Et af aldringsforskningens mere komplicerede emner er kompetence og kreativitet set i et livsperspektiv. Hvornår kan man “toppe” – og inden for hvad? Bibeholdes kreativiteten og energien til at tænke nyt gennem hele livet? Og hvad med udviklingen af modenhed og de egenskaber der beskrives med aldringens plusord?
Center for Sund Aldring afholder en debatdag om emnet:
Tirsdag 8. oktober 2013, kl. 9 – 17.
Medicinsk Museion, Bredgade 62, 1260 København K
Formålet med dagen er, at:
Debatdagen er delt i en ’unkonference’ om formiddagen, hvor målgruppen er nuværende og kommende forskere inden og udenfor ældreforskningen, og andre fra Akademia med særlig interessere i forskerens livskarriere. Om eftermiddagen et symposium som er åbent for alle interesserede.
Program
09.00 – 12.00 Unconference
Moderator: Jesper Jørgensen
Formålet med ’unconferencen’ er, at skabe et uformelt møde mellem aktive forskere på tværs af fag med interesse i forskerens livskarriere og forskere med livserfaring fra videnskabeligt arbejde. Dette i et åbent forum hvor ideer og kommende projekter kan præsenteres og diskuteres, nye netværk udenfor den etablerede gerontologiske forskning kan opstå og som en perspektivering af eftermiddagens symposium. Eftermiddagens oplægsholdere inviteres som deltagere i unconferencen. Unconferencen er en open source symposiemodel som organiseres og styres af deltagerne selv, som et alternativ til det konventionelle symposium med forberedte præsentationer og modereret panel debat.
Ved tilmelding til unconferencen får kommende deltagere et link til hjemmeside hvor deltagerne kan uploade dokumenter, billeder, deltage i diskussion og forberede diskussioner på unconferencen.
12.00 – 13.00 Frokost for deltagere i unconferencen
13.00 – 17.00 Symposium
Moderator: Henning Kirk
13.00 – 13.05 Velkomst /Carsten Hendriksen, lektor, overlæge, dr. med. KU
13.05 – 13.30 Forsker- og livskarriere i historisk lys /Henning Kirk, aldringsforsker, dr.med.
13.30 – 13.55 Forskerens livsløb – den eksistentielle dimension. Refleksioner med udgangspunkt i nobelprismodtageren Ragnar Granits selvrefleksioner /Thomas Söderqvist, professor, dr.phil.KU
13.55 – 14.20 Kognition og forsker-livskarriere /Erik Lykke Mortensen, professor KU
14.20 – 14.40 Kaffe
14.40 – 15.05 Niels Bohr, forskning og kompleksitet /Finn Aaserud, Ph.D.,Niels Bohr Arkivet, KU
15.05 – 15.30 Ungdomsdyrkelse og aldersfascisme i Akademia/Jesper Jørgensen, ekstern lektor, RUC
15.30 – 15.55 Akademiske livsforløb: Udfordrede karriereveje i videnssamfundet /Bjarke Oxlund, ph.d., postdoc, KU
15.55 – 16.20 Organisation af forskning og forskere i et livsperspektiv /Christian Nissen, cand.scient. & phil. Adjungeret professor CBS
16.20 – 16.55 Paneldebat med oplægsholdere
16.55 – 17.00 Afslutning /Carsten Hendriksen
Registrering
Deltagelse i unconference og symposium er gratis. Deltagelse i begge afdelinger kræver forudgående tilmelding. Unkonferencen foregår på dansk/engelsk og symposiet på dansk.
Tilmeldingsfristen er 1. oktober kl. 12:00
Tilmeld dig unconference og/eller symposiet her.
Featured image: Ernst Mayr (1904-2005), one of the leading evolutionary biologists in the 20th century, published his last book (What Makes Biology Unique? Cambridge University Press, 2004) at the age of 99!
(courtesy: http://www.mrines.com/Miscellaneous/OdeDay/Lunch/Page1.htm)
How do you create a larger-than-life dress out of pills? This short film shows artist Susie Freeman of Pharmacopoeia doing just that. Knitting on her old industrial machine, comparing pill fabrics, and putting them on the dress base.
Together with Dr. Liz Lee she has weaved a dress made of ten years of prescription pills for two women, one from Denmark, the other from the UK, with metabolic syndrome, i.e., the combination of, among other diseases, type-2 diabetes, hypertension, and obesity.
