Starlog

View of the Derwent, Hobart

Last week five members of the Digital Futures team flew to Hobart to participate in ascilite 2011: Changing Demands, Changing Directions. The conference, which lasted for three days, covered a wide range of topics including virtual worlds, social media in education, e-readers, mobile technologies and many more. Between the five of us, we were able to attend a number of the high quality presentations on offer.

On day one of the conference the presentation by Dr Simon So from the Hong Kong Institute of Technology caught my particular attention. He discussed the use of QR codes in education and highlighted some of the ways in which this technology is being used at various institutions. At the University of Bath, for example, the students designed a QR-code of the periodic table of chemical elements. The chemical table can further be changed into an interactive memory game for the students to use.

Penny de Byl’s (of Bond University) presentation “Preserving our past with toys of the future” addressed the issue of how we can use technology to preserve intangible cultural history. She discussed the use of augmented reality as a means of interacting with intangible cultural heritage as it allows people to partake in activities rather than simply receiving flat information. At Bond University, Quartz composer and kinect are being used to teach children Indigenous dances. The children copy the movements of the puppets and the software reports back on their progress.

Day two commenced with a keynote by Simon Buckingham of the Open University, followed by a full-day of presentations, workshops and symposiums. Of note was Vickel Narayan (Institute of Technology) session on “Learner generated content as a pedagogical change agent.” He discussed a number of innovative ideas for education. These included the use of ‘hip hop’ for helping low socio-economic and racially disadvantaged students learn and engage as well as an example of students taking control of their own learning spaces, which involved arranging the furniture in a U-shaped formation rather than rows and columns and engineering students making videos about the processes involved in building a boat.

There was of course, in between all the hard work, a great deal of socialising and networking going on. The social event of the week was the James Bond-themed party which saw everyone dressed in their finest attire and decked out in their feathers and tuxedos. Nevertheless, and a little worse for wear, we reconvened for the final day of the conference if ever so slightly less alert than we had been on the previous two days.

The highlight of day three for me was undoubtedly Kwok-Wing Lai’s (of the University of Otago) presentation on “Using collaborative peer feedback and supervision to support doctoral research at a distance.” After an overview of the attrition rates of higher degree by research students in New Zealand and Canada, he discussed the University of Otago’s strategy for counteracting this high drop-out rate. In a program not dissimilar from our own Shirley Reushle’s Collaborative Community Mentoring Program, the University of Otago have developed a collaborative peer-support and supervision model to support distance doctoral students in New Zealand. The program, which has been operating for four years, has proven successful and contributed to a decrease in the number of doctoral students opting out of their studies.

After a fabulous three days, it was time to board the plane and return to the real world. The ascilite conference was invaluable and has prompted me to produce a paper that I can present at ascilite 2012, which will be held in Wellington, New Zealand.

Dr Amy Antonio

As the old cliché says “All good things come to an end” and alas we look back on the final day of what has proven to be a superb conference.

After a tasty conference dinner the night before, day three began with a performance of a piece called Pentaphonics by two studnents of the Queensland Conservatorium. Unfortunately I did not catch their name, but it was a wonderful performance despite a hard drive failure at one point. The music, which blends precomposed music, improvisation, and feedback (with custom software that detects feedback from handheld lights in the audience), was beautiful. It was ambient with a few analogue bleeps thrown in and reminded me somewhat of the work of Brian Eno and the electronic group Orbital.

Next up was a keynote by Ernest Edmonds a leader in the area of interactive art and computer interaction, and Director of Creativity and Cognition Studios, UTS. The title of Ernest’s talk was “Art and Interaction” and he showed some of the work that has been created by the studio. As a constructivist thinker, his work and ideas will always challenge and I will go away and take a closer look.

On to the sessions:

Dr Tim Marsh of James Cook University gave a talk about serious gaming. Serious gaming is a branch of gaming that distinguishes itself by being less about entertainment and more about training, learning, and education. Tim pointed out a few serious games that he has worked on:

Waker from the Singapore-MIT game lab is puzzle/platform game designed for 11-14 year old students to better conceptualise classical physics concepts, e.g. displacement, velocity, etc. As Tim highlighted, this would be an example of a game that uses traditional video game mechanics where as other work that he has done could be seen as experimental environments with fewer gaming characteristics. For this type, Tim showed off an experimental environment being created for the SEMAT project – a project aimed at the remote  monitoring of aquatic and coastal environments. The work being created by Tim’s team is an experimental space that will allow the analysis and modelling of data sent back – it sounds  fantastic and I will follow progress with interest.

