"From
States to Regional and Continental Integration:
Will Americans and Europeans Live Tomorrow in
the Same World?"
Presentation for TIESWeb Miami Congress, 16 November
2002
Colette Mazzucelli, MALD, PhD,
FIBA
Center for Educational Outreach & Innovation
(CEO&I), Teachers College, Columbia University
and Rotary Center for International Studies in
Peace and Conflict Resolution, Institute of Political
Studies (Sciences Po), Paris
These
brief remarks present my work with a team of educators
on several continents using a variety of multimedia
tools. Email exchanges, listserv dissemination,
file sharing, moderated threaded discussions,
Internet PC videoconferences and traditional classroom
teaching allow us to create the Transatlantic
Internet/Multimedia Seminar Southeastern Europe
(TIMSSE).
This
seminar is offered for credit to students at Institute
of Political Studies in Paris and the Center for
Applied Policy Research (CAP) in cooperation with
the University of Munich. It takes place over
a 15-week period. Additional sites in New York,
Houston, Bucharest, Ljubljana, San Jose and several
cities in China make the series global in its
outreach.
Numerous
in-kind technological contributions, particularly
free use of the CUseeMe server located at the
Houston Community College System, http://www.hccs.cc.tx.us/,
enable the seminar to develop over time.
The
pedagogical effectiveness of multimedia tools
we use is being established across continents
through our experience in the TIMSSE series. There
are several reasons educational offerings of this
type could offer a way for Americans and Europeans
to gain a sense of the future world in which they
are destined to live together.
First,
the series is a low cost project to implement.
Most of the tools we use are available either
free of charge on the public domain or can be
purchased at minimal cost ($50 or less). The TIMSSE
website, http://www.timsse.com,
provides the key to the project's organization.
Second,
the project emphasizes teamwork and human interactions.
The multimedia tools support the seminar's content
as well as personalized exchanges. Students, faculty,
practitioners who serve as guest speakers, and
the audiences we invite to participate with us
feel part of a unique learning community.
Third,
our technology use is part of the solution. It
focuses attention on helping our partners who
need to upgrade their infrastructure. Our work
involving Costa Rica in the series since 1999
is a case in point. It is also of potential relevance
to countries that are likely to influence tomorrow's
world and yet are currently left out of the information
revolution.
Fourth,
we also intend to make use of radio and other
tools that areas with infrastructure development
issues could benefit from at the present time.
The technology we rely upon performs well at low
modem speeds.
Lastly,
we aim to make this seminar engage people with
one another. Technology can be a distraction from
human discourse, if we are not careful. Our awareness
of this fact prompts us to emphasize the human
element in our team teaching and to work with
tools that are easy to use and pedagogically effective.
