NEtwork for Teaching Information Society

We have published the course book of the project (Information society – from theory to political practice) in mid-September. This month we have organized the book launches in Sopron (HU), Komarno (SK) and Budapest and introduced the book for researchers, students and colleagues.

Robert Pinter (editor), the book and Szilard Molnar (author) introduces the course book

I was present at the Budapest and the Komarno book launches as a moderator. In Budapest we were located at the city centre in a book shop, named Fókusz Könyváruház. There were not so many guests, however at the end we had a very interesting conversation on teaching in the 21st century, students’ needs and activities, and teachers practices and malpractices. We have agreed on that e-learning is not an easy challange, everybody has the customs and practices to teach in-front-of students, how to have a traditional class, 90 minutes work, seminar or lecture. E-learning is something completely different, you need to involve the students and work together in a group, make them to communicate even to each other, because if you stay in the centre as a teacher, and you communicate alone with everybody else, it becomes too stressful, and the result will be frustration on both sides. We also had conversation on the book itself, for example how long can be useful a book like this, written on information society, on sometimes ephemeral phenomena. We hope that bigger parts of our book will be useful in the next decade as well. There are theoretical chapters on the meaning of information society, relation of technology and society, role of innovation in general etc. Ideas regarding these topics change not so fast. However, changes are more fast in other topics such like e-government, eInclusion policy or information literacy in the European Union. Anyway, the book is out now, it is available in Hungarian, in printed and electronic version, and in Moodle. We are preparing the English and the Greek version, hopefully will be ready until the end of this year.

Pictures from all three book launches are here. (If you need the podcast of the Budapest book launch /in Hungarian/, please contact us at our website.)

Robert Pinter, editor of the book