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Overview
(QuickTime, 2 min.)
Summary
Berliner sehen is a hypermedia documentary for German Studies that relies on
an extensive collection of digital video and image materials to form a collaborative
learning environment for beginning to advanced-level students.
Focusing on Berlin, this documentary features live-recorded video and authentic historical documents that depict the cultural, social, and political life of the city.
The hypermedia format of Berliner sehen encourages students to investigate
material in context from different perspectives, to create their own hypermedia
mini-documentaries, and to collaborate with other students on the expansion of
the archives.
Objective
Berliner sehen advances the genre of the interactive documentary
in the French CD-ROM Dans un quartier de Paris (Yale
University Press, 1999) and the Japanese CD-ROM Tanabata
- The
Star Festival (Boticelli Interactive, 1998), the interactive archive
in the Shakespeare
Interactive Archive, and the interactive narrative A
la rencontre de Philippe (Yale University Press, 1994), all pioneered
at
MIT. The design of Berliner sehen represents a crucial next step
in the development of a new generation of learning environments for foreign
languages
and cultures.
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Berliner sehen
A Hypermedia Documentary Integrating the Study of
German Culture and Language
- Project Directors
- Ellen Crocker
- Kurt Fendt
- Co-Investigator
- Janet Murray
Sponsors
Berliner sehen has so far received seed funding through the National
Endowment
for the Humanities, Washington; the Max Kade Foundation, New
York;
the Consortium
for Language Teaching and Learning, New Haven, the Marion and Jasper
Whiting
Foundation, Boston; and the MIT Provost Fund.
Lufthansa
German Airlines is a sponsor
of Berliner sehen.
Direct all inquiries to
Ellen Crocker
Kurt Fendt
Screenshots
Delivery
The Berliner sehen archives, including all texts, images, audio and
video can be accessed through
an innovative, platform independent
hypermedia web application. Berliner sehen is constructed as
an open system that allows students not only to expand the archives but also
to collaborate on the construction of new collections over networks that can
be made available to other users.
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Subject
The contemporary video core of Berliner sehen consists of 18 hours
of natural conversations with Berlin residents from different social backgrounds.
Spoken in authentic German, they acquaint students with the many facets of individual
lives. Together with the extensive archive of texts, images, historical audio
and video, these conversations form an expansive narrative network that engages
students in exploring key cultural issues from diverse points of view. The footage
for Berliner
sehen was filmed during Summer 1995 by the Berlin-based German documentary
video artists INTERACT, who worked in close collaboration with project directors
Crocker and Fendt to create a video expressly designed for the hypermedia format
of this project.
Publications
“Contextualizing Content: The Potential of Hypermedia for Interdisciplinary
Language Learning”, in: v. Hammerstein, K./Kecht, R. (eds.): Languages
Across the Curriculum: Interdisciplinary Structures and Internationalized Education,
Columbus, OH, 2001, Ohio State University Press, pp. 201 - 223 “Die Kohärenz des Nicht-Linearen: Über den Erwerb komplexen
Wissens in Hypertextsystemen”, in: E.W.B. Hess-Lüttich (ed.): Medien,
Texte und Maschinen. Angewandte Mediensemiotik, Frankfurt/Bern/New York,
2001, Peter Lang
“Dynamic Content — A New Model for collaborative learning environments
for language and culture studies”, in: Proceedings
of ED-MEDIA/ED-TELECOM, 10th World Conference on Educational Multimedia and
Hypermedia, Charlottesville, 1998, AACE
“Multimedia as an Interactive Narrative Environment for Learning”,
in: Borchard, F. (ed.): CALICO ‘97
Conference Proceedings
"Neue Wege durch Berlin" Die Zeit, Hamburg, Germany, Number
20, May 9 1997, p. 70.
"Neue Medien in den Geisteswissenschaften - Projekte des MIT" FWU Magazin - Proceedings of the 7. Bundeskongreß der Bildstellen/Medienzentren, Mainz, 16. - 18. Oktober 1995, 1-2 (1996), pp. 101-104.
"New Program will offer students hypermedia visit to Berlin" MIT Tech Talk, Dec. 7, 1994, p.3.
"Hypertext und Medienintegration. Ansätze zum Gebrauch moderner Medien beim Lernen fremder Sprachen". Deutsch als Fremdsprache - Aspekte des Lehrens und Lernens, edited by Theodor Ickler. Olms, Hildesheim, Series: Germanistishe Linguistik, 1993, pp. 45-72.
"The Project Berlin: Learning German with Interactive Video", Wheels for the Mind, London, April 1991, pp. 26-29.
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