The concurrent stream featured a focus on the role of iPads in media production from the visually and aurally stunning Ishq to the immensely entertaining animation ‘Playtime’ by New Zealand Masters student Thomas Verbeeck.  Thomas was both very frank and inspiring in his assessment of the amount of work animation requires and I was astounded that someone would be able to teach themselves to this level of quality.  Discussions about wire-frames and body movement were couched in laymans’ terms and I was saddened that the time constraints didn’t allow for an encore performance of his work.  As he revealed that contacts at Pixar and WETA had critiqued his work, I was led to reflect on how much the New Zealanders had dominated the conference (and recent sporting events).

Overall, the conference was well-organised, the papers of a high quality and the keynotes thought-provoking.  It has given me plenty of new contacts (and a few fruitful meetings already) as well as a ton of new things to consider in my day-to-day job.  It is very hard indeed to think that all of that was fit into only three days.

Neil Martin and Adrian Stagg

It’s been another fascinating day at Create World in Brisbane. Yesterday over dinner, Adrian and I were discussing whether it would be possible to equal Tom Ang’s keynote – well today Ian Taylor did just that with an entertaining presentation.

Ian is a former New Zealand singer and TV presenter that now runs a world-leading multimedia company called Animation Research Limited. Ian began his talk by reflecting on his upbringing as a Maori living on the East Coast of the North Island where there was no electricity. He is amazed at the high tech world that he now inhabits.

Animation Research Limited was established in 1988 in Dunedin and has provided animation for major sporting events such as The Americas Cup, Formula One, and Ashes Cricket. His animators have also animated news events such as modelling Brisbane in the 2011 floods. Ian showed that a combination of creativity and technology can achieve great feats. I was particularly amazed at a demonstration of an air traffic control simulation environment that his team had put together – for example conditions in rainy situations.

Ian is particularly excited about the potential of augmented reality and at the end of his talk demonstrated a couple of iPad apps that shows how one can view Louis Vuitton shoes in three dimensional animation when placed over a magazine advert. It is certainly something we will be following closely as the application and impact of augmented reality become clearer.

Other highlights of the day included:

• A panel discussion on place and creativity emphasised that purpose designed spaces, both in physical and virtual places, are vital in terms of constructing creative environments.
• An exploration of the iPad as a musical instrument. Jamie Gabriel of MacQuarie Univeristy highlighted the advantages of using the iPad as a musical instrument and demonstrated how it can do things in terms of composition that traditional instruments such as piano and guitar cannot do, which is due basically to physics. Jamie has written an app that he believes shows that the iPad can be viewed as an instrument in its own right.
• Using an iPad in assessment of student live performance. Julia Wren of Edith Cowan University showed how the mobility and functionality of the iPad has made it possible to assess Performing Arts students in real time and through peer assessment. The iPad is used to film performance and using ipsative assessment – the students performance can be compared over two different time periods – e.g. from one semester to the other. A really cool thing about the app that has been created for the purposes of assessment, is that students can get feedback that tells them what they need to do to improve their performance to achieve a higher score in the next assessment. Additionally, the criteria of assessment have been agreed with their peer group through the use of clicker technology that allowed fellow students to understand what standards are expected based on videos of the previous year’s cohort.
• Using gamification to show relatedness of museum objects. This was a demonstration by Catherine Styles of the National Museum of Australia of an iPad game called Sembl that allows school students to compare the relatedness of objects in museums. For example handcuffs and a Welsh Organ were offered as a challenge with (one child making the insighful connection that they both have keys, but have very different functions. As a board game the challenge is for the students to find unique attributes shared between disparate objects in the museums and by making new links move forward to the next round of the game.) The feedback from both students, teachers and curators has been overwhelmingly positive.
• iOS app development in a New Zealand national park. Grant Baxter of the University of Otago showed how design students responded to the question “How can iPhone/iPad technology be used by visitors to New Zealand national parks?” Grant highlighted some of the traps that students fell into in terms of design such as losing sight of functionality over aesthetics. However, a couple of apps are being moved into production one of which a bird conservation app looks very interesting. Grant showed how mobile technology can enhance the discover experience in a national park through location awareness and information sharing – so watch this space.