The artwork tries to visualize and provoke our understanding of life with this complex cluster of metabolic diseases, using the pill as a material trace and symbol of the immense impact such a diagnosis has on the everyday life of the patient.
From October 11th the finished artwork will on display in the entrance hall of Medical Museion.
Read more about Pharmacopoeia and the pill dress here.
So this piece: Who comes first, your partner or your kids? did the rounds yesterday. Go read it if you haven’t then come back…
I was struck by the negative comments to the piece – and also the fact that people clearly seem to think this is an OUTRAGEOUS thing to say. Personally, I read it and thought “er, yeah, that’s absolutely right. Of course it is. How could you possibly argue otherwise..?”
Looking back at 8 years of parenting we’ve always (not with any particular grand plan) done three things that seem to fit what Marshall says:
1) always said a firm and absolute no (apart from moments of illness where it was absolutely necessary and those first few weeks of non-sleep hell when – frankly – anything goes) to having kids in our bed.
2) Had a solid evening / bedtime routine back to very early on which still maintains to this day – thereby giving us “adult time” after the youth are in bed. No pissing about with fussing “I don’t want to go to bed” kids, no “oo, go to bed when you want” (IMO: wishy-washy bollocks that confuses the fuck out of both adults and kids alike), but a known, solid time when The World is No Longer For The Children. I should say BTW that now ours are 8 and 6 we can adapt this bed-time should we fancy a family night at the boozer or whatever – and the boys are very happy now being out and about until late every so often – but it’s only IMO by having a routine that you can break it once in a while…
3) Always been very open in our affection for each other and – more importantly – our solidarity as a married, coherent, loving unit. We spend a lot of time being supportive of each other’s parenting rather than combatative – I think we both know how hard the other works both in work (money-earning) terms and in family work. (To see the opposite of how I think this works, try reading that bullshit article recently about money being the last taboo in a relationship – there you’ll find a childish, gnarly, nit-picky way of being in a relationship which is wholly NOT how this should go if you want stuff to last IMO..)
We have – I know – been pretty lucky. We’ve got kids who (now) sleep like logs every night. They don’t come and find us in the middle of the night. They don’t fuss about bed-time. I really – REALLY – feel for people who have problems with this stuff. But….I also believe that parents are quite often walked all over by their kids, and this can quickly become a vicious circle: needy kids that always get what they want (“I won’t eat vegetables! I won’t sleep!” – er, yeah you will if you’re hungry and tired enough…) end up taking and taking – usually at the expense of increasingly tired and increasingly unable-to-cope parents – who inevitably, obviously, end up giving the kids what they want. Getting kids to eat non-crap, or into a solid sleep routine, or liking reading, or not spending 24 hours a day looking at a screen or..whatever – is bastard hard work – but you persevere, and persevere and persevere. And eventually it works.
The main thing for me, though, is this: If your solid central unit of family – (in our, traditional case, the man and woman who started it all..) – falls apart, then so does everything else. You and your partner are the hub of the whole thing, the central bit that everything else revolves around. This doesn’t mean (OBVIOUSLY – I hope) that you don’t love your children more than anything on earth – but if you don’t give yourselves time to consolidate, be together, talk about what’s working and what isn’t, be intimate, drink wine – whatever – then it’s gonna break. This central relationship needs as much – probably more – help to maintain than the relationship with the kids.
Surely.
Dear Nico,
Every month I sit down to write these missives to you, the thought of finishing one seems more ridiculous. A month is forever. Each month is fuller than the last. These snippets capture a few moments of your world… which may be appropriate, actually, since I only get glimpses of what’s really going on for you.
It’s wild to think about how little you’ll remember of your early life. These windmill-tilting newsletters are better than nothing.
You continue to insist on calling all cats “Aki,” all fans “tah,” and milk “mama”—despite knowing full well the correct words. You seem to actively enjoy having your own language that is nonetheless understood by others.
You’ve learned to blow your nose, which is a huge deal, because goodbye the hated nose-sucker and hello agency.
True to toddler form, you’re full of no. Control over your own body is super important: even if you got yourself into a clearly uncomfortable position while sleeping in the big bed, you’re damn well going to get yourself out of it. Any physical help is met by betrayed wailing. This gets tricky when you’re too sleepy to fix a situation yourself.
Luckily for the adults involved, you’re also full of yeah. It means that we can mostly trust the no. More importantly, I think, it means that you trust us to believe what you say. I hope this continues.
