Alicia Sánchez-Requena – Comunicar Journal Blog

The Audiovisual Content Downloads among University Students

12 de agosto de 2016 por Alicia Sánchez-Requena

Internet has set the pace for the 21st century, also known as ‘digital era’. The spread of the Internet in any electronic device allows us to be communicated at all times, with its advantages and disadvantages. This revolution has made possible for the society to have easy access to Internet at home. In Spain, for example, 78.8% homes had Internet connection in 2015 (INE, 2015). Being able to be ‘online’ 24 hours a day provide not only free online programmes, but also downloadable films or series at no cost. Whether these practices are legal or moral is questionable.

The article in this post gives a thorough reflection on the uses that university students make of these downloads. Some of the results are eye-opening. In the survey undertaken, 67.3% of the participants said that their downloads were ‘pirated’, free and with no permission from the authors. Have they been informed about this matter? Are they really aware of the legal constraints in their uses?

I highly recommend reading this study that has received almost 1,000 online visits and whose aim is ‘to analyse the habits of audio-visual (movies and television series) consumption via the internet of university students; to detect their attitudes, knowledge and abilities as related to illegal downloading of content from the web; and to describe the education/training they perceive to have in relation to legal and ethical issues on the subject’ (Duarte-Hueros et al., 2016:52). How can we educate the new generations to look after the increasingly amount of audio-visual material ‘available at any time and any place’?

Duarte-Hueros, J., Duarte-Hueros, A. & Ruano-López, S. (2016). The Audiovisual Content Downloads among University Students [Las descargas de contenidos audiovisuales en Internet entre estudiantes universitarios.] Comunicar, 48, 49-57. (DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.3916/C48-2016-05.)

Internet and the Elderly: Enhancing Active Ageing

5 de enero de 2016 por Alicia Sánchez-Requena

The traditional tertiary services approach is now questioned by the new technologies revolution, opening discussion regarding the existence of a quaternary sector. There is no doubt that the internet has changed people’s lives, especially since the beginning of the 21^st Century. However, limited research exists about its impact on our ageing process.

Dr. Llorente-Barroso, Dr. Viñarás-Abad and Dr. Sánchez-Valle have carried out a study that aimed to find out the usefulness of the internet for the eldest in society, as well as explain the potential of the intranet to encourage an active ageing. The study included participants with an age range of 56 to 81, where answers and reactions provided valuable results. Focusing on the possibilities for those ageing in the internet era, results show that there are four areas of interest: information, communication, transactions and administration, leisure and entertainment. The internet can be used to optimise their quality of life in relation to these categories.

Bearing in mind that according to the UN, Spain will have the third eldest population in the world by 2050, research that promotes ways of inclusion and progress between the old population and the digitalised world are more than interesting and worth reading. Do not miss your chance to find out details about the above-mentioned article in the following link.

Llorente-Barroso, C., Viñarás-Abad, M. & Sánchez-Valle, M. (2015). Internet and the Elderly: Enhancing Active Ageing [Mayores e Internet: La Red como fuente de oportunidades para un envejecimiento activo]. Comunicar, 45, 29-36. (DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.3916/C45-2015-03).

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FLAME (Films, Languages and Media in Education)

11 de octubre de 2015 por Alicia Sánchez-Requena

FLAME (Film, Language and Media in Education) is an innovative project that combines the areas of teaching foreign languages with film and media. It is based in Manchester Metropolitan University and its main aim is to promote research projects as well as become a reference point for those working on the field. To find out more about FLAME, visit https://www.hssr.mmu.ac.uk/flameresearch/

Their first conference was held in June 2015 with a huge success. It was a fantastic and well-organised event that put together professionals from different parts of the world. Dr. Kieran Donaghy and Prof. Brian Tomlinson were keyspeakers in an event that had around 60 speakers and more than 100 participants. More than 95% of the attendees expressed their desire to become affiliate members of FLAME. The following video summarises the experience http://https://vimeo.com/141644210

Don’t hesitate to contact the FLAME team if you have any further questions on the project: FLAME@mmu.ac.uk

“A Digital Repository of Filmic Content as a Teaching Resource”

27 de junio de 2015 por Alicia Sánchez-Requena

Tobías, M.Á., Duarte, M.C. & Kemczinski, A. (2015). A Digital Repository of Filmic Content as a Teaching Resource [Un repositorio digital de contenido fílmico como recurso didáctico]. Comunicar, 44, 63-71. (DOI: 10.3916/C44-2015-07).

Just what you were looking for? The surrounding world is itself immersed in a continuously evolving process in which the adjective dynamic defines the language as well as its teaching and learning processes. Regarding the use of video in the classroom, the development of new technologies has facilitated rapid progress since its earliest references in the first half of the 20^th century. This has led to an increase in teachers’ interest and longing to share their teaching experience. There is a desire to get to know one’s counterparts, a desire which has been accelerated by innovations such as Internet 2.0. In this way, teachers multiply the rewarding feeling they get from the effort they put into preparing material. Nowadays, not only do our own pupils benefit from our work, but teachers and students globally can also reap the rewards.

In this article from the journal Comunicar, the authors present a project designed to recover informative content from videos (known by the acronym RECIF in Portuguese). Their objective is to gather videos to include in lessons, an idea that has been developing over the past few years. More information can be found on their website, available in Portuguese, Spanish and English, and presented from Paraná, Brazil (http://www.recif-ufpr.net/es/). One of the current gaps regarding the use of authentic audiovisual material is precisely the difficulty of sharing such resources; projects like RECIF mark a new era in which such difficulties are overcome..

As a result, this type of initiative provides web users with a resource that is refreshed daily, optimising time and effort and preventing teachers from having to reinvent the wheel every day.