Current events

[13/03/2012]

Interview with José Antonio Marina

"Schools don't just have to teach, they're society's awareness of education"

Nurturing both individual and social talent is the key to a better society. Based on the notion that a solid level of education is necessary for economic development, more talent and more education would have made the impact of the current economic crisis much less severe. Those are the views of the philosopher, essayist and educator José Antonio Marina. Director of the Universidad de Padres, a pedagogical project geared to cooperation with parents in their children's education process, he believes that the role of schools extends beyond teaching to acting as society's awareness of education. In that light, schools ought to work alongside parents to meet the challenge of educating their children. In a lecture at a Debates on Education event at the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA) on 15 February, Marina talked about "the education of talent: the role of schools and families".

[06/02/2012]

Interview with Terhi Rantanen

"Everyone wants news but no one wants to pay for it"

In mid-December, Terhi Rantanen took part as visiting lecturer in two IN3 seminars, where she spoke of communicative modernity and global risks on the one hand, and on globalisation and the media on the other. In this interview, Rantanen seeks to look back to understand that what is often presented as new is simply a reinvention of the past and she admits that certain journalism companies, such as newspapers and news agencies, are coming to the end of an era.

[16/01/2012]

Interview with Isabel Solé

"You learn to be a good reader over time and through different reading situations"

Some view reading as schoolwork, an obligation or a necessity. Isabel Solé, on the other hand, considers it "a discreet, silent companion, always close by", among other things. A companion who helps you find your way into fascinating worlds and opens the doors to knowledge and thought. Solé, a professor at the University of Barcelona's Education and Evolutionary Psychology Department, has devoted 30 years to reflection on reading and is just as enthusiastic now as when she began. On 14 December 2011, she shared her passion for and knowledge of the topic with attendees at a Debates on Education event, an initiative of the Jaume Bofill Foundation and the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Open University of Catalonia, UOC).

[02/01/2012]

Interview with Insung Jung

"In South Korea, over 50% of courses use ICT"

Between 21 and 25 November, the South Korean e-learning expert Dr Insung Jung visited the UOC to hold meetings and seminars with faculty members and researchers. During her stay in Barcelona, Jung also gave the talk 'Quality Assurance in E-Learning: Contributions from Asia' at the headquarters of the Catalan Association of Journalists. The talk was funded under the "la Caixa" Foundation's Internationalisation at Home programme.

[28/12/2011]

Interview with Terry Anderson

'Content is everywhere, so we have to think about what we can add as institutions or teachers'

On 9 November, Dr Terry Anderson, professor at Athabasca University (Canada), gave the talk 'Connectivism: Perfect Pedagogy for the Networked Era?'. The aim of the talk, which took place at Barcelona?s CaixaForum, was to analyse certain new pedagogical trends in the digital era. During his stay in the Catalan capital, Dr Anderson also held interviews and meetings with UOC faculty and researchers. All these activities were funded under the Internationalisation at Home programme, a collaborative agreement between the UOC and "la Caixa" to promote exchanges with prestigious international experts in e-learning and new technologies.

[02/12/2011]

Interview with Peter Baptist

"A mathematician is like an artist"

Information and communication technology, ICT, has radically changed our lives, the way we communicate and how we learn. However, neither the way we teach nor the contents of the academic curricula have changed, becoming obsolete in a completely new setting. This is one of the conclusions reached by a group of 80 experts in Barcelona at the Eighth International Seminar of the UOC UNESCO E-Learning Chair, Teacher Training: Reconsidering Teachers' Roles.

[25/11/2011]

Interview with John Perry Barlow

"The internet allows for liberation like no other technology before it"

John Perry Barlow (Wyoming, 1947) can certainly be described as prolific. A poet, essayist, retired cattle rancher and former Grateful Dead lyricist, he is also deputy chairman and co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, as well as a member of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. A pioneer in championing neutrality on the Web, he published 'A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace' in 1996, a text that has only grown in relevance in the light of events such as those surrounding WikiLeaks and the Arab Spring uprisings.

Barlow participated in the first session of the Communication and Civil Society Seminar, organised by the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Open University of Catalonia, UOC), and in the Free Culture Forum 2011, both of which took place in Barcelona in late October.

[10/11/2011]

Interview with Antoni Gutiérrez-Rubí

"If you can't talk about it, don't do it!"

