FHEA Application

Posted on by geraldbkennedy

Introduction

As an early-career academic and Lecturer in Graphic and Web Design at CCCU I lead six modules across levels 4 to 6 on both the BA (Hons) in Graphic Design and the BA (Hons) in Web Design degree programmes.  I am a practicing designer and hold full membership of The Teaching Council of Ireland. The Graphic/Web Design programme is a practice-based discipline that marries creativity and technology to enable students with a broad interest in design to become technically creative job-ready professional practitioners. The values I strive to bring to HE is to facilitate the creation of knowledge and produce innovative critical thinkers that benefit society on a local and international level.  Since joining CCCU, our students regularly outperform the university and sector JAC employability by 9%. In 2016, the degree achieved an NSS student satisfaction rating of 100%.

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How to view a website’s source code

Posted on by geraldbkennedy

How to view a website’s source code:

1) Navigate to the website who’s source code you want to see e.g. http://www.geraldbkennedy.c1.biz/
2) Right click
3) Select “view page source”

How to see a website’s source code – when right-click is disabled!

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Systematic Training and Training Needs Identification and Analysis

Posted on by geraldbkennedy

  1. Introduction

In order for a Training Needs Analysis (TNA) to be efficient, it must always satisfy the needs of its participants.  “A needs assessment can pinpoint reasons for gaps in performance or identify new and future performance needs” (Gupta, 1999).  Needs assessment data can be gathered using various methods (e.g. rating scales, interviews, focus groups) and can be used to identify these gaps.  This paper aims to outline theoretical references to Systematic Training and Training Needs Identification and Analysis, specifically the following topics:

  • Systematic Training and Instructional System Design (ISD) Models.
  • Background to training needs in an organisational & individual context.
  • Issues surrounding TNA.
  • Models and approaches for conducting a TNA.
  • Tools/Techniques available when undertaking a TNA.

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Digital Methods/Theories of Digital Art

Posted on by geraldbkennedy

“Digital humanities is born of the encounter between traditional humanities and computational methods.”

As a society we need more art that takes digital tools and digital thinking and uses it to express and curate beauty, meaning and debate.  To continue to store it within communications and marketing downgrades its importance, and to continue to call it ‘digital’ art rather than just art belies the fact that as a society we have started to move on from classifying digital as different from everything else in our lives.  It may sound like stating the obvious to say that digital innovation in the arts must be about the art, but from a policy perspective this has just not been the case.  Of course, practice-led innovation is not appropriate for everyone, and those who do not want to use digital tools and digital thinking to create new work must be able to make that choice.  Perhaps the most relevant and comprehensive definition of art is that given by Johanna Drucker in her essay “Art” in Critical Terms for Media Studies:

“In the modern to contemporary period, the prevailing belief is that the distinctive identity of art derives from the unique ability of individual artists to give formal expression to imaginative thought.”

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Use of Digital Tools for Research/Personal Learning

Posted on by geraldbkennedy

We need research on the possible use of technology to create institutions that serve personal, creative, and autonomous interaction and the emergence of values that cannot be substantially controlled by technocrats…. And the role of the teacher would be no more to give lectures, but to direct and organise the traffic of data (partially providing it, partially using self produced and/or self-collected data by actively involved learners)
– Illich

How far does online learning depend on people buying into the ideas of Illich? It doesn’t. Within the haven of universities today, whether one likes it or not, learning is happening outside as well as inside the classrooms, and modern faculties of learning need to realise this and adapt with/for the students to maximise their learning experiences. Buying into the ideas of Illich and Robinson is irrelevant, learning online is happening regardless. However, I do believe that in order for online learning to be successful and beneficial (to both parties – institutes and students) that “people” (i.e. institutes of education) do in fact need to buy into the ideas of Illich and Robinson. Currently students are taking the responsibility for their own online learning and in order for it to be successful they will need what Illich refers to as a “guide”. Students’ making it up as they go along is not the way forward and I think all parties involved would agree that collaboration is what’s needed. Freire (2000) insisted that the function of education was to build on the language, experiences and skills of the “educates”, rather than imposing on them the culture of the “educators”.

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Open Source vs. Proprietary Software

Posted on by geraldbkennedy

The term open source refers to software whose source code, the medium in which programmers create and modify software, is freely available on the Internet; by contrast, the source code for proprietary commercial software is usually a closely guarded secret.

Whilst “Open Source” software is usually free it is not the same thing as “Free Software”. The fundamental difference between the two is in their values, their ways of looking at the world. For the Open Source movement, the issue of whether software should be open source is a practical question, not an ethical one. “Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement.”

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Why does racism exist?

Posted on by geraldbkennedy

This post intends to look at the discourse of otherness from the perspectives of racism.

Each adult has their own perspective of themselves and their surroundings, a perspective into which is blended a lot of unexamined prejudice, self-esteem, and popular mythology. There is little doubt that the dialect in which we write or speak supports and perpetuates those perspectives. This poses the question, what does it mean for something or someone to be categorised as the other?

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The Difference between the Internet and the World Wide Web

Posted on by geraldbkennedy

How many times have you used the internet? How times have you surfed the web? Did you know that the internet and the web are not the same thing?

Don’t worry, many people use the terms Internet and World Wide Web (aka. the Web) interchangeably, but in fact the two terms are not synonymous, and this usage is technically incorrect. The Internet and the Web are two separate things.

What most of us think of as the Internet—Google, eBay, and all the rest of it—is actually the World Wide Web. The Internet is the underlying telecommunication network that makes the Web possible.

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Impact of Digital Content on Learning

Posted on by geraldbkennedy

For 500 years the book’s historical role in learning has been based on the primacy of text over the visual, but modern research shows that we learn faster through the use of visual media utilised in learning.  Now the webpage, a pretender, as it is not a page at all, but a dynamic, contextual, linking environment that is more like a springboard for a message, has arrived.  And that’s not all.

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Portraits – A Salute To My Colleagues

Posted on by geraldbkennedy

A brief look at the key issues or concepts we read about/discussed in “The History and Theory of Digital Art” class:

The main concept I took from this class is that collaboration is essential to succeed. Our world is heaving with remarkably talented people, each with their own diverse strengths and belief systems. We all have limitations, but when we combine our abilities we’re limitless; we are the dream team! At the beginning of the module Mike asked us, “What is the most important element for learning?” Most, if not all of us, stated people. Interacting with people is vital to our capabilities to learn and develop. Throughout this class I learned from people, not assignments or textbooks. My opinions were questioned, my beliefs were questioned, and my values were questioned. I learned that I was wrong, but that I was also equally right. We all were. There is no right or wrong answer. We are all trying to discover our way through this life and there is no user manual. For many of us, myself included, we do this through self-expression. Art is, for me, what distinguishes us from animals. This innate ability, need almost, to express ourselves is unique to humans. My project is an acknowledgment that my classmates* are the key issue to this semester.

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