London’s Ravensbourne College is launching a new program called the School of Computing for the Creative Industries.
It’s quite hard to work out what it actually involves as their overview reads like a missive from a Hoxton style bar, babbling on about the “learner-practitioner” using the Internet “as an inspirational resource, drawing on that vast, interconnected meme-pool, but returning far more to it than s/he ever withdraws.”
We had to reach for the dictionary to make sense of this part:
“As the creative industries bifurcate into the twin realities of intellectual property businesses, and crafts-for-hire, the new creative has the skill, and panache, to exploit the opportunities of the new creative landscape.”
Apparently these new creatives are connected citizens, “whose passions and campaigns, ideas and innovations appear first on their blog.”
We would have thought that most of the passion manifests itself in the student bar, but the School insists that the new creative “understands that s/he is defined by the impact and credibility of their online presence.”
Now, some of you may be rightly thinking that this sounds more like The School of Buzzword Bullsh*t, but there is some interesting stuff lurking within the industry-speak.
It seems that School will release its learning materials under a Creative Commons license in an attempt to maximise usage and dissemination.
All the technical facilities in the School will be built on open source platforms, with support offered to students wishing to release projects under free and open source licenses.
Although it’s easy to scoff at their daft Nathan Barley airs, this looks to be a brave and innovative move by Ravensbourne College, which may prove a portent for colleges coming to terms with the impact of new technology on teaching.
Overview of the School of Computing for the Creative Industries
Creative Commons