online application markus reuter
DESCRIPTION
This is... ...my application for the University of Arts and Design Helsinki (TAIK) for the international MA program "ePedagogy Design - Visual Knowledge". Here you can see my CV, Letter of Motivation, and some projects I did so far.TRANSCRIPT
markusreutermarkusreuter / haferweg 15 / 22769 hamburg
University of Art and Design HelsinkiApplication OfficeHämeentie 135 C
00560 HelsinkiFinland
haferweg 1522769 hamburg
+49.177.4353936
www.roitsch.info
Dear Sir or Madam,
I would like to apply for the MA program “ePedagogy Design - Visual Knowledge”.
I am presently studying educational science at the University of Hamburg. The focus of my study is the connection of education and creative elements, espacially visuali-satitions with the help of different media (technology).During my last years I accomplished different projects, which all have the ability to combine design, interculturality, and education. My personal motive for my applica-tion is that the University of Arts and Design Helsinki will provide their students with the MA program “ePedagogy design” exactly these three factors. The international MA program would perfectly provide my career to become an educator, who can combine the three elements design, interculturality, and education.
My application, especially my study plan might be very diffrent to other ones you will receive. Within my study plan I want to show you my development chronologically arranged in order to give you the explanation why I became the person I am right now and why I would like to apply for the MA program “ePedagogy Design”.Thank you very much for your consideration.
Sincereley,
Markus Reuter
22 Febraury 2009
curiculumvitae
22 January 1982in Düsseldorf, Germany
Haferweg 1522769 [email protected]
born
adress
mobileemail
experience
University of Hamburg, Project ePUSH http://mms.uni-hamburg.de/zentrale/projects/view/7
Student employee: Public relations, Visualizations and Evaluation
University of HamburgTutor: for the seminar „ePortfolio“
Warner Chappell Music GmbH & Co. Kg Germany http://warnerchappell.com
Administration and Copyright Management
Amnesty International New York, USA http://amnestyusa.org/educate/about/page.do?id=1102103
Volunteer: Projects for the section „Human Rights Education“
Cultural Care, NewYork City, USA http://culturalcare.com
Aupair
Internationale Jugendgemeinschaftsdienste, IJGD http://ijgd.de
Internship: Planing, Realization, and Evaluation of an international Workcamp
Martin Leyer-Pritzkow; Curator http://www.mlpart.com/index_engl.htm
Student employee: Customer Aquisition, Planing & Realization of exhibitions
Catholic Community Service http://dem-leben-dienen.de/
Team leader: Planing, Realization, and Evaluation of different camps
June 08 - Present
Sept 08 - Present
Oct 07 - Present
Nov 05 – April 06
Sept 05 – Sept 06
May 04 - Sept 04
Dec 01 – Jan 03
May 95 – Sept 03
education
Sept 2006 - Present
Sept 03 – June 05
Sept 92 – June 02
University of HamburgStudy of Pedagogy
University of RegensburgStudy of Pedagogy, Pre-diploma
Goethe-Gymnasium DüsseldorfAbitur
skills
LanguageMedia
German (native), English (fluent), French and Spanish (basics)Adobe-Products, Office-Products, CSS, HTML, Final Cut
markusreuter
myapplication
The first project I would like to present is the idea behind my application. As you may have noticed
there are several elements which recur throughout the application. These elements shall create a
specific corporate identity. A corporate identity in-
cludes different aspects: corporate design, personal
identity, and corporate communication.
My corporate design is very simple and well struc-
tured. The first element is the speech bubble, which
occurs on every piece of my application. The speech
bubble is a visualisation of communication (of
speech), but simultaneously a medium of communi-
cation itself - it visualises the content of speech via
writing. The beholder reads the writing and thereby
a communication process is created. Communication is a basic element of education. Besides the
speech bubbles I use the same font and colors to create an effect of recognition. In my letter of
motivation you can find two different kinds of (hyper-)links. The first one is a hyperlink in form
of the url (e.g. www.markus-reuter.com), which leads to a certain project or topic you should visit
to attain more information. The other link, in
form of blue underlined expressions refers to
a certain part in my application. The design of
the second link is inspired by the hyperlinks in
the internet. For example letter of motivation
(above) or the link googlemaps, which refers to
a single project in my portfolio.