Another new discovery: the concept of dirty. The toilet is a potty, and it’s dirty, so you shouldn’t play with it. Toilet “training” is nearing—I have no investment in its timing, but it’s fascinating to watch interests get “turned on” more or less in the sequence that they do for billions of other humans. DNA is crazy. Socialization is crazy. Put them together, and why in the world didn’t I go into early childhood development? Humans are fascinating.
(Remind me to tell you why I did go into my field. It has to do with stories, and humans being fascinating.)
Favorite games these days include hide-and-seek, in which you hide inside a curtain; figuring out the connecting construction blocks; a couple of pretty great tablet games we’ve found; and books. I can’t possibly tell you how much I love that you love books, so instead I try to show you by always agreeing to read one (or three) whenever possible. Anything by Sandra Boynton is automatically the best, but you’ve been branching out.
One of your caretakers put a temporary tattoo of a butterfly on your arm a couple of weeks ago. It made a huge impression. You kept showing it to everyone: “TA-toh!” Now, every time you see a butterfly in a book, you get all excited: “TA-toh!”
Big feelings and tears all over the place, not always predictable, and sometimes inconsolable. On the other hand, you love belly buttons and find mine comforting.
“Adaa!” for “all done!” is pretty freakin’ adorable.
You totally give kisses. To me, to other people, to stuffed toys. To books.
We have impromptu dance parties.
Onward.
Love,
-Mama
p.s. Pix as usual, and three new videos.
“History has been and remains a book-based discipline…” This phrase, that begins the third paragraph of the recent statement by the American Historical Association on dissertation embargoes, has been rattling around in my head for weeks, like that annoying song from high school you just can’t get out of your head.
If you followed the controversy that ensued after the AHA issued this statement [search on "#ahagate" for more], you know that much of the often heated discussion centered on two issues: was it a bad idea for recent PhDs to embargoe their dissertations, and what did the AHA’s position on the issue say about the Association’s position on open access more generally?
Both of those topics have now been pretty well beaten to death in the blogo- and twittersphere, so I’ve been at a loss to explain why that phrase won’t get the heck out of my head. Fortunately, I’m teaching my Clio Wired grad seminar, starting tonight, so I had to focus hard on all things digital history over the past couple of weeks and in that focusing I finally figured out what my problem was. (I know you’re relieved.)
You see, regardless of what we might think about open access, or dissertation embargoes, or any of the other issues that came up in the ahagate conversation this summer, if we accept that history has been and remains a book-based discipline, then we are accepting that the book is the standard by which historians should be judged for such things as jobs, promotion, tenure, raises, etc. For our professional association to make such a bold defense of the book as the gold standard is more than just counter productive, it’s really out of touch with the realities of the history job market our MA and PhD grads find themselves in.
Don’t get me wrong. I love books. Really love books. Don’t believe me? Come to my office and take a gander at the overflowing shelves. But my bookophilia doesn’t extend to my definition of what it means to be a historian in 2013. And, yes, I know the AHA doesn’t ignore the fact that lots of historians do lots of things that never involve publishing a book or even a peer reviewed article. But still.
“History has been and remains a book-based discipline…” Saying this so directly is to take a position that the book is the goal, the standard by which historians are to be measured. If that is so, those historians who choose to build their careers around museum curation, or website development, or public history, or any number of “altac” career paths just don’t quite measure up to the book (gold) standard promoted by our professional association.
And that just makes me sad. Sad for everyone who is a historian and never publishes a book and so is somehow not quite up to snuff, and sad for the AHA, because, well, emphasizing the bookishness of our discipline is just so 1990.
’The Data Body on the Dissection Table’ took place at Medical Museion on June 4th. The video recordings of the event talks are now online! See links below.
The collection of body data is a growing field. How do we grab hold of this data? How do we make sense of it and communicate it to others? See and hear Professor Albert-László Barabási, Professor and Artist François-Joseph Lapointe, Associate Professor Annamaria Carusi, and Artist and Research Director Jamie Allen talk about how contemporary artists and designers give our ‘data body’ material form through images, sound, and touch. What kind of tools are complex networks science proposing, and what kind of body do they reveal?
‘The Data Body on the Dissection Table’ was co-organised by Medical Museion and Leonardo/OLATS
Click here to read more about the event.