It's that simple. This is the phrase with which Antoni Gutiérrez-Rubí summarizes the new challenges posed by the world we live in to politics. Internet and the new technologies mean that all of us increasingly have more information at our disposal. And, moreover, we can express our opinions on it. Thus, we can listen and read but also speak. This, in a way, makes us "watchmen". Consequently, politics no longer has absolute power; it can no longer do whatever it wants to. It is now being scrutinized. This is the thesis of Antoni Gutiérrez-Rubí in his new book published by the Editorial UOC: La política vigilada, la comunicación política en la era de Wikileaks [Scrutinized Politics, political communication in the Wikileaks era]. He is a communications advisor and political consultant, professor in master's programs in communication at several universities, and writes regularly for newspapers such as El Pais or El Periódico.

[11/10/2011]

Interview with Pere Mayans

"Immersion has to be done using second language teaching-learning strategies"

The rulings that threaten the preferential use of Catalan in the education system have to spur on universities to improve initial teacher training. So believes Pere Mayans, head of the Language Immersion and Reception Service at the Department of Education of the Catalan government. He claims that teachers should use second language teaching-learning strategies. As a student in the first intake of the UOC's language and cultural diversity management postgraduate course, Mayans has presented the final project, which will be taught as a course aimed at teaching staff, on how to manage language diversity in an educational institution.

[30/09/2011]

Interview with Fanxi Meng and Bei-Zhong Han

"In five or ten years, we could be completely agriculturally self-sufficient"

On 8 and 12 September, a Chinese delegation attended two round tables - organised by the East Asia Studies and Health Science Studies - at the UOC's Madrid and Barcelona centres about opportunities and trends in agriculture in China. In this interview, two members of this delegation (Fanxi Meng, President of the Beijing International College and Bei-Zhong Han, Vice Dean of the Faculty of Food Science and Nutritional Engineering, both colleges of the China Agricultural University) analyse the agricultural situation in world's most densely populated country. The conference, which paves the way for future collaborations with this hundred-year-old Chinese university, is part of the At Home programme, a collaboration agreement between the UOC and la Caixa.

[15/09/2011]

Interview with Donald Hanna

"A learning culture includes not only what happens in the classroom, but in the entire university"

Thanks to the At Home programme -a collaborative agreement between the UOC and "la Caixa"-, the eLC is hosting a wide range of foreign experts on different fields linked to e-learning and new technologies. Until 30 April, one of its Research Fellows was Dr. Donald Hanna, professor of Educational Communications at University of Wisconsin-Extension. On 4 April, he took part as a lecturer in the 6^th CIDUI-CESE (Congrés Internacional de Docència Universitària i Innovació-Comparative Education Society in Europe) Symposium, focusing his speech on the most effective keys to reach excellence in higher education.

[09/09/2011]

Interview with Alberto Arce

"The fall of a dictator does not constitute regime change on its own"

Alberto Arce (Gijón, 1976) is one of the leading Spanish reporters of his generation. A specialist in conflicts, in recent years he has documented some of the world's most mediatised and paradoxically unknown crises in situ and from a human point of view, which include the Iraq and Afghanistan post-war periods, the Gaza Strip blockage and Israel's "cast lead" operation in southern Lebanon. Since mid-2008, he has combined his work as a journalist with teaching work on the UOC Masters in Conflictology. Now, just back from Libya, he discusses his experience at the heart of one of today's most controversial and silenced conflicts.

[05/09/2011]

Interview with Blanca Busquets

"My book cries out against the silence surrounding abuse"

For Blanca Busquets i Oliu (Barcelona, 1961), language and communication are not so much the tools of her trade as a religion. A writer, scriptwriter, radio producer and journalist, she is currently enjoying one of the highest points of her career as a result of her novel La nevada del cucut (Rosa dels Vents, 2010), which recently won the 12^th Premi Llibreter award. At present, she combines her writing with a show called El visitant on the Catalunya Ràdio network, and has been a regular on the airwaves for the last 24 years. Nonetheless, she still manages to find time to study for a degree in Catalan language and literature at the UOC.

