstract)
• Seminar Change of Media (SoSe 2008), Binary Age, DatabaseGroup
• Seminar Change of Media (SoSe 2008), History, DatabaseGroup
• Seminar Change of Media (SoSe 2008), Persons, DatabaseGroup

Final Report

First of all we read the two given texts “Hypertextualität als neues Informationsprinzip” by Ursula Maier-Rabler/Erich Sutterlütti (Steffi, Julian) and “Database as a symbolic form” by Lev Manovich (Julia). These were discussed during the following session. After clarifying the technical terms (Julian) we came to the conclusion that we have to keep in mind that hypertext and database is not only possible on computer and internet but that it has always been existing.

Furthermore we decided to focus on the educational impact it has as well as the fact that it's important to experience it oneself to fully understand. Therefore we didn't want to give a normal presentation. Our first ideas were:

• Ring binder without beginning or end, but with a kind of bookmark with the title of the book (database)
• The user has to write down five terms he associates with e.g. the term “house” on one of the empty book pages. Afterwards he also has to note them on a webform to compare them with other entries.
• We create a flash movie in which three people of different cultural background are asked to imagine a house.
• The reader is told to go into a library and look for a special book, on a special page to simulate a database query.
• Instead of numbers the pages are marked with different colors. One link could be go on reading on a page in a happy coloration.
• Error or “under construction” page
• Dead end street - the user has to collect dandelion and brew a tea with it. The reason for doing so would become clear later. It is important to judge information critically meaning not to reproduce but to absorb.
• The result of a realtime query has to be compared with an older result of the same query that is written down in the book.

After balancing the pros and cons, we agreed on realizing it in a combination of selfmade cardboxes and webcontents.

Cardcontent:
Cards in different colors for relevant persons, history and binary age. Therefore we had to translate extracts from the German text into English. (Steffi)
Please follow this link to see Seminar Change of Media (SoSe 2008), Cardcontent, DatabaseGroup

Webcontent:

• Explanation film of database in form of a common craft style video. (Julia, Julian)
• Flash animation to show that everyone resorts to a different personal database in mind. (Julia, Julian)

Please follow the link to see Seminar Change of Media (SoSe 2008), Webcontent, DatabaseGroup

In every session we talked about further steps and discussed the process. The final steps of procedure were done together in our spare time. These were:

• selecting and checking the linkage of every single card
• creating the cards and cardboxes (thanks to the facility manager)
• editing the video
• transfering the cardcontent into the wiki (for our Finnish students)
• creating the wiki linkages

Realization

For the presentation we were in a different room to give an idea of what it could be like in a future classroom. Furthermore it was meant to show that no introduction is needed to engage the group autonomous and self organized in the topic. The only task we gave the group on the canvas was the unanswerable question “Who invented hypertext and when?”. The three cardboxes were standing in the room without further comments. Despite not beeing in the room, for possible questions we were available via skype and could follow the progress of the students due to a video stream.

Evaluation

For the evaluation we entered the room after a certain time. First of all we asked for the answer of the given question. At this point it became clear to the students that it wasn't possible to give an explicit answer. As expected they had vainly tried to find an answer on the web. Then they searched the cardboxes and found the links to the webcontent. The feedback showed that our basic idea came across.