An information system to exploit the use of metadata within film and television production

The article focuses on an information system to exploit the use of metadata within film and television production. It is noted that the television and film industries are used to working on big projects. This involves the use of actual film, video tape, and P.E.R.T charts for project planning. Scripts are in most instances revised. It is essential to attach information on these in order to manage, track and retrieve them. The use of metadata eases the operations involved in these industries.

An information system to exploit the use of metadata within film and television production

The television and film industries are used to working on large projects. These projects use media and documents of various types, ranging from actual film and videotape to items such as PERT charts for project planning. Some items, such as scripts, evolve over a period and go through many versions. It is often necessary to attach information to these “objects” in order to manage, track, and retrieve them. On large productions there may be hundreds of personnel who need access to this material and who in their turn generate new items which form some part of the final production. The requirements for this industry in terms of an information system may be generalized and a distributed software architecture built, primarily using the internet, to serve the needs of these projects. This architecture must enable potentially very large collections of objects to be managed in a secure environment with distributed responsibilities held by many working on the production. Copyright © 2005 by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, Inc.

Literature and the shaman: Jung, trauma stories and new origin stories in The Lion, the witch and the wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

The paper first considers the role of Jungian ideas in relation to academic disciplines and to literary studies in particular. Jung is a significant resource in negotiating developments in literary theory because of his characteristic treatment of the ‘other’. The paper then looks at The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950) by C.S. Lewis whose own construction of archetypes is very close to Jung’s. By drawing upon new post-Jungian work from Jerome Bernstein’s Living in the Borderland (2005), the novel is revealed to be intimately concerned with narratives of trauma and of origin. Indeed, a Jungian and post-Jungian approach is able to situate the text both within nature and in the historical traumas of war as well as the personal traumas of subjectivity. Where Bernstein connects his work to the postcolonial ethos of the modern Navajo shaman, this new weaving of literary and cultural theory points to the residue of shamanism within the arts of the West. [From the Publisher]

Learning styles, personalisation and adaptable e-learning

Common Learning Management Systems (for example Moodle [1] and Blackboard [2]) are limited in the amount of personalisation that they can offer the learner. They are used widely and do offer a number of tools for instructors to enable them to create and manage courses, however, they do not allow for the learner to have a unique personalised learning experience. The e-Learning platform iLearn offers personalisation for the learner in a number of ways and one way is to offer the specific learning material to the learner based on the learner's learning style. Learning styles and how we learn is a vast research area. Brusilovsky and Millan [3] state that learning styles are typically defined as the way people prefer to learn. Examples of commonly used learning styles are Kolb Learning Styles Theory [4], Felder and Silverman Index of Learning Styles [5], VARK [6] and Honey and Mumford Index of Learning Styles [7] and many research projects (SMILE [8], INSPIRE [9], iWeaver [10] amonst others) attempt to incorporate these learning styles into adaptive e-Learning systems. This paper describes how learning styles are currently being used within the area of adaptive e-Learning. The paper then gives an overview of the iLearn project and also how iLearn is using the VARK learning style to enhance the platform's personalisation and adaptability for the learner. This research also describes the system's design and how the learning style is incorporated into the system design and semantic framework within the learner's profile.

Reaching across organisational, sectoral and geographical boundaries: exploring the learning potential of an EU cross-border project

Research This paper outlines some of the key findings from an evaluation of the project and demonstrates that EC funded projects such as this, which seek to promote cross border collaboration and understanding (i.e. across organisational, sectoral and geographical boundaries) offer considerable learning potential – not least about variances in health politics across different communities. However, for this learning to be realised a comprehensive system of knowledge management needs to be an integral part of project planning alongside a system for sustaining embryonic professional networks. The concept of managing relationships was also a key part of the projects success. Executing a project funded by the EU demands the development of complex organisational skills to negotiate all the administrative challenges en route to successful completion and this project in particular relied for its success on the development of social relationships of trust and mutual respect across national, professional and social boundaries. Context A three–year European Commission funded project designed to exchange a wide range of staff (professional semiprofessional and voluntary staff in health and social care) project led by the University of Greenwich (UK) and the Université Catholique de Lille, France was completed this year (February 2008). The project was complex because it involved working in different national contexts, was multi-disciplinary, and demanded the negotiation of multiple boundaries. Theories A mixed method evaluation including written reports gathered immediately after each exchange visit and a post hoc series of individual interviews and focus groups was conducted in order to gain qualitative information (from the participants perspective) on their experiences and to identify any learning gained. Results Analysis of the data provided evidence of learning on a number of levels; personally, inter and intra professionally and organisationally as well as across sectors and also from a project management perspective. The learning crystallised around the extent of the differences noted by the participants between the UK and the French health and social care systems despite geographical proximity, common membership of the EU and many shared challenges in health and social care. The extent of these differences, noted at every level from policy to practice proved a rich source for reflection on organisational philosophies, ways of working, distribution of resources, professional roles and autonomy and professional registration and mobility - in short on health politics at ‘macro’ and ‘micro’ levels.

Extreme weather events and business continuity planning

There is now a broad scientific consensus that the global climate is changing in ways that are likely to have a profound impact on human society and the natural environment over the coming decades. The challenge for Facilities Mangers is to ensure that business continuity plans acknowledge the potential for such events and have contingencies in place to ensure that their organisation can recover from an extreme weather event in a timely fashion. This paper will review current literature/theories pertinent to extreme weather events and business continuity planning; will consider issues of risk; identify the key drivers that need to be considered by Facilities Managers in preparing contingency/disaster recover plans; and identify gaps in knowledge (understanding and toolkits) that need to be addressed. The paper will also briefly outline a 3 year research project underway in the UK to address the issues