[22/08/2011]

Interview with Christopher T. Marsden

"Nobody with money wants to see net neutrality enforced"

Christopher T. Marsden lectures in communication law at the University of Essex (UK) and is the author of a number of books, notably including Net Neutrality: Towards a Co-regulatory Solution. Net neutrality and other challenges for the future of the internet were the focus of the 7^th International Conference on Internet, Law and Politics (IDP 2011). Marsden inaugurated the event, which took place between 11-12 July and was organised, as ever, by the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Open University of Catalonia, UOC), under the auspices of the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3), this year, with the support of El Derecho Editores.

[05/08/2011]

Interview with David McKie

"It is impossible to control the image a nation projects"

On 28 and 29 June, the MediaTIC hosted the Barcelona Meeting COM: 2011 International Public Relations Conference. Organised in conjunction with the Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) and the University of Waikato (Hamilton, New Zealand), it brought together a hundred experts from some twenty countries, including academics of renowned prestige, such as Scot David McKie, Professor of Communication Management at Waikato and author of several books on public relations. These include Reconfiguring Public Relations: Ecology, Equity and Enterprise (2007), co-written with Debashish Munshi. President of the Conference's Science Committee, McKie combines his academic work with that of advisor at the highest level in areas of strategic communication and leadership.

[02/08/2011]

Interview with Jane C. Ginsburg

Google's book-scanning is unlikely to qualify for an EU copyright exception

On June 20, the InterDret research group and the Department of Law and Political Sciences at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Open University of Catalonia, UOC) organized in Barcelona the seminar "Google and Fair Use". This rendezvous, devoted to intellectual property and Internet, featured Dr. Jane C. Ginsburg, professor of Literary and Artistic Property Law at Columbia Law School (New York). Her attendance was supported by the At Home program, a collaborative agreement between the UOC and "la Caixa".

[26/07/2011]

Interview with Daniel Miller

"Facebook gives us what we lack in real life"

Anthropologist Daniel Miller (University College London) is fascinated with Facebook, which he says is changing people's lives, mostly for the better, and will be, within a few decades, one of the main allies of elderly people in the fight against loneliness. A large part of his work is devoted to criticising materialism and the relationship that we have with things, which, according to him, robs us of time for interacting with others. In his last book, "Tales of Facebook", he relates seven true stories of people whose lives were changed by this social network. Miller was in Barcelona at the end of May to take part in an IN3 seminar.

[18/07/2011]

Interview with Fabrice Hénard and Fernando León

"The UOC is a good educational model for similar institutions"

On 27 and 28 June, the UOC hosted a meeting of a group of ten experts for the second phase of the Quality of Teaching in Higher Education Project of the Programme on Institutional Management of Higher Education (IMHE) of the OECD, of which the UOC is an institutional member and in which it has participated as a case study. The aim of the programme is to ascertain how universities guarantee and develop their quality processes in the teaching and content of their learning offer. OECD analyst, Fabrice Hénard, was in charge of reviewing the project. Fernando León García, President of CETYS University, Baja California, Mexico, managed the UOC case study.

[13/07/2011]

Interview with Cristóbal Cobo

"There are skills and abilities which are important where employability is concerned but are not covered by formal learning structures"

We were already familiar with face-to-face learning, distance learning and e-learning. In Barcelona last week, though, we were introduced to a new concept, invisible learning, which takes place 24/7, in 3D and through 360°, by Cristóbal Cobo, researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute and expert on digital skills. Co-author of Aprendizaje Invisible: Hacia una nueva ecología de la educación ['Invisible Learning: Toward a new ecology of education'], Cobo took part in the most recent Debates on Education event, where he advocated a rethink on educational institutions and spoke of the need to ensure the recognition and assessment of knowledge acquired in non-formal settings.

[10/06/2011]

Interview with Enrico Spolaore

"An independent Catalonia could be as economically viable as any other country"

Enrico Spolaore is Professor of Economics at Tufts University (Massachusetts, United States). An Economics graduate from the Sapienza University of Rome and with doctorates from the universities of Siena and Harvard, he is a specialist in political economy, international economy and economic growth. His research includes the relationship between the size of states and their economic development. The conclusions of his work, alongside Alberto Alesina, were published in The Size of Nations (2003) / La mida les nacions (2008). He recently took part in the international seminar entitled 'Small nations at a time of crisis. Seeking the way out', co-organised by the UOC and the CatDem Foundation.