The video talks:
Metagenomic Art: A Family Portrait by Professor and Artist François-Joseph Lapointe
Getting Hold of the Digital Patient by Associate Professor Annamaria Carusi
Networkology, Thinking in Network Terms by Professor Albert-László Barabási
Our Data Doppelgängers. What creative practice with and from data reflects and reveals by Artist and Research Director Jamie Allen
Click here for video overview
About six months ago, I was asked by the executive director of a prestigious but somewhat hidebound—I guess “venerable” would be the word—cultural heritage institution to join the next meeting of the board and provide an assessment of the organization’s digital programs. I was told not to pull any punches. This is what I said.
I’m happy to say that, aside from a few chilly looks (mainly from the staff members, rather than the board members, in the room), my no-holds-barred advice was graciously received. Time will tell if it was well received.
I am currently in the process of formulating some thoughts on objects in collections (read more here and here) which I hope will coalesce into a proposal for an object-oriented exhibition. While thinking and reading about what happens when objects are put in exhibitions, I came across a useful concept from film theory: The Kuleshov Effect.
The Kuleshov Effect is a well-documented and often referenced concept in film-making, accredited to the Soviet film editor Lev Kuleshov. During the 1920s Kuleshov made a film showing an actor, edited together with a plate of soup, a dead woman, and a woman on a recliner. Supposedly, audiences would praise the acting, noting the subtle and minute shifts in the actor’s expressions showing hunger, grief, or lust. In reality, Kuleshov re-used the same clip of the expressionless actor – the effects were created entirely by the juxtaposition of images. This is what the footage looked like:
Here is Alfred Hitchcock explaining the effect, interestingly referring to it as ‘pure cinematics, the assembly of film’:
Kuleshov had laid the ground for Soviet montage cinema, which culminated most famously in Sergei Eisenstein’s The Battleship Potemkin (watch it here, it still carries a visual punch few movies can match – and his careful attention to objects makes it essential viewing for exhibition designers, me thinks). The Kuleshov Effect speaks to the fundamental inseparability of experience and the importance of context, not just in film making where meanings are created out of the editing of images but also in exhibitions where something similar happens with the placement of objects.
Good exhibition design capitalizes on the potential effects objects have on each other. This cannot be parsed out and made into a formula for successful object placement, rather it is a matter of sensibility towards the effects of objects that develops by looking at a lot of objects and thinking about them as objects, and not just as tools with which to lay out whatever story you have in mind. Good object placement brings the objects to our attention in unexpected ways, inviting both presence and meaning responses – we feel something when we look at the juxtaposed objects and that affective response makes us want to delve deeper into what is happening in the specific situation.
The worst kinds of exhibitions to me are those that display no sensibility towards the complex potential effects of objects. This most often happens when all the energy is put into an overarching representational frame which drowns out the objects, making them lifeless props for a story already in place. It also happens when objects are displayed without thought to their effects on one another and their juxtaposition in the display space – often they are laid out on flat surfaces inviting a flattened viewing, their liveliness sucked out of them.
What I would like for an object-oriented exhibition to do is to bring the complex and myriad ways in which we experience objects to the surface – sure, there are plenty of stories in things but there are also multitudes of things in stories, and they exert their own gravitational pressures and pulls on them. Displaying the lively qualities of objects is a way to bring those pressures and pulls into the exhibition space. Paraphrasing Hitchcock, something that builds upon a ‘pure exhibition making, the assembly of objects’.
However outré, none of the brands at this month’s fashion fair have what we will have soon: A dress made entirely out of pills woven into fine, black fabric. Spectacular and (thought) provoking, the art work tries to visualize the cluster of metabolic diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular conditions (often referred to as ‘metabolic syndrome’), as well as related complications like depression and pain, that is one of the great health problems of our time.
In the art work, the 10 year medical records of two women living with chronic metabolic diseases, come together to form one larger-than-life pill dress. When the summer was at its hottest, Bente and I went to London to talk to the two women behind the dress: Dr. Liz Lee and artist Susie Freeman of Pharmacopoeia.
At her consultation in Bristol, Liz introduced us to her patient Jaz, who has ‘donated’ her medical record to form part of the basis for the artwork. The discussion quickly became very open and personal. Because these metabolic diseases are both dependent on genetic predispositions as well as personal life style, any one of us who have had diabetes in the family or are a little bigger around the waist (not even a lot, < 80 cm. for women) might be at risk. This is why it is so important to raise awareness about in a non-didactic, personal and visual way, and that is just what art can do.