My personal identity are the three basic ele-
ments design, intercultural aspects, and ed-
cuation, which creates the basis for my aimed
profession. You will recognize that these three elements matter throughout all my projects but also
throughout all the experiences of work I have had (curriculumvitae).
The corporate communication is basically the ap-
plication itself. First is the written sample, second
is the website www.markus-reuter.com which I
designed for the application to simplify the hy-
perlinks within this application. The online ap-
plication is the same as the written one, but em-
beded into a flash document so you can browse
with the ease of visualisation provided by the
internet.
The basic idea was to present some of my skills through the application itself. I used layout
and text editing (Adobe InDesign) to create the written application. With the help of image
editing software (Adobe Photoshop and Il-
lustrator) I embeded the images into the
doucments. Using CSS and HTML I was able
to design the online application. Skills of
visualisation, helped me to commit my ide-
as/thoughts to paper.
My first of all steps was to create a mind
map on my wall to visualise the structure
and concept of my application. The visu-
alisation was the golden thread throughout
my whole process of application.
whyme
Within my study plan I would like to explain my reasons why I am applying for the MA program
“ePedagogy Design” at the University of Arts and Design Helsinki. The task is not just solved by
simplemindedly listing my reasons, I would like to explain why I have been dealing with the topics
of design, interculturality, and education for a long time and why I would like to extend my skills in
dealing with these topics through the MA program.
Since I can remember I was always confronted with the three topics design, interculturality, and
education. It came naturally to me that I became an educator. My grandmother and my mother both
were kindergarden teachers. My father is an trainee teacher at the public utility. My grandfather was
a carpenter and my whole familiy has the aptitude to be called a “do-it-yourself” family, it means
that crafting and creativity is spread throughout my whole family. In my circle of friends most of the
people do some kind of creative work. Many of them are working in an advertising agency, or study-
ing arts and design. It always affected me to socialize with people with creative professions. After I
finished my school leaving exams, I was not quite sure what to do. During my community service, I
had conversations with different people who knew me the best, and they all recommended me to
look for a scope of work where I am dealing with people, because as they told me I had the ability
to be good with people. I came to the idea to study pedagogy at the University of Regensburg.
During my second year at the university I had to make an internship. I decided to lead an interna-
tional work camp. I was fascinated by the combination of intercultural aspects and edcuation. So
I thought about having more experience in that field. I decided to make a break before my pre-
diploma to get some work experience abroad.
During my year in New York City I was an au pair for an US-american family. My main job was to
care for a 10-year old boy. The experience to live within a different culture was unique. Especially
the city itself, New York, had and still has a lasting effect on me. During my time abroad I was able to
work for Amnesty International USA. I volunteered for the Human Rights Education program.
The combination of education and the creative aura of New York inspired me to decide that I wanted
to change the University.
I changed to the University of Hamburg after my pre-diploma in order to study pedagogy within
the new media. The faculty of pedagogy at the University was very interesting for me. The program
ePUSH and the multi media studio are good examples of the usage of new media within education.
Through the seminar “Visual Knowledge Culture” of Torsten Meyer I was asked to accomplish my
own project. I developed the project “GoogleMaps”. The project is still ongoing, but preliminiary
feedback has been exceedingly positive. Torsten Meyer liked the project and asked me to join the
faculty’s mayor project ePUSH, where the faculty wants to help shape the ICT-developments for the
section education.
My first project was “studylog“, where I designed a video for the “knowledge construction tool”.
I started to gain more interest in the topic of new media. Last October I started to run a weblog,
whytaik whyePedagogydesign
“roitsch.info”, where I write on a variety of topics affecting me, such as design, music, or art. And
within my choices of lectures and seminars I centred upon education and new media. For the semi-
nar “Change of Media - Change of Education” I was participating in the work of creating a wiki about
the seminars topic. I joined a group with students of the MA program “ePedagogy Design”, Joni and
Noora. We handled the topic „Central Perspective, book print and beyond“. My own part dealed with
the topic “Google and the Central Perspective”.
In the following semester I got the assignment to develop posters to make ePUSH and its sub-
projects more public. The ePUSH posters were hung up throughout the entire faculty.