All in all, another (truly) enlightening day. What will tomorrow bring?

Neil Martin and Adrian Stagg

This week Neil and I will be reporting back from the Apple University Consortium CreateWorld Conference. The purpose of the CreateWorld conference lies in ‘for the members, by the members’ and embodies the spirit of sharing knowledge and practice. For those who have never attended, CreateWorld brings together creative arts, technology and education. The schedule, therefore, is quite diverse and we’ll bring you our highlights over the next three days.

Opening Remarks

What better way to start but to talk about change and challenge? The AUC Chair, Tony Grey (University of Tasmania) succinctly summed up the external environment for higher education as indicated by:

• a steady or declining amount of funding for Higher Education
• a decrease in the number of traditional computer labs (and an increased reliance on ‘bring your own device’)
• an increase in the use and acceptance of the ePub format and a similar increase in the use of platform-agnostic open source software
• and an increase in expectations of ubiquitous wifi on campus, which will impact on the way services are delivered and students are supported.

All of these challenges require a degree of re-conceptualising, flexibility, creativity and community in order to create a viable future for higher education, not only in Australia, but worldwide. A fitting start to the conference, indeed.

Musical Performance

Next up was a performance of electronic music by New South Wales collective, Tralala Blip. The performers have a range of disabilities and use iPads, Apple technology and digital and analogue music technology to create a unique musical expression. They received a great reception from the audience for their original compositions.

Creatively designed degrees?

The afternoon session ‘Evolving tools, teaching and methods in technology enabled learning’ from Judit Klein (AUT) continued this theme. Technology, like education, she argues, is in a constant state of change and interaction with both is a personal experience. The point was raised that students starting a degree now will have to be prepared to use technologies and apply for jobs that don’t yet exist. 

For universities, expectations regarding resources are changing. Traditionally, students have been directed to primarily print-based learning resources, but this is increasingly changing to multimedia resources. Additionally, higher education is becoming more inter-disciplinary, which means that resources need to be viewed from a university rather than Faculty level.

The interesting point about the on-campus experience for the AUT Bachelor of Creative Technology Degree was that physical space was shared by first to third year students who are able to collaborate, mentor and create together, an opportunity which does not occur in most universities.

In many ways, this is a work environment similar to the Australian Digital Futures Institute – we have an open-plan creative space where academic and professional staff work together around project needs rather than management reporting lines. There should be more focus on transferable skills such as problem-solving and teamwork within an industry context, rather than a pure content focus.

Digital Photography

The day was rounded up by Tom Ang. Tom shows that the notion of sharing is alive and well in the photography world with Flickr reporting 3000 photos uploaded per minute, while Facebook users upload a total of 200 million photos per day.

The social history of the image stretches back to 1854, when the Emperor Napolean III and Queen Victoria popularized the photographic image. (This goes to show that mainstreaming of technology that requires a ‘celebrity’ backer is certainly nothing new).

Kodak, we are shown, built their business empire on making the equipment for photography cheap and accessible, and making profit from the processing and supply of the content (perhaps the same business model as the Kindle Fire?).

The accessibility of the technology, coupled with ease of use, made photography viable for amateur hobby enthusiasts – and in our lifetime we have seen a similar change in a number of technologies. The digitisation of a traditionally print-based medium (the photograph) was a one-to-one social interaction.

By digitising photos their social impact increases. It is possible therefore, for a wide audience to enjoy, use or discuss the image more widely. This dissemination does not diminish the quality of the content, but rather this sharing makes the image more accessible.

In the same way, one can reasonably track these changes to information resources. The continual move to commodify information is problematic as once information is shared, it can be further shared without diminishing the content – but I would argue that the information is only worth something once it has been shared, used, and subsequently re-used.

This notion defies traditional business models, so approaches like Kodak’s and Amazon’s are the only viable solutions to commercialising content. My question, therefore, given the ubiquity of information, is what should universities truly be focused upon?

Tom states, ‘the only good image is the used image’ and this captures the sentiment perfectly. The aim of the photo is to act as visual DNA, moving through the web, looking for the perfect mate so that something new and unique can be created. The same applies to information.

For me then, the message is clear. From today, I’ll be taking away a broader view of the education environment and the surety that the future will involve some risk-taking, collaboration and a lot of creativity.

You can follow the conference via Twitter (#cw11), or via the conference website.

Adrian Stagg and Neil Martin