WOW – Chaucer meets Machinima

Posted on December 1, 2010 by Ian
Graham Barwell & Chris Moore

Graham & Chris

For those not familiar with the term, Machinima – you can pronounce that ‘ch’ as either a ‘k’ or a ‘sh’ by the way – involves making films within computer modelled environments, typically within 3D game environments. (See a more extensive definition at machinima.org, or just google ‘YouTube Machinima’ and open up any one of the thousands of results that you get.) It might not be the sort of thing you would expect to be the focus of study inside a medieval literature course at university, but Graham Barwell (University of Wollongong) and Chris Moore (Deakin University) thought they might give it a shot. They put together students studying digital communications with students studying Chaucer, and asked them to produce between them a machinima piece that reinterpreted Chaucer’s Pardoner’s Tale within the setting of the World of Warcraft (WOW for short) game.

A horrendous dumbing down of Chaucer? Or all part and parcel of that long and well established tradition of reinterpreting classic literature into contemporary settings? …. Well, hear how Graham and Chris rated the success of this initiative in our interview with them. And see what some of their students produced in the YouTube video below.


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No ordinary TAFE …

Posted on November 30, 2010 by Ian
Basil Harvey

Basil Harvey

Basil Harvey’s students hardly ever sit in lectures. They spend most of their time learning instead. Basil’s students are involved in game development, computer modelling, graphics, animation, multimedia, and so on, and they do their stuff in teams, in a simulated gaming industry environment, in large open classrooms without too many dividing walls. And they seem to do pretty well at it.

This is the Southbank Institute of Technology in Brisbane (Australia), where Basil is Head of the School for Engineering and Design. The Southbank Institute of Technology, or SBIT for short, is clearly no ordinary technical education college. Dispensing with traditional educational delivery models, they operate instead in ‘multi-modal’ fashion, with educators and students working flexibly and spontaneously together.

But it does have its moments, and it does have its challenges. Basil and colleagues presented the first keynote at CreateWorld on the SBIT model, and we interviewed Basil subsequently. Listen to the discussion through our AudioBoo player below.

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Create World 2010 – the inaugural iOSteddfod !

Posted on November 26, 2010 by Ian

With November drawing to an end, it’s time again to pack our bags for Brisbane, and head off to Create World, far and away the most delightful conference in the academic calendar, full of all sorts of interesting people doing – and talking about – all sorts of creative things using digital systems. The Between the Buttons team, in various guises, has covered this conference over the last two years, and it is always a joy to report on.

This of course is going to be the first post-iPad Create World, and I’ve been looking at a feed about 25 iPads in Japan synced together in an interactive musical display, and I’ve been thinking, “That’s nothing – just wait until Create World gets going, then we’ll really see something wonderful happening with iPads.”

So to help bring that hope to fruition, Between the Buttons is pleased to announce a competition. The best creative performance on an iOS device (or group of iOS devices) lodged with us by a Create World delegate (or group of delegates) during the conference will win ….. a prize. We don’t know what the prize will be just yet, but we are confident someone will come up with something before next Wednesday. There are no rules, except that the performance has to be on the iPad, iPhone or iPod touch, and has to be recorded and published on this site. Innovation, imagination and exploitation of the iOS platform will of course be more highly valued than sheer virtuosity; we don’t want talent to get in the way of the judging, of course. So get to work, Create World delegates.

We are calling this competition the inaugural Create World iOSteddfod. And yes, as far as I can tell from Google, that term is entirely original – nobody anywhere has ever used it before. So this is a world first, not just a Create World first. This means that someone, somewhere, is going to donate us one heck of a prize.

Create World 2010 banner

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Give away iPads, get new paradigms

Posted on September 20, 2010 by Ian

Professor Bob HillYou’d have to have been on some other planet last week not to have heard about the iPad giveaway from the Faculty of Science at the University of Adelaide – yes, as of first semester 2011, all new enrollments in first year science will be given (yes, given) one of these much sought after devices. This is the sort of thing, of course, that the media loves. The news feeds went ballistic, and Robert Hill, Adelaide’s Executive Dean of Science, found himself thrust into the role of multi-media celebrity, as commentators everywhere scratched their heads and asked him why. Hand out thousand dollar technology to a bunch of shiftless uni students? Professor Hill, what are you thinking?

Well, in fact there’s a lot of interesting thinking going on here. The iPad giveaway is not just some buzzy attempt to build up student numbers, nor is it simply focused on the digitization of text books. The iPad is seen rather as the catalyst for a wholesale paradigm shift in the nature of science education at the university, as connected, interactive, collaborative students explore the workings of science, and its real world applications, in a radically reconceived way.

In this interview we talk to Bob Hill about this vision for reshaping science education, and about the many challenges that it brings. This is not the world’s first higher education iPad initiative, of course – there are already a number of pilot/evaluative programs under way, primarily in the United States – but the revolutionary pedagogical aspirations of this one make it particularly exciting. So the pressure is on at Adelaide. We all will be watching closely to see how it fares.