Another project was to develop a visualisation of a survey about the students media use. I am cur-
rently designing the surveys visualisation with the help of Ole Koch.
Recently I designed a video for the seminar “Pedagogical Media Theory”. The video “finding an-
swers” is about the development of media which are used to find aswers to certain questions.
As you can see my progression of studying pedagogy in order to become an educator who can
combine the three elements design, interculturality, and education was influenced by many things
throughout many years. I enjoyed every single project and would like to go on with my progression
by attending the MA program “ePedagogy Design - Visual Knowledge” at the University of Arts and
Design Helsinki.
The MA program is the perfect combination of my three basic fields of interest. The international
program is offered to students from all over the world and I would like to make use of the intercul-
turality in order to collect different point of views and different options to deal with educational
problems. The focus on technology and especially new media is a perfect combination to the scien-
tific work of education. In my opionion using technology in education has some great advantages
but also bears a lots of challenges. I would like to join the MA program to learn more about the topic
and gain skills to cope with these challenges.
Within my application you can recognise my personal skills and strenghts. I feel that my streghts
lie with thinking creatively, constructively solving problems and using visualization to generate the
greatest amount of impact. Further, I feel that I am a strong motivated team worker. The ongoing
project surveys visualisation allows me to apply these skills. The project was very well received by
our superiors.
My future plan is to merge design and interculturality into education. In March 2009 I will start an
internship at “mpg Experience Design”. Their scope of work contains developing interactive exhibi-
tions for musems or science centers. I conceive to work in such a scope of work, it would perfectly
combine my personal interests with my profession.
The MA program “ePedagogy Design” would help me to extend my skills and would accompany me
to make my future plan come true.
internationalworkcamp
In summer 2004 I fulfilled my required internship for my pre-diploma. I was in charge of an interna-
tional work camp, where 11 international youths were asked to reconstruct a playground in Berlin.
My internship included the preparation of the camp, the realisation of the work we were assigned
to do, the evaluation of the program and a presentation of the results at a meeting with the joint
service, IJGD.
The preparation began with a training program where I learned a theoretical basis and some practi-
cal tutorials about variant topics as civic education, self-organisation, intercultural or social lear-
ning. I also learned about the legal points of an international work camp and its organisational
processing.
Two weeks before the actual work camp the organisa-
tional and educational preperation had begun. During
the camp in Berlin I needed to handle the realisation,
the supervision of the international youth group as
well as the management of the budget for the whole
group.
The youth group consisted of 11 different people
from around the world.
Our work assignment was to reconstruct an adventure
playground. The adventure playground was based in an underdeveloped neighbourhood of Berlin.
Mostly children came to the playground in order to distract themselves from their situations at
home. The result was that the whole group had an additio-
nal work to accomplish, we needed to care for the children
as well. It was very interesting to see how the whole group
was interacting differently with problems resulted from va-
rieties of the cultural background. Most of the children were
not able to speak English and most of the work camp parti-
cipants didn‘t speak German. But the atmosphere was very
good and we fulfilled our assignment more than satisfying.
The work camp was my first experience with an assignment
I needed to fulfil with a group of people with different cultural backgrounds. We needed to const-
ruct something with the help of different skills and needed to handle the situation that we all have
different cultural relations to most of the things we dealed with.
This experience inspired me to work in an intercultural context of edcuation and I was sure I wanted
to create things which can be received by people.
humanrightseducation
During my year abroad in New York City from September 2005 till September 2006, I was an au pair
for an US-american Family. During that year I had the
most impressive experiences and inspirations I could
have ever imagined. In just a few other cities of the world
the cultural impact is as omnipresent as in New York
City. But not only the cultural variety was a big impres-
sion, also the ubiquitous creativity throughout the city
had a big impact on me. I was sure that when I go back
to Germany I would try to integrate these two elements
much more within my study. I wanted to use creativity to
provide education. I wanted to have contact to different
cultures to use the impressions to extend my options of education methods. At that time I was sure
to change my university to fulfil these ideas.
After a few months I was given the opportunity to use my
spare time for a traineeship at Amnesty International USA. In
the time between November 2005 and April 2006 I worked
for the Human Rights Education program. My responsibili-
ties were conducting research and assisting on administra-
tive matters.