[31/05/2011]

Interview with Hunter Hoffman

"People with anxiety disorders are much more interested in coming into therapy if it involves virtual reality"

The Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Open University of Catalonia, UOC) Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) co-organised the 1^st International Forum on Health Care and Information and Communication Technology between 8 and 10 March. The event also involved the IWK Health Centre, Halifax, Canada; the University of Valencia, and Jaume I University. Thanks to the At Home programme run by the UOC, with the support of "la Caixa", the meeting was attended by several international experts on psychology and health care. One of them was Dr Hunter Hoffman (University of Washington in Seattle), a pioneer in using virtual reality (VR) to reduce fear and pain, who presented the paper entitled An ICT Solution to Pain. Virtual Reality Pain Distraction for Burn Patients and VR Therapy for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. During his lecture in Barcelona, Dr Hoffman presented a therapy based on VR pain distraction that reduces the pain intensity reported by severe burn patients during wound care by 25-50%.

[13/05/2011]

Interview with Isaac Mao, director of the Social Brain Foundation

«If more and more companies adopt Sharism, they will be able to benefit from the know-how of others to improve their products»

The renowned Chinese blogger Isaac Mao was the focus of attention at the recent UOC Associate Companies and Institutions Meeting. The director of the Social Brain Foundation defended his theory of Sharism as a new paradigm in business culture and the information and communication society whereby organisations can benefit from sharing networked knowledge.

[26/04/2011]

Interview with Patrick J. McGrath

"The use of ICTs doesn't guarantee democratisation of health care, but it could make it much easier to accomplish"

The Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Open University of Catalonia, UOC) hosted the 1^st International Forum on Health Care and Information and Communication Technology (HICT 2011) from 8 to 10 of March. The event was co-organised by this institution, the IWK Health Centre in Halifax, Canada; the University of Valencia, and Jaume I University. Thanks to the At Home programme – a collaborative agreement between the UOC and "la Caixa" – the conference involved prestigious international experts in the field. One the lecturers was Dr Patrick J. McGrath, Vice President of Research at the IWK Health Centre and Canada Research Chair and Professor of Psychology, Psychiatry and Pediatrics at Dalhousie University in Halifax, who talked about family centred health care through technology. During HICT, Dr McGrath presented the Strongest Families programme, an innovative distance treatment aimed at children with behaviour and anxiety problems based on the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs).

[08/04/2011]

Interview with Jaume Curbet

"We live in a country that readily buys into the myth of regulations"

Un mundo inseguro. La seguridad en la sociedad del riesgo ['An insecure world. Security in the risk society'] (Editorial UOC) is the title of the latest book by Jaume Curbet, director of the public safety policies programme at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Open University of Catalonia, UOC) and research associate in security at the Barcelona Institute of Regional and Metropolitan Studies, a research group of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). The publication was presented during the week in which Curbet gave a seminar at the UOC on security in the risk society. His experience as an advisor on security policies, both nationally and internationally, makes him a leading authority on the subject. It has also led him to conclude that we often take the same approaches to different problems and that we ought to seek universal security rather than that of individuals and specific groups.

[17/03/2011]

Interview with Irving Waxman and Marc Giovannini

"The internet has changed patients' attitude"

Marc Giovannini, oncologist and head of the endoscopy service at the Institut Paoli-Calmettes in Marseille, and Irving Waxman, director of the Center for Endoscopic Research and Therapeutics at the University of Chicago, took part in the closing ceremony of the UOC's endoscopic ultrasonography specialisation course, held jointly with the Centre Mèdic Teknon and the Hospital de Bellvitge in February. In this interview, not only do these two doctors review the progress made in their field of specialisation, but they also reflect on how new technology affects current medical care.

[28/02/2011]

Interview with Fiona Ellis-Chadwick

"The Internet may be a different medium, but the rules of business are the same"

On 10 January, the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Open University of Catalonia, UOC) and the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) of the University of Oxford co-sponsored 'Consumers and Internet Studies: a Workshop'. The event brought together experts from around the world to discuss and debate growing consumer power on the Internet. In this interview, Fiona Ellis-Chadwick, Senior Lecturer in Retail Management at the Open University (OU) Business School and a bona fide expert in the development and applications of e-marketing and online retailing, reflects on the present and future of a business model that only continues to grow.