Next day we went to Susie’s lovely but sizzling hot Notting Hill studio. Dominating the room was the huge, black dress base, not yet covered in its pill fabric. Susie demonstrated her beautiful old industrial loom, which she has readjusted to knit fabric with build-in pockets for the thousands of little pills. She showed us sketches and fabric samples with different pills and packings, and how the weight, colour and shine of the pills lends the black fabric a different feel and texture.
I will upload a short teaser film of the dress ‘in the making’ as soon as I’ve finished editing it, so you can get an idea of the textuality (and size!) of the art work. The dress itself will be installed in our entrance hall, opening on this year’s Culture Night, October 11th.
I recently received a copy of Numbersense by Kaiser Fung for review. Fung is the author of a blog I have a lot of respect for : Junk Charts. The current post at the top of Junk Charts is about spider charts, and I knew before reading it that Kaiser would be explaining, kindly, why these are nonsense (I would add, on the topic, that one of the real problems with these graphics is that there is an implied meaning for the area of the chart (in terms of the polygon) and that area is not independent of the order of dimensions around the centre of the diagram).
I really like the idea of the concept of NUMBERSENSE. It is what it sounds like - a set of intuitive behaviours, practices, etc. that amount to common sense for data analysts.
I also really like one of Fung's core opinions regarding 'big data' - that more data is an invitation for more and more analyses which result in an explosion of interpretations and a multiplicity of incorrect conclusions.
The book is structured essentially around a small number of case studies, or studies of characteristic areas where numerical, statistical and probabilistic analytics are employed (often in areas that we unknowingly interact with on a daily basis in our regular lives). This structure is, in my mind, part of the weakness of the book. While reference is made to NUMBERSENSE at various stages, the examples highlight more the general theme of 'don't trust everything you read in the papers' rather than a specific structured thesis. For example, the book could have enumerated, illustrated and re-enforced a small set of common misconceptions regarding statistical inference; or it could have catalogued a small number of misleading sampling scenarios. Rather, it stays more at the case study story telling level.
It concludes with a rather odd chapter detailing the trials and tribulations of Kaiser as he works through some technical details while analysing some data. This fails to provide a clean summary or visualization of the big picture.
Given the quality of communication on his blog, my expectations were high for this book, but I came away feeling that it was perhaps poorly edited and not as impactful as the topic could have been. I already do, and will continue to, evangelize NUMBERSENSE to my team, but would like to do so with a more potent reference.
And on an unrelated note - the title of the book strongly reminded me of that most challenging game show 'Numberwang' which I include here for your enjoyment:
Hi everyone:
Session proposals for the American Association of Museums’ Annual Conference in Seattle (May 18-21, 2014) are due August 26th. Get them in now!
Every year, the Media & Technology Professional Network looks for people to teach detailed, often hands-on workshops called Tech Tutorials. These beginner and intermediate workshops are designed to be accessible and intimate, a place where attendees can ask specific questions and get some hands on experience. We’re submitting proposed Tech Tutorials for the following topics and we’re looking for teachers for all of them. If you’re coming to AAM in Seattle (May 18-21, 2014), please consider becoming a mentor! Drop me, Susan, or Alex a line if you’re interested in teaching or facilitating (not all of the session descriptions are developed yet, which is why the list looks the way it does. The presenter[s] will have the opportunity to help craft the description):
1. Tech Tutorial: Getting Started with Social Media – Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and Google+ (Beginning level)
Have you never used Twitter? Not sure what a hashtag is? Not know how to ‘Like’ or ‘+1” something? Never even heard of Tumbr? Then this tutorial is for you. Learn how these social media platforms work, why they exist, and how museums are using them. Y ou’ll come away with information to help you decide if using these platforms makes sense for your institution. The tutorial is limited to 20 people so participants can ask questions, and share their stories. This is a beginner-level tutorial, designed for those with little to no social media experience.
2. Tech Tutorial: Deepening Engagement with Social Media (Advanced level)
Gain insight on how to build upon your existing social media presence. This tutorial will explore tactics for developing a comprehensive social media strategy that works in concert with your institution’s overall communications and engagement strategies. We’ll cover advanced features of various social media platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr; discuss which platforms work best for different types of projects; and explore ways to create connections to your blog. The tutorial is limited to 20 people so participants can ask questions, and share their stories. This is an advanced-level tutorial. Participants should be familiar with managing and using social media platforms.