My assignment was to collect information about the US-
american education system. Amnesty International and Joy
Berry, a famous American author of children self-help books,
published a book about the Human Rights for kids, “Mine &
Yours“. Amnesty International had the purpose to constitute
the book as a schoolbook for elementary schools through-
out the USA.
For the integration of the book into the everyday school life
it was necessary to know within which subjects the Human
Rights can be taught. I was asked to find out which subjects were taught throughout one state and
who was responsible for the curriculums in this state. I made a research on the organization of the
state’s education system for the 50 states of America and made contact to the responsible policy
makers.
The involvement in the work of the Human Rights Education program was a great experience for
me. I learned a lot about the US-american education system, and the way how a creative and usefull
product needs to make its way through officialdom to get utilised.
newyork
googlemaps
The seminar “Visual Knowledge Culture” was offered by Torsten Meyer for the summer semester
2008. I visited the seminar enthusiastically because this was one of the first seminars for me, where
we students were allowed to find our own field of attention and were asked to develop our own
project which has connections to the seminar‘s topic.
I was always interested into “Google” and all their products. One session dealed with visual rep-
resentations of our world, “Cartography”. At first
I came up with the idea to embed our faculty
into the “GoogleMaps” system. The background
was to support the student‘s spatial orienta-
tion throughout the campus. At the beginning
of someones study the student needs to find
his way throughout the campus, for example
he needs to find a special building or needs to
know where he can apply for a scholarship. The
idea was realised pretty fast.
More and more ideas came into my mind. I thought about the connection of the virtual world with
the reality. The idea was to embed a “GoogleMaps” marker into real life. A marker made of sturdy
material should be mounted in front of the faculty‘s main
building inorder to arouse the students attention. It is the
same spot as the spot of the digital marker in “Google-
Maps” and it looks the same, so the effect of recognition
is guaranteed.
The project started fictional but the idea gained more and
more interest so that the project became one project of
the faculty‘s mayor project ePUSH.
After I convinced executives of our faculty, who had to de-
cide whether to support the project or not, the project developed to the idea to embed all buildings
of our faculty into the “GoogleMaps” network and to embed “GoogleMaps” marker infront of every
main buidling. Right now, the status of realisation is processing. Torsten Meyer had the idea to in-
corporate the College of Fine Arts of Hamburg. It has to be considered that the markers need to be
mounted very carefully inorder to protect them against vandalism.
A second idea was that theoretically the satellites of “Google” will scan the world one day and the
“real life” marker is scanned by a satellite and will be published by “GoogleMaps”. Then the repre-
sentation of the virtual world in the real world will be represented in the virtual world again.
The project is an attempt to create a cut through the real world by the virtual world and back-
wards.
study.log
“study.log” is a knowledge construction tool, which was developed by employees of the education-
al science faculty of the University of Hamburg. “study.log“ is now also a part of the mayor project
ePUSH. Sebastian Plönges and I were asked to support
the project by taking over the public relations and be-
come the interface between users and developers.
The work included the servicing of the corresponding
web site “www.studylog.de”. Our first task was to cre-
ate a new video which explains the basic ideas and the
object of “study.log”. We taped different kinds of media
which are usually used to collect material, information
or knowledge. Then we presented the advantages of “study.
log” by making screen recordings of the tool in action.
The realisation of the video exacted a big amount of organi-
sational talent. We needed a female narrator, an expert for
voice recording, and someone to compose a musical work
for the background.
The video can be seen at www.vimeo.com/3295835
In January 2009 the first German “BarCamp” with the top-
ic “Design” took place in Cologne. And I went to the
“DesignCamp” in order hold a session about the design
aspects of “study.log”. I focused on the visualisation
aspects of presenting the material in different kinds of
arrangements.
The presentation was followed by a discussion about
the content of the session. The session was taped by
the organiser and streamed online. In this way the pub-
licity effect of the session was very big.
roitsch.info
A weblog is an easy to handle (new) medium for the publisher as well as the for the readers to
present aspects of a life and opinions to specific topics. In my opinion a weblog is a mixture of a
diary and a medium of communication.