Listen!

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Retromedia to transmedia – HyperStudio

Posted on February 15, 2010 by Ian

Roger Wagner

OK, so it’s 2010, and everybody who knows what’s what about state-of-the-art education is talking multi-media. But go back some 20 years ago, and how many of us realised what directions personal computing was heading in, and how important multi-media was going to be? Well, Roger Wagner was one of those rare people. And not only did he have a good sense of what the next two decades were going to bring, he developed his own application for them.

That application was HyperStudio, a multi-media/project authoring tool, which rose out of the ashes of Apple’s much-loved HyperCard, and which was hailed through the 1990s as one of the leading-edge Mac programs. And while things on the HyperStudio front went quiet for a few years subsequently, the application – and Roger – are now back on the scene with a vengeance.

Roger presented the opening session in the CUE Educate stream at MacWorld, and he spoke to Ian and Allan afterwards. During his presentation Roger showed us some mighty impressive examples of what can be done with HyperStudio in a K-12 environment, and demonstrated how seamlessly the application can pull together a range of different media formats. You can see some demos for yourself, and link into all the news and information from HyperStudio users, through the HyperFest Central group on Facebook. Below here we have embedded a simple example of output from a HyperStudio project. This one was done by a 7th grade student. Find lots more on YouTube. These are relatively simple, yes, but powerfully dynamic for learning and teaching purposes.

Of course, there is a challenge to be met here. In fact there are two of them. For as much as Allan and I have nostalgic memories of the visionary HyperStudio of the 90s, we have to admit that in 2010, when it comes to multi-media project authoring, there are more than a few applications out there that might seem to present as worthy competitors to it. So Allan and I have grabbed a couple of fully functional licenses for the latest version of HyperStudio, and when we get home after MacWorld we are going to put it to the test. We’ll report the results in this blog in a few weeks time. In the meantime, if you have tried it out, please comment below and let us know.

And of course the second challenge is the degree to which this application, much celebrated in the K-12 context, might be of benefit in the higher education sector. Immediately we can see some real pluses – the neat way it manages sources and attributions (and thus makes copyright management that much easier), the intuitive drag-and-drop approach that means you don’t have to have a PhD in file format conversion, not to mention its potentially powerful transmedia communication uses. But again, we will put our initial enthusiasm to the hard empirical test, and will get back to you with the results. Watch this hyperspace!

Written by Ian

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Education nation

Posted on February 14, 2010 by Ian

Milton Chen

How do children of the net generation, the so-called digital natives, spend their time? Do they devote endless hours to arranging their social lives on Facebook? Or are they up every night gaming until dawn? Are they totally geeking out?

Milton Chen, executive director of the George Lucas Educational Foundation, the publisher of Edutopia, might have some answers for us. Milton has just overseen a project which has produced multi-media portraits of the lives of 10 American kids, ranging in age from 9 to 18, tracing their activities from the time they wake up in the morning until the time they go to bed. We have included below a video on one of these kids, taken from the Edutopia web-site.

And what are the results? Well, according to Milton, they are quite reassuring; in fact, they are more than reassuring. They are quite exciting. Over all, he says, the kids lead balanced lives. They’re not 24 hour a day slaves to their computing devices; they are doing other ‘normal’ stuff, like playing sport, for example. But at the same time they seem to be using the technology to push the boundaries of what preceding generations could do, putting together information in exciting ways, and, who knows, maybe (maybe maybe??) even starting to work in different sorts of cognitive paradigms.

As if the portrait project isn’t enough to keep him busy, Milton is also writing a book, Education Nation: Seven Leading Edges of Innovation in Our Schools, to be published later this year by Jossey-Bass. The book distills much of the experience and learning of the George Lucas Educational Foundation over the last few years, but also adds a comparative perspective, looking at educational innovation internationally. Have you heard, for example, of the Glow project in Scotland? It’s a world first, a national intranet for education. Check out their website, and find out a lot more, as Ian and Allan talk to Milton in this interview.


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The opinions that really count

Posted on February 13, 2010 by AllanANDIan

This was a podcast episode with a difference. First, I was asked to be interviewed by an articulate 13 year old student together with a classroom of peers located some 8 hours’ drive from San Francisco and who were connected to the seminar by iChat.  Kelly Swarze is a regular to Macworld, and after she interviewed me I had the opportunity to interview her. It was a very rewarding experience.

Kelly wants to learn with technology and is forthright with her opinion about teachers who refuse to use it and to teach with it. Ouch! Kelly boldly claims that the majority of teachers don’t know what they are talking about with technology and don’t want to learn different stuff … that’s humbling.