3. Tech Tutorial: Principles of Effective Video (Beginner level)
Understand the basic steps in creating video, including audio, cameras, and editing systems. You’ll come away with a list of the equipment you’ll need, and tips about basic approaches to creating successful video. This is a beginner-level tutorial, designed for those with little to no video production experience.
4. Tech Tutorial: Video Crit Room (Advanced)
Bring your video projects to this tutorial and get constructive feedback from your peers. This is an advanced-level tutorial, designed for those who understand the basics of video production.
5. Tech Tutorial: Podcasting – Is anyone still listening? (Beginner-Intermediate)
Podcasting may seem very 2005, but many museums and non-profits are producing successful podcast series. Audio production is less expensive and can require much fewer resources than video production. Learn the basics of podcasting, find out who is using podcasts in the field, and understand out if podcasting may be the right approach for your museum.
6. Tech Tutorial: Does my museum need a blog? (Beginner)
We’ll show you how to get started. Understand how to plan for and implement a blog using WordPress. Employ advanced techniques to build your blog into a valuable, sustainable communication tool to engage your online audience.
7. Tech Tutorial: Google Analytics (Beginner)
8. Tech Tutorial: User Testing on a Shoestring (Beginner)
9. Tech Tutorial: Digital Copyright and Privacy (Beginner)
10. Strategy: What’s the best tool for my message? Digital strategy for projects (Advanced)
11. Tech Tutorial: Basics of Mobile Websites (Advanced)
12. Strategy: Drupal or WordPress? Content Management Systems (Advanced)
13. Tech Tutorial: Organize and Manage Your Digital Assets (Beginner) – I (Perian) have volunteered to talk on this one. I’d like someone familiar with managing video and audio to co-present.
I know a lot of technologists don’t take the time to go to AAM, as it’s for a more general audience, and it’s a frequent complaint that we don’t get much out of AAM. But the registrars, curators, directors, and education staff really need people like us to help them make sense of their technology projects. It’s up to us to help bring the rest of the field forward, to ensure that we’re able to deploy technology projects effectively, and get support from other non-techy staff. Please consider lending your voice and expertise and come to AAM.
Thanks everyone,
Perian Sully
Program Chair, Media & Technology Professional Network
Susan Edwards & Alex Lawson
Tech Tutorial Co-Chairs, Media & Technology Professional Network
P.S. On another note, I’m noticing a lot of session proposals on the AAM website are missing their presenter bios in the proposal. That information is important for us on the National Program Committee to know about the diversity and qualifications of the presenters. When submitting your proposal, please make that information available to us. It makes it more likely your proposal will be approved. Thanks!
I am really not a climate expert or anything close but I am a fan of the ScienceOnline non-conference format, so I thought I’d just promote a bit the ScienceOnline Climate which runs today and tomorrow (15-16 August 2013) in Washington DC, USA.
ScienceOnline is about science communication using social media and other new media to communicate research and science understood in its broadest term. It’s mission is to cultivate the ways science is conducted, shared, and communicated online. It brings together a diverse group of researchers, science writers, artists, programmers, and educators who conduct or communicate science online. The goal is better science communication within the science community, with the public, and with policymakers.
I have only had the opportunity to participate in an ScienceOnline event in-person once, but have followed more online, and I must say I love the concept. ScienceOnline Climate narrows down the focus of science communication to looking at communication of climate related research. According to the planners the event ”will explore the intersection of climate science, communication, and the web. Complex scientific concepts will be interwoven with creative communications approaches through the connective power of the internet. It will be an energizing experience for scientists, journalists, artists, policymakers, and attendees from all nodes of the climate communications ecosystem.”
Some sessions will be live-streamed and there will be lots of tweeting too on the hashtag #scioclimate. Take a look at the schedule for the conference to see if anything is of interest to you.
I need to update my business card with a new title. I am now a certified ‘Ultimate Expert’ in the use of social media in Medicine. This is a title I have achieved after completing the final module of the free online Social MEDia Course offered by Webicina.coma or more specifically by Bertalan Mesko, MD, PhD, a self-declared Medical Futurist, and founder of Webicina.com
The course is a spin-off of a university course offered to medical and public health students at the University of Debrecen, Hungary since 2008. Bertalan Mesko’s created the course as a response to the lack of digital literacy among doctors:
“Social media are changing how medicine is practiced and healthcare is delivered. Patients, doctors, communication or even time management, everything is changing, except one thing: medical education.”
