bachelor-students's web-sites

The first six groups have finished their online papers/magazines. I'm very impressed with them as they had to struggle with a very difficult and unstable web-server, and three of the groups furthermore had to work on old and exhausted imacs. One of the groups still haven't had the chance to upload their last versions, as it has been close to impossible to get any connection to the web-server since afternoon. Another group has some trouble with their stylesheet. I'll fix that tomorrow morning. There are links to the students websites here (na01 - na06).

temporarily relieved

Karen released all the tensions in my back/shoulder/neck area by giving me a 3 minute massage. She's good! Assisting students with their web-pages means I don't sit in front of the computer a lot. I sit beside the computer. Makes my neck go ouch.

teaching

The bachelor-course I'm co-ordinating and teaching this autumn, Tekst, produksjon og analyse finally started last week. As part of the course, the students have to make online newspapers (in groups of 6-7) and a 3 minute movie (in groups of 10-11). There are about 85 students in total (which is 25 more than usual). They have 2 weeks on each assignment (starting either with 2 weeks of film or online newspapers before changing). For the next four weeks I'll be seeing a lot of students struggling over computers. I don't have to bother with their film-making problems though as Bob Foss and Karen Thommesen are in charge there. Any way: busy days. Luckily, when Arnte was in charge of the course, he made a great job developing a good course-structure. I have in fact copied his course from previous years (on which I have also assisted). It's great fun, and I learn a lot! I hope the students enjoy it too.

connotations

I read Barthes' Mythologies in 1997 when I started studying media and communication. Reading about the soldier on the cover of Paris Match in "Myth today", I could immediately visualise the black soldier giving a military salute. Barthes explains the connotative meaning of the picture as "France has a great empire; all her sons, without distinction of colour, serve faithfully under the French flag and there is no better answer to the critics of colonialism than this black's zeal in serving his supposed oppressors." I knew exactly what the soldier looked like. Hence, I was very surprised when I last year found the picture online. It was not at all how I imagined it.

sleep

I don't use the alarm on my cell phone to wake me up in the weekends. Maybe I should: I woke up 2.30 pm today. My back hinted that I had slept for too many hours. Some 13 hours is indeed way too much.

group interview

I talked to four girls about their use of various communication media this afternoon. It worked out fine. I haven't done any group-interviews before. I can cleraly see that there are pros and cons compared to individual interviews. Anyway, they preferred to do it together, which I thought was quite ok. I would definitely have liked to go into more details on a few questions, and I didn't get all the stories I would have got if I'd done interviews individually. Then agian, they knew each other well, and nobody felt inhibited by the presence of the others. The group setting was only supporting.

I also tried the reaction cards towards the end of the interview. And I was positively surprised. They did bring new elements to the discussion.

whooosh, days passing

So, what have I done today? Written e-mails and talked on the phone. There are a millon details left to sort out (although everything is of course under control) before the course (Tekst, produksjon og analyse) I'm co-ordinating and teaching this autumn starts on Monday. I've written 14 e-mails today, and I think that's a lot (way too much actually). Danah Boyd doesn't like e-mail. I like it because at least I can always go back and see what I've actually dealt with already and what I still need to do. I use the phone when it's more efficient, but maybe I'd like some sort of archiving-system for phone-calls as well? Btw, Danah's mail-trouble seems really frustrating.

nick cave

I never wrote about the beautiful Nick Cave-concert last Monday. I believe it's my first sit-down concert. Nick Cave played the piano, and was accompanied by bad seed-members Warren Ellis (violin), Martyn P. Casey (bass) and Jim Sclavunos (drums). It was rather dramatically performed and more or less what I imagined it would be: just perfect. Funny though, they played a few requests from the audience: "yeah, we can play that."

Now I will wait (forever) for Tom Waits to come and play for me.