[21/02/2011]

Interview with Manuel Castells

"The popular uprisings in the Arab world perhaps constitute the most important internet-led and facilitated change"

The media has spent weeks concentrating first on Tunisia and now on Egypt. The popular uprisings which followed the sacrifice of the young Tunisian Mohamed Bouazizi soon led to the downfall of dictator Ben Ali and, like a stack of dominoes, the ousting of president Hosni Mubarak, opening up a democratic process in the country. Demonstrators also took to the streets in Yemen, Algeria and Jordan. What we are seeing is the Arab world rising up, calling for greater levels of freedom from its respective regimes. New technology plays a fundamental, even key, role throughout this process, particularly social networks which enable people to by-pass the prevailing censorship. In light of these historical events, Manuel Castells, university professor of Sociology and Director of the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Open University of Catalonia, UOC), reflects on what is happening and provides keys to understanding a citizens' movement which is exploiting fully the new communication channels available to it.

[07/02/2011]

Interview with Genís Roca

"Facebook is the internet's disco"

Trained as an archaeologist, specialising in the Lower Palaeolithic, he is now one of the Directors of RocaSalvatella, one of the country's leading strategic and business development consultancy firms, a firm that applies network logic in its operations. Genís Roca maintains that he is still an archaeologist and moved by the same aims: to study important social change in human groups, as identified by certain clues. He no longer goes to digs, instead visiting the offices of many of the country's leading corporations who are looking for expert advice on how to make the most of digital logic within their organisations. Roca, who previously led the UOC's Internet Initiatives, gave the opening speech at the Web 2.0: New Strategies for People Management conference, an event organised last November by UOC Business and the Catalan subsidiary of the Asociación Española de Dirección y Desarrollo de Personas (Spanish Association for People Management and Development, AEDIPE).

[25/01/2011]

Interview with Enric Ruiz-Geli

"It is possible to build sustainable architecture at market prices"

Since last September, Barcelona has had an iconic new building which reaffirms its position as a city at the cutting edge of world architecture. But more than purely an aesthetical impact, Media-TIC — where the UOC has relocated part of its offices — aims to establish sustainable, economic and energy-generating architecture, conceived using the latest technology. Its creator, Enric Ruiz-Geli, is the champion of a movement of energy architects, who no longer turn to nature for their shapes, but for their processes, and how these can be reproduced in their buildings. Ruiz-Geli, to whom the New York Times devoted a seven-page supplement in 2008, is director of Cloud 9, a firm of architects which has more patents than buildings in a clear commitment to research and development. He is currently working on the future New York aquarium, a hotel in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat and the design of the new El Bulli.

[18/01/2011]

Interview with Klaus Gottschlich

''Internet offers many professional possibilities''

The General Manager of eBay in Spain, Klaus Gottschlich, gave a lecture on 26 November as part of the Alumni Annual Get-Together in Madrid under the title "Doing Business on the Internet: Opportunities and Pitfalls".
Today, talking about eBay is very easy as it needs no introduction. There are now very many people worldwide who have bought or sold something using this internet portal, which allows you to carry out any type of transaction all over the world. Nowadays, you can find nearly 120 million items every day, which generate a volume of transactions with more than 500 million users in over 38 countries.

[04/01/2011]

Interview with Larry Cuban

"Access to technologies has not led to shifts in teaching practices or increases in students' academic achievement"

Catalan schools are experiencing a period of revolution. Digital whiteboards, ebooks and projects such as Educat 1X1, which looks to ensure each student has a laptop, are changing the landscape of classrooms, requiring teachers to reassess their tasks and schools to make large investments. The US, which is one step ahead, went through a similar process in the 1980s. Now, experts such as Stanford professor Larry Cuban question whether these policies and investments improve student performance and increase their chances in the labour market, and whether they change teaching practices. Cuban, who took part in the most recent Debate on Education at the invitation of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Open University of Catalonia, UOC) and the Jaume Bofill Foundation, reflects on this and other issues.

[21/12/2010]

Interview with Gustavo Cardoso

Free downloads should not be seen as a problem, but rather a business opportunity

Information and communication technology (ICT) has not only radically transformed human relationships, but also helped to form new cultural and leisure habits that provide additional fodder for an as yet unsettled debate. Questions regarding the free nature of multimedia content or the economic viability of the traditional media are today being asked everywhere, including academia, where they are the object of analysis and discussion. It is in this sphere of research where Gustavo Cardoso, visiting professor at the IN3 and professor of media, technology and society at the University Institute of Lisbon (ISCTE), carries out his work. Former advisor on information society and telecommunications policy to the Presidency of Portugal and named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2008, he is also co-editor, with Manuel Castells, of the book Network Society: from Knowledge to Policy and, with Jeff Cole and Angus Cheong, of the book World Wide Internet. More recently, he has given a series of five seminars at the UOC looking at the challenges posed by media in the knowledge society.