My weblog www.roitsch.info started Octo-
ber 2008. I want to collect and share interest-
ing things I met through the internet but also
through my everyday life. Basically I am writing
about anything which matters to me. The catego-
ries are and will not be limited. In my blog I post
about topics like design, visualisations, observa-
tions of daily life, ideas or music. These topics all
have the same effect, they influence me in the way I see things, they represent my interests. Thus
you can say my web blog is a reduced presentation of myself. I want to share my impressions with
the world in order to communicate about these topics.
The strengt h of weblogs is the cultural and social exchange. People read my posts, write comments
or create links to my blog/posts. The interexchange through communication creates new points of
views. These new points of views can lead to new states of mind and create ideas. According to my
opinion ideas are the results of inspiration and
creativity.
These two elements are essential, also within the
scope of education. Thus the weblog influences
me in the way I deal with the topic education.
A weblog can be reached by everybody in the
whole world, consequently there are no cultural
or intellectual borders.
Another strength of the weblog is that within this
medium you can embed different kinds of media, e.g. texts, videos, music, or flash animations. Thus
a personal benefit is that I can use my weblog to publish different projects I accomplished. I can
connect them and present them to people, who are giving me feedback. The feedback helps me
to find ways of improvement. I learn with the help of people from all over the world, with different
cultural backgrounds.
My weblog is a perfect instrument to combine the three essential elements I want to work with:
design/creativity, interculturality, and education.
Map of visitors of my weblog
google¢ralperspective
In the summer semester 2008 I attended the seminar “Change of media - Change of educational
settings”, which was open to students from the international master program “ePedagogy Design
– Visual Knowledge Building” as well as to students of educational science from the University of
Hamburg. In this seminar we dealed with different literature which have a focus on media theory. I
joined a group with students from Finland, Joni and Noora. We handled the topic “Central Perspec-
tive, book print and beyond”. It was my first seminar where I worked together in a group with people
I never met for real. We had conversations through emails and “Skype”. It was a very interesting
experience for me.
The assignment was to create a wiki about our
topic. We subdivided the assignment into differ-
ent parts and each of us three developed his/her
own part but with consideration of the others.
I dealed with the supposition that it is often taken
for granted that “Google” is getting a monopoly
of knowledge. And with its project to digitalise
books, “Google” will continue to prove the sup-
position. In the first part of the wiki I explained the process of digitalisation and reported about the
controversies, which occurred recently.
The second part deals with the consequences of the overload of information, offered by the inter-
net, espacially offered by “Google”.
I reported about the changes which developed
with the spreading of the medium internet and
the rise of “Google” to the most used search en-
gine world-wide. Espacially educators have to
deal with the impacts of these changes. Within
my part of the wiki, I discuss the advantages and
disadvantages, which come along with these
changes.
You can find the wiki under this url:
http://wiki.christinaferner.de/doku.php?id=content:central_perspective_book_print:00_overview
In order to read it, please use the login and password from the written application.
epushposters
One of my first assignments at the mayor project ePUSH was to develop an advertising campaign
to make ePUSH and its sub-projects more public throughout our faculty. Sebastian Plönges, Carolin
Seng and I were instructed to handle this assignment.
The idea was to hang up posters with pictures with
unique closeups of our faculty. The posters were labled
with quotes from texts with their focus on media theo-
retical topics. On the one hand we wanted to visualise
the connection to the faculty by showing pictures of it
and on the other hand we needed to embed the topic
we are dealing with in the ePUSH project. For example
we used quotes from the “Horizon Report”, which is a
qualitative research project that seeks to identify and
describe emerging technologies likely to have a large
impact on teaching, learning, research, or creative ex-
pression within learning-focused organizations.
We wanted to use the advantages of “guerilla market-
ing” which use uncommon actions to extend a prod-
ucts publicity. One of our idea was to make different
steps of promotion. The first step included to hang up
posters throughout the whole faculty but with no ref-
erences of where the posters are coming from. Even
in the second step we did not publish on the posters
who was responsible for the campaign. We wanted to
arouse the students attention by showing them the
information on the posters but the missing initiator
should arouse even more curiosity. The posters of the
third step included references to the ePUSH project.
At the best students would then realize the connec-
tion of ePUSH, the faculty, and technologies (espa-
cially new media), which are used within learning en-
viroments.
surveyvisualisation
For the mayor project ePUSH we employees were asked to develop a visualisation for this years
survey about the students media use. Ole Koch and me chose to deal with the assignment.