After having run successfully for a few years and in response to requests from people abroad to travel to Hungary to follow the course, Bertalan decided to develop an online version of the course – making use of all that social media offer and continue his quest to change the attitude of future doctors and their knowledge about online issues and ultimately revolutionize medical education at a global level.
Prezis, YouTube and a lack of scientific knowledge
The course is organized in 16 different modules all followed by a test, which you have to pass in order to achieve the badge (I felt a bit like a girl scout getting labels to put on my uniform). Each module consists of a Prezi, which systematically takes you through all corners of the topic. Pictures, YouTube videos, take home messages etc. makes the courses dynamic and fun, but at times also a bit commercial and sometimes a tending towards being too unscientific, especially for a university course I miss more solid data. The length of each course varies between one and two hours.
As with any other course, some modules work better than others, probably partly due to one’s interests and baseline knowledge level. I have taken the course over a long period of time (I think 6 months), so I can’t really recall all modules or which ones functioned better than others. Working myself with social media and public health I felt I had to complete the course and get the Ultimate Expert certification, but the modules can quite easily be taken on an individual basis according to one’s needs and interests. Actually, I think my recommendation would be to take the course on a topic by topic basis without aiming to go through all 16 modules unless you get totally hooked on the format. If one aims to take the full course I’d probably spread it over a few weeks or even months taking a module now and again. Going through too many Prezis in a day might make you a bit overwhelmed and the commercial side of the module gets a little too dominant. Besides, if you want to really learning something, you need not just take each module but afterwards experience using Twitter, trying out the possibilities of Wikipedia, engage in medical communities etc. In other words do it yourself.
More medicine than public health
Although the course is meant also to target public health students it is my impression that the primary audience is medical students and doctors. This doesn’t make the course irrelevant to public health students/professionals or other non-medical-but-health-related professionals, but it just means that you do not always feel the content that relevant to you. There is a lot of focus on doctors-patients relationships and apps relevant for medical doctors etc. Relevant stuff but mostly to doctors.
Especially to new-comers to social media (for other than private purposes) the course provides a good baseline introduction to how Twitter works; what the idea behind Wikipedia is and how you can use it; and how social media opens up for entering new communities and crowd-source at a much larger scale. Social media as a tool for communications, finding resources etc. also makes some of the modules relevant to researchers in general.
Take notes!
As mentioned, each module is followed by a test containing 25 multiple choice questions, of which you have to answer at least 23 correctly to pass. For each questions you have 30 seconds to respond. The questions relate very closely to the Prezi and I can strongly recommended taking good notes. The test is really meant to test that you watched the whole Prezi and is not so much a test of what you actually learned. Questions like “What year was Google launched?” and “Who is the founder of the search engine Duckduckgo?” really requires good note-taking. Many questions are framed negatively, e.g. “‘Which is not a suggestion to avoid violating HIPAA?” which requires a lot of (unnecessary?) sentence analysis and can stress you out a bit, resulting in answering incorrectly to questions you actually do know the answers to. To my taste the tests are a bit too useless and doesn’t really add anything to your own learning. But I guess the objective has been to test that you paid attention throughout the Prezi and not that you actually learned anything (which is assumed you did if you know the Prezi by hard) or can apply what you learned. The tests (and Prezis) could use a good editing by an English native speaker, as it in many places is clear that it was developed by a non-native-English-speaker. For one module its okay, but if you take too many in a row you get a bit annoyed.
Interactive
In the spirit of social media the course is of course interactive and you are encouraged to comment and give suggestions for improvements. The response rate to comments is impressive and you have a feeling that your comments are taken seriously. You can also share your achievements (the badges you earn after passing each test) on Facebook and other social media and thus help spread the word not only about the course but in a way also promote the use of social media in medicine.
More academia, revised tests and further studies
All in all the course is interesting, entertaining and an impressive amount of work has been put into developing it. I have learned a lot of good tips, but perhaps because my baseline knowledge of social media is above the average it wasn’t a big eye-opener to me. Being based on a university course, I would have expected a bit of a stronger academic basis of course. It heavily relies on YouTube videos, TEDtalks and lots of popular data. If I was to recommend anything for the future development of the course it would be to put a bit more ‘academic’ material in the modules. If not in the Prezis then perhaps as an additional recommended readings list. Also a test that feels more relevant to the student might be helpful and some tips on how to get started, or continue exploring the topic after each module might be a good idea.