[10/12/2010]

Interview with Dieter Zinnbauer

"The integrity of a system requires strong ethical commitment by the leadership"

9 December is International Anti-Corruption Day. According to NGO Transparency International (TI), the largest NGO devoted to fighting corruption, this is defined as "the abuse of entrusted power for private gain." A series of reports are written every year to measure this elusive variable, which include the Corruption Perceptions Index, CPI. IN3 Fellow, Dr. Dieter Zinnbauer, is Senior Programme Manager for research at the organisation and is currently researching the potential of social media for his international work.

[19/11/2010]

Interview with Lluís Busquets i Grabulosa

"Pope Benedict XVI has missed the opportunity to be with people and hear their criticism about his Church"

When we love, we want the person or object being loved to be a better version of ourselves. Sometimes, as a result of confrontation, debate or irony. Never out of silence or indifference. Lluís Busquets i Grabulosa, both a believer and profound critic, has written Carta al Papa d'un creient crític, a meditation on today's Church and the work of the Papacy to coincide with the visit of Benedict XVI. This writer and journalist, UOC subject tutor and secondary school teacher, who feels let down, believes that once again the Pope has let slip many opportunities, such as being close to people and not to politicians. For him, from the very same aircraft where he criticised laicism – a necessity for coexistence in plural societies – and compared the current situation to the radicalism of the 1930s, or at the Sagrada Família, where he painted the picture that women in the Church are there to lay the table, everything has been a string of absurdities. In his book, Busquets calls for a Pope who is loyal to the Gospel, who makes pastoral visits and not political ones and one who, why not, leaves the Vatican and returns to the world.

[11/11/2010]

Interview with Nico Cloete

"The World Cup has made all South Africans, whites and blacks, work together"

On the 11th of June, Johannesburg became stage to an historical event: South Africa was taking on Mexico in the inaugural match of the first World Cup held on African soil. In today's world, in which football moves millions of dollars and people, more than just a cup was at stake for the host nation: its recognition, image and future were also under examination. An exam that Nico Cloete, director of the South African Centre for Higher Education Transformation and an expert on the council for analysing the higher education system created by Mandela in 1995, believes was passed with flying colours. But after these magical days in which everything seemed possible, he, like many of his compatriots, is wondering: "So now what?" They are calling for change and a project for the future. Invited by IN3, Cloete gave the conference South Africa and the World Cup: We organised it and you won it, in which he spoke about these and other issues.

[27/10/2010]

Interview with Carol Rozwell

“Project success is 20 per cent technology and 80 per cent people”

Carol Rozwell, vice president and distinguished analyst on Gartner's Social Software and Collaboration team, joined Gartner during the e-business frenzy and helped clients electrify their processes. Now she explores the dynamics of collaboration including social networks, communities and innovation. She recently visited the UOC invited by Francesc Noguera, the University's Deputy Manager for Information Technologies, to give the talk “The 80% Solution: Addressing the Human Dimension of Collaboration Programmes”

[06/10/2010]

Interview with Josep Maria Tamarit

"Immigrants are more likely to be victims of crime than potential aggressors"

The UOC is to unveil Spain's first online Criminology degree this month. Its director, Josep Maria Tamarit, has been Full Professor of Criminal Law at the University of Lleida since 1999 and he has decided to begin a new stage of his professional career at the UOC. Tamarit is an expert in criminal law and victimology, and lead researcher in the Criminal Justice System research group, a group recognised as consolidated by the Catalan government, and on a Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation project on the development and application of restorative justice. He has been a substitute judge on Lleida's provincial courts, and Director of the University of Lleida's master's degree in Criminology. He has taken part in many postgraduate and doctoral activities at universities in different countries. He is currently President of the Catalan Victimology Society.