When I was reflecting on this experience I had a personal flashback. In 2005 I had the wonderful experience of visiting Prof Stephen Heppell in Dublin Ireland. Stephen has been called by the press “Mr ICT” he consults at the highest level on learning spaces and teaching with technology. During the visit he told me about a program he was pioneering as a member of the board of the BAFTA awards (the UK Oscars). They are giving awards to young people for creative uses of technology.  With pride he declared he had a T-shirt for me.  In big bold letters it said “Be Very Afraid” (BVA). I asked what that meant, and he said that this is the message that young people are sending to professional filmmakers like Lucas and Spielberg.  Four years on, Professor Heppel makes this disturbing observation:

We should all worry about the gap that has opened up between the institutions, teachers and learners who have embraced – and are busy astonishing us with – this complex mix of technologies and services, and those institutions that mindlessly ban phones, YouTube, international links, social networking, joy, challenge. The gap is rapidly becoming a chasm.

Stephen says a lot more and I recommend that every teacher  read the entire piece. And I think that at least once every year every higher education academic and teaching faculty member should be interviewed by a class of 13 year old college students of tomorrow. This will rekindle their passion for teaching and contribute to their professional development.  Do you agree? Please add your comments to this blog, join the dialogue and be part of the wisdom.

Written by Allan Carrington

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Broadcast learning from your classroom

Posted on February 13, 2010 by AllanANDIan

Can Podcasting be interactive? Does it really improve learning? What makes a good podcast for education?  These are some of the questions that Ian put to educational podcasting expert Burt Lo, from the California Technology Assistance Program, or CTAP for short, after Burt’s workshop in the CUE Educational stream at Macworld.  The CTAP website is really worth a visit and shows what can be done to provide an online portal for professional development for teachers.

Burt is a highly successful podcaster in his own right, with his Edtechclassroom.com program. In this interview Burt provides excellent tips for the podcast newbie on how to get started, how to get effective learning happening, and how to think outside the box. He also reflects on the challenges ahead for podcasting.

Listen to this interview and think about how you could be using this powerful medium. Any insights or success stories will help build knowledge for others, so please add your comments to this blog, join the dialogue and be part of the wisdom.

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Smartboards and iPhones … a match made in heaven?

Posted on February 12, 2010 by AllanANDIan

The BTB team are always on the alert for people talking about education here at Macworld. John Soward of the University of Kentucky and John Turner of Assistronics , LLC were just sitting in the common area and Allan couldn’t help talking to them.

The conversation led to a novel idea: John S. talked about how smartboards have been around for at least 10 years but in the last 3 years the demand and number of installations have skyrocketed. He posed the question: could it be the iPhone? We throw around the idea of the “touch revolution” and if the iPhone multi-touch interface might be changing the way people want to interact with content. As a result, is teaching becoming more touchy-feely? Good grief there’s a research grant application waiting to happen, don’t you think?

We moved to the challenge of accessibility of mobile technology in institutions. How many universities and schools are considering the problem of everyone and that means students and teaching staff having iPhones – that’s a biggie

We couldn’t avoid the hot issue of do we need Flash on iPhones? Told you the conversation got interesting. How do we develop interactive e-assessment on an iphone without it? – hope a lot of innovative educators are working on it.

John S. leaves us with an interesting thought … does an iPhone really cost anymore than a few textbooks? Maybe we should rethink the actual cost thing, the requirement thing and the subsidy thing? What do you think?  Please add your comments to this blog, join the dialogue and be part of the wisdom.

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Integration of Technology … it’s a people thing

Posted on February 12, 2010 by AllanANDIan

In any institution today, especially schools and universities, there is constructive tension between the innovative, ‘enveloping pushing’ practitioner and the oh-so-necessary ITS (Info Technology Services) Department. ITS Departments work hard to secure the networks, prevent technological meltdown, and try to keep every aspect of the institution happy and productive. It is a mammoth, and often, thankless task.

In this episode Allan talks to Ben Greisler of kadiMAC Corp . Ben is a presenter at a Power Tools workshop called “Mac Enterprise Integration”.  Also with him is Mark Szota of Monash University in Victoria Australia. Mark is part of the workshop, and attending Macworld courtesy of the Apple University Consortium.

We talk about some big issues… issues that can make or break an enterprise using technology effectively. Such things as how techie people (ITS departments) need to train their people in teamwork building skills while the people people (teaching and support staff) need to develop project management skills and understand the dynamics of building a business case for their needs to be adopted across the enterprise.

Allan asked about the challenges of the next five years.  Ben and Mark discuss how do you reasonably deal with all the variables – more than one platform, more than one, excellent software solution for every problem? This isn’t new but it is accelerating. How everybody wants everything yesterday and why is it imperative to take time for testing and for others needs

Do you think Ben nails it when he says “Technology is easy, people are hard and people need to learn to work with people the technology part just follows.” Please add your comments to this blog, join the dialogue and be part of the wisdom.

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