I have several times thought about putting together a list of resources about social media for science communication, that would be handy to refer others to and useful for myself. I figured it should include published literature and blog posts about social media for science communication and guides on how to use it. But with new things published almost every day and life in general it has never really happened.
BUT luckily someone else have been working on such a database, focusing mainly on Twitter! Lunched just a few days ago Tweet your Science sets out to diffuse scientists’ hesitation of getting on board social media by providing a guide, reviews, evidence and a database of scientists who are already on Twitter - everything the average scientist needs to start tweeting their science!
The person behind the website is Kimberley Collins who has created it as part of her Master’s in Science Communication at the University of Otago, New Zealand.
The website is extremely simple. Focus has thus far definitely been on content and not layout, and a first glance can send you off a bit confused. It’s not always clear where to click to get to the database, guideline or resources and intuitive links are missing here and there (for example it’s not possible to link directly to the guide but only to individual chapters of the guide). But when you dig into the resource pages it reveals itself to be quite comprehensive, and super useful.
A nice little feature in the resource section is that next to every linked article is a Twitter button so that you can directly share the article with your followers on Twitter. Very much in the spirit of tweeting science.
The Guide to Twitter provides step by step guidelines from how you create an account, edit your profile, start tweeting and start to follow others. It also explains Twitter abbreviations such as MT, RT and HT. Even the least IT savvy person should be able to get on Twitter following this guide.
Tweet your Science is of course also on Twitter (@tweetyoursci) and Facebook.
I look forward to going through the resource list and to following the further development of this great initiative.
Mia Ridge wrote a very nice blog post recently on object-centered and object-driven approaches in the context of online exhibitions. Mia asks whether the object-driven exhibition format that most museums employ might clash with the object-centered practices that most often drive online exhibition.
I won’t comment directly on Mia’s interesting question of whether there is “a potential mismatch between the object-driven approach that exhibitions have trained museum audiences to expect and the object-centred approach they encounter in museum collections online” but rather examine the distinction between object-centered and object-driven approaches itself.
An object-centered approach, following art historian Bernard Herman is one in which the focus of study is on the object itself, specifically its physical attributes and its provenance; this is the kind of descriptive, check-list approach that forms most museums catalogues of their collections. An object-driven approach, on the other hand, emphasizes how objects relate to people and the cultures that make them. It is the kind of culturally contextualizing approach that drives most exhibition making.
This distinction is useful in that it captures a great deal of what goes on in museum practice. But it also, I think, points to the narrow space that some of the most interesting qualities of objects are afforded.
The distinction reminded me of a critique that philosopher Graham Harman and others from what is called object-oriented ontology has developed about how objects tend to be approached in philosophy. Objects, Harman says, tends to be either undermined or overmined. Here is a quick description from Ian Bogost:
Undermining positions understand reality as smaller bits, be they quarks, DNA or mathematics. Ordinary things such as sheep or battleships become fictions, tricks that deceive minds too naive to understand their depths. Overmining positions take objects to be less real than the processes and circumstances that produce them.
The point of this duality is not that over- and undermining does not produce interesting and valuable knowledge about the world, but rather that neither entirely capture what things are and how we relate to them. There is a functional and effective irreducibility of things at various levels. The rock can’t exist without the atoms but is something distinct from those atoms. And the coffee cup has all kinds of social and cultural implications but it is not functionally reducible to these implications. As a result, what object-oriented ontology tries to do is to stick to the object in order to see what happens if we resist the urge to continually explain it entirely from above or below.
Tacking this critique on to the object-centered and object-driven approaches to museum practice, it seems to me that a good dose of object-orientedness might be in order. This is because some of the most interesting, seductive and mind-bending qualities of objects cannot be deduced neither from the parts list of the object-centered approach nor the contextualizing instincts of the object-driven. Instead, they emerge in the very specific, contingent and materially embedded meeting with the object (I tried to outline something of what I think sticking with the object might entail in museum practice in this blog post last week).
While I do not subscribe wholeheartedly to an object-oriented philosophy, I am in full agreement with the sentiment behind it: that it is worthwhile to stick to the object as a discrete and functional entity in the world without continuously reducing it to something else. If we continually search for something below or above the object in order to classify or contextualize it, we run the risk of missing what Daniel Miller has described as the “…unexpected capacity of objects to fade out of focus and remain peripheral to our vision and yet determinant of our behaviour and identity…”