[10/09/2010]

Interview with Karin Deutsch Karkelar

"Cuba is one of the worst countries for internet users"

There are increasingly more internet users, more content on the internet and better internet access technologies but at the same time government surveillance of this content is growing, as is censorship and the repression of those citizens who dare to criticise their governments on the internet. This is the situation that initial results of the Freedom on the Net survey have shown, an index that measures the level of internet freedom, published by Freedom House, a non-governmental organisation based in Washington, dedicated to human rights and freedom of the press and of the internet. The report, based on the study of fifteen countries, was coordinated by Karin Deutsch Karkelar, researcher and editor at Freedom House. Karkelar, a Cambridge graduate in the history of India, with extensive experience as a researcher in countries such as Nigeria, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Pakistan, was one of the speakers at the 6th Internet, Law and Politics Conference, which focused on cloud computing and its consequences with regard to law and politics.

[16/08/2010]

Interview with Jan-Martin Lowendahl

"Information Technology will really reshape learning when enough people will have grown up playing with it"

Jan-Martin Lowendahl (Gothenburg 1965) was impressed by the reaction of a teacher as he was explaining the Hype Cycle, which is a graphic representation of the maturity, adoption and application of a technology. The teacher saw it as a "tsunami", an image that, according to Lowendahl, shows how some educators may feel about all these new technologies hitting the classroom: a big opportunity that is also putting a lot of pressure on them. As a Research Director in higher-education technology strategies at Gartner Research, Lowendahl helps higher education institutions to translate their real needs into services that will eventually help professors and researchers. He visited the UOC invited by Francesc Noguera, the University's Deputy Manager for Information Technologies, to give the talk ?The future of higher education technology?.

[05/08/2010]

Interview with Fernando Conde

"We will provide students with the tools they need to set up their own company"

This October, the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya [Open University of Catalonia, UOC] will launch Spain's first MBA in Property Sciences. The programme was conceived of and designed by its academic director, Fernando Conde, who took advantage of last year's slow-down in the sector to put together an ambitious and pioneering programme, tailored to the new panorama arising from the ashes of the construction crisis. Conde, who chose the UOC for its flexible model and use of ITCs, holds a degree in economics and business science from the University of San Pablo and the Autonomous University of Barcelona. He is the president and founder of Newland Property Consultants SL and is a member of the Urban Land Institute and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (MRICS). He has taught in the master's programme in management at Abat Oliba University.

[22/07/2010]

Interview with Montserrat Guibernau

"Independence is now viewed as an option for the future"

Montserrat Guibernau holds a Doctorate in Social and Political Theory from the University of Cambridge and is professor of Political Science at Queen Mary College, University of London. She has recently published, in Catalan, Per un catalanisme cosmopolita (Angle editorial, 2009) and La identitat de les nacions (Dèria editors, 2010). On 15 July, she took part in the seminar entitled, "Can we say Adéu Espanya (Goodbye Spain)?", organised by the UOC's Department of National and Identity Studies, based on the documentary, "ADÉU ESPANYA?" (GOODBYE, SPAIN)?" directed by Dolors Genovès for Televisió de Catalunya.

[12/07/2010]

Interview with Daniel Innerarity

"In the knowledge society, we can do without intelligent people, but not intelligent objects"

In the knowledge society, which some of us inhabit, clichés are ten-a-penny. The intelligent ones are not the ones who know the most, the wise ones are not necessarily the white-bearded elders, a potato seller is no less creative than an artist and philosophers are not incomprehensible beings who talk only of the ethereal. Or that's how it seems when I interviewed Daniel Innerarity, philosopher and university lecturer who took part in the Education Debates as a guest of the UOC and the Jaume Bofill Foundation. Innerarity, a student who has benefitted from the time to which he belongs, pays as much attention to listening as he does to speaking and appears to practise the art of doubt and reconsider everything in a brief conversation, giving the person with whom he is talking the same value as he does himself as a constructor of this present.

[28/06/2010]

Interview with Roser Salavert

"School success happens in the classroom: teacher, student and contents are the protagonists"

New York, the skyscraper capital, has 10,000,000 inhabitants, of which 1,200,000 are school-age students, divided between 1,400 schools and attended by 79,000 teachers. Some 46% of these boys and girls are enrolled in public schools, where 13% of the students do not speak English and 141 different languages can be heard. Roser Salavert, Catalan primary school teacher and psycholinguist, has spent 20 years as one of the cogs that make the machinery of this whole system work... no matter whether it's Bush or Obama in office. Now general manager of schools in District 3, she defends the argument that educational excellence for all is a reality and not simply a utopia. A guest at the Education Debates, she presented the model that, according to her, is on the way to achieving this.