At first we thought about the main aspects of the survey. In the main focus were the students and
their contact to „new medias“. For example their usage of weblogs, online coummunities, or their
contact to medias within their study. But also technical questions were important, for example what
kind of operating system their are using or what kind of internet connection.
The first work step was to chose the right kind of medium to present the results. That wasn‘t easy be-
cause the survey contains more than 30 questi-
ons. We choose a flash animation which should
be embedded into the faculty‘s web page to
provide a big level of flexibility and to get the
student‘s attention. We had the idea that the
beholder should be animated to interact with
the visualisation. The main content of the eva-
luation is the student himself but we also wan-
ted to show the connection to the university. In
order to combine students, the university and
the results of the survey, we chose an image of the university with the faculty‘s main buildings from
the bird‘s eye perspective. This image is the background of our visualisation. We wanted animated
students to run around the campus and they should present the results themselves. The students
run around in different colors for different kind of questions. For the realisation we taped our mo-
vements from above with a video camera. Then we embedded these movements as an animation
into the animated campus. The result was that the students are running around the campus and
when you scroll over one certain student with your cursor the animated student holds up a sign with
its certain question. When you click onto the
sign or the student, the sign turns around and
shows the results.
The results should not only represent this
years evaluation, but also the change to last
years results. We came up with a new form of
pie chart. The percentage of an answer (e.g.
87% of students are using an internet flat
rate) was represented by the circle‘s area. We
used the advantages of flash animations and brought the circle to widen. The widening shows the
increase or decrease in comparison to last years results. The evaluation was not completed yet, as
well as the animation. The base frame works and the single animations as well but right now we
need to combine all aspects into one flash animation. As soon as the results are evaluated the flash
animation of this years survey will be finished.
findinganswers
For the seminar “Pedagogical Media Theory” in the winter semester 2008 I had to make a multi me-
dia snippet, for example a video. The task was to produce a small multi media snippet explaining a
concept or a term related to a discussed media theory.
With the help of a camera, a screen recording program, Fi-
nal Cut, and some crafting skills I designed a video, which
deals on the one hand with the topic how answers to
certain questions can be found. “Google” is currently the
most used tool (or interface) for this task, thus it plays a
main role in my video. On the other hand the video deals
with my professor Torsten Meyer’s thesis that a medium is
not only seen by its observer, but that the observer is also
seen by the medium.
Torsten Meyer uses Jaques Lacan’s “object petit a” to explain an interface in his lecture “Pedagogi-
cal Media Theory: Interfaces, Media, Education”.
“According to Lacan - in the intersection, between subject and object (whose places are not clari-
fied) originates a screen, an interface [inter-face], between their faces.”1
While I read Torsten Meyer’s interpretation of Lacan afterwards I came to the idea to use this as-
sumption for my video.
“Google” is often critized for their observing methods. I used these assumptions to show how the
search engine chooses the results for you, in an ironical way.
You can see the way the results are found as an assumption of a media theory itself. The medium,
e.g. the internet, could be seen as a space of possibilities. Within my video the man in the “Google’s”
box office could be seen as the mechanism, which chooses the possibilities and presents the results
as search results on your screen, on the interface.
I wanted to show how far search engines, especially “Google”, can/might go and I wanted to show
that the medium internet misleads the users to believe that it is always up to date, and always
shows the truth. That’s why the internet is often the first choice to purchase information. A common
task in school is to find information about a certain topic and many pupils (as teachers) believe, by
“googling” some things and printing the results the task is settled. But the real work just begins:
the information needs to be verified and you need to check the reliability. That’s complicated and
hardly taught, mostly because adults even teachers are overchallenged themselves.
The video can be seen at www.vimeo.com/3058505
1. Original quote: “In der Mitte, zwischen Subjekt und Objekt (deren plätze nicht geklärt sind) entsteht – Lacan zufolge – somit ein »Bild-schirm«, eine
Schnittstelle, ein Inter-face, zwischen den Gesichtern.” Meyer, Torsten: Interfaces, Medien, Bildung. Paradigmen einer pädagogischen Medientheorie, 2002,
S.163