Teaching on the importance of education at St. John’s School, Vizag

teaching-st-john-school-vizag

The importance of education is a relevant topic, especially for the joungest. I’ve been lecturing on the topic at St. John’s school, near Vizag (India) and had a great time interacting with the students. Together we have seen examples of Indian thought leaders and famouse personalities, and have drawn a personal map to success. I was really amazed by the knowledge of English of the students, and even more by their enthusiastic particiaption to the class. Together we have celebrated Pongal, a major Indian festival: the students have performed by dancing and singing, as you can see in the photo.Thanks to the Principal, Mrs Anu and her husban Isaac Bathulla, and to fr. John for the invitation.

stjohn-school-vizag

Indian School of Business (ISB) Hyderabad

Indian-School-of-Business-Hyderabad

During my last trip to India I visited the famous ISB (India School of Business) in Hyderabad. The buildings are really iconic and modern: the campus is beautiful and athmosphere is pretty American with an Indian flavor. The environment is as fascinating as the story of this world reputed business school, which you can read in “An Idea Whose Time Has Come: The Story of the Indian School of Business” written by Pramath Raj Sinha.
A big thank you to Raphael for organizing my visit!

 

 

The Knowledge Visualization research group of the University of St. Gallen

knvis-team

Our wonderful research group in St. Gallen! Left to right: Roland, Friederike, Nicole, me and Martin.

Visual Literacy for Management course picture

Visual-Literacy-for-Management-2012

Thank you to the students of the Visual Lieteracy for Management course for their active participation to the activities in class. It has been a great semester 🙂

Goodbye Oscar Niemeyer

The famous Brasilian architect recently passed away, on December 5th 2012, at the age of 104!

I started to admire his work, and write about his work for Brasilia, the new capital of Brasil, back in the ’90s. It really impressed me that the city was planned completely from scratch (an unknown concept in old Europe!) and that he gave it the shape of a plane… the ultimate visual metaphor 😉

 

Economist’s map of the Internet: the realms of GAFA

A recent article on the Economist (1 Dec 2012) portrayed a map of the Internet, with the 4 big players: Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon – abbreviated in GAFA.The articles itself is based ont he metaphor and continuously refers to the visual metaphor. The Economist is going visual 🙂

Thank you Martin for the hint

Visual identity for startups: a guest lecture by Masaba Coffee

In the Visual Literacy for Management course we just had a guest lecuture by Mr. Jean-Claude Luvini, founder of Masaba Coffee Switzerland.

He talked about the fascinating story of his company, supporting an NGO in Uganda through his sales, and about the development of the visual identity. An insightful story both from the “visualization” and from the entrepreneurship perspective, concluded with a taste of fair trade premium arabica coffee, of course!

The impact of social media on the purchasing process

My students of the Visual Literacy for Management course just gave excellent presentations at Interbrand Zurich on the topic of social media and purchasing process. At Interbrand, the largest brand consultancy in the world, Dr. Jürgen Häusler gave us very interesting insights on branding and on his approach/philosphy. Then the students amazed us with insightful and interactive presentation, from PptPlex through Prezi’s animations and live sketching:

The Value of Visualization

A nice article on what are infographics and why they are useful can be found here, and here’s a short video on the valueo of visualization by Column Five:

Thank you Martin for the hint

Khan Academy – educational videos for free

The Khan academy is an incredible success story of education through new media.

E-learining has promised to be the solution to a more personalized and affordable education. Yet, computers alone are not the answer.

Salman Khan had this idea back in 2004, creating educational videos for his cousins, and uploading them on youtube. Now the Khan Academy is a non profit organization, supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and other donors, and has over 3500 videos on any topic. But it’s not only about the videos: it is an integrated learning platform for teachers and students. Indeed teachers are assigning the videos as homework, and they are getting the students to do the exrcises in class, so they can coach them one by one. The platform provides exercises for students and track their results and progresses. Teachers can then check the performances of the students and interveen where needed.