[10/06/2010]

Interview with Gill Kirkup

"Gender inequalities overlay themselves onto new technologies quickly, so we cannot ignore them"

Are information and communication technologies (ICTs) becoming a new barrier to access to education for women around the world? This is the main question that the experts who participated in the roundtable on "Education, Gender and ICTs" held at the UOC on 20th May tried to answer. Gill Kirkup, a senior lecturer in educational technology at the Institute of Educational Technology at the Open University (UK), chaired the session. She is particularly interested in the ways that gender and technology intersect and has most recently been researching this issue in the context of the use of ICTs for learning and teaching.

[25/05/2010]

Interview with José Manuel Robles

'The digital divide will not close unless we eliminate social inequality first'

Although José Manual Robles is now an expert in the phenomenon of the digital divide, he did not originally intend to study technology. Robles has a degree in Philosophy and a doctorate in Sociology, but he was especially drawn to political philosophy and in particular, everything concerning participation. While researching in digital democracy, one of his priority fields, he realised that the power of the internet offers great opportunities to those who know how to take advantage of them and, likewise, it may be a source of exclusion for those that are left out for one reason or another. Robles visited the IN3 to deliver the seminar 'The Digital Divide: dimensions of technological inequality', where he presented a new concept of the phenomenon of the digital divide.

[04/05/2010]

Interview with Howard Giles

«Everything that appears in the press about the police tends to be negative»

This British professor, resident of the United States for almost four decades, is a recognized expert in social psychology who has been president of the International Communication Association and the International Association of Language and Social Psychology. His studies have focused, above all, on interpersonal and intergroup communication, aspect on which he has received numerous awards and has authored some twenty books. On March 23 Howard Giles gave a conference at the UOC on communication between citizens and police as well as the role played by personal and social identities during interaction between these groups.

[22/04/2010]

Interview with Eben Moglen

“The great oligopolies are going to fail in their attempt to privatise the net”

Most people recognise hackers by the image of them broadcast in the media: experts who systematically and for fun breach the computer security of all kinds of institutions. However, the hacker community is a heterogeneous group, the core of which comprises the fathers of the net and free software, such as Richard Stallman, Tim Berners-Lee and Linus Torvalds. Their work philosophy is based on the free exchange of knowledge, collective creation and the continuous improvement of open-source software. Thanks to the contributions made by this community, its values have become established as one of the pillars of internet culture. Eben Moglen, lecturer at Columbia University, has led this community’s legal battles against the large restrictive software multinationals at the head of the Free Software Foundation (2001-2006) and currently does so from the Software Freedom Law Center. Moglen was the guest speaker at the main ceremony at the most recent UOC students’ get-together.

[15/04/2010]

Interview with Doctor Toni Aira

«Politicians are not here to govern,» claims
Sir Humphrey, «but to do politics»

Doctor Toni Aira is a journalist and lecturer in Political Communication and Public Institutions at the UOC. He also teaches on the Institutional, Social and Political Communication Project at the UPF and is also a lecturer on the Introduction to Communication at the Blanquerna Faculty of Communication (URL), where he has been head of the press office and where he gained his PhD. A collaborator with the Avui newspaper, he has been the editor of the Elsingular.cat paper and can be heard on Catalunya Ràdio, on El Suplement, with Núria Ferré, and on Tot és molt confús, with Pere Mas. He is also the founding president of the Catalan Society for Political Communication and Strategy (SCCIEP) and is a member of the ACOP (Political Communication Association). He also has a number of publications to his name, the most recent of which is the translation into Catalan of «Yes, Minister»
(Sí, Ministre), published by Acontravent.

[06/04/2010]

Interview with François Bar

“We'll get all different kinds of innovation if we get different kinds of users”

Try looking for "day laborers" in Google. It's likely that, right after the Wikipedia entries, you'll get a sad entry saying things as nice as "some of the most violent murderers, rapists, and child molesters, are illegal aliens who work as day laborers". The VozMob project helps immigrant workers in Los Angeles with limited computer access to gain greater participation in the digital public sphere to, among other purposes, fight the bad reputation hate groups are trying to spread about them. It's a platform that lets them create stories about their lives and communities directly from cell phones. François Bar (Dijon, 1958), originator of the VozMob project is a new IN3 Visiting Professor.