Pastplay: Teaching and Learning History with Technology

In the field of history, the Web and other technologies have become important tools in research and teaching of the past. Yet the use of these tools is limited—many historians and history educators have resisted adopting them because they fail to see how digital tools supplement and even improve upon conventional tools (such as books). In Pastplay, a collection of essays by leading history and humanities researchers and teachers, editor Kevin Kee works to address these concerns head-on. How should we use technology? Playfully, Kee contends. Why? Because doing so helps us think about the past in new ways; through the act of creating technologies, our understanding of the past is re-imagined and developed. From the insights of numerous scholars and teachers, Pastplay argues that we should play with technology in history because doing so enables us to see the past in new ways by helping us understand how history is created; honoring the roots of research, teaching, and technology development; requiring us to model our thoughts; and then allowing us to build our own understanding

Designing for digital playing out

We report on a design-led study in the UK that aimed to understand barriers to children (aged 5 to 14 years) 'playing out' in their neighbourhood and explore the potential of the Internet of Things (IoT) for supporting children's free play that extends outdoors. The study forms a design ethnography, combining observational fieldwork with design prototyping and co-creative activities across four linked workshops, where we used BBC micro:bit devices to co-create new IoT designs with the participating children. Our collective account contributes new insights about the physical and interactive features of micro:bits that shaped play, gameplay, and social interaction in the workshops, illuminating an emerging design space for supporting 'digital playing out' that is grounded in empirical instances. We highlight opportunities for designing for digital playing out in ways that promote social negotiation, supports varying participation, allows for integrating cultural influences, and accounts for the weaving together of placemaking and play

Children s Acceptance of a Collaborative Problem Solving Game Based on Physical Versus Digital Learning Spaces

[EN] Collaborative problem solving (CPS) is an essential soft skill that should be fostered from a young age. Research shows that a good way of teaching such skills is through video games; however, the success and viability of this method may be affected by the technological platform used. In this work we propose a gameful approach to train CPS skills in the form of the CPSbot framework and describe a study involving 80 primary school children on user experience and acceptance of a game, Quizbot, using three different technological platforms: two purely digital (tabletop and handheld tablets) and another based on tangible interfaces and physical spaces. The results show that physical spaces proved to be more effective than the screen-based platforms in several ways, as well as being considered more fun and easier to use by the children. Finally, we propose a set of design considerations for future gameful CPS systems based on the observations made during this study.Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and the European Regional Development Fund (project TIN2014-60077-R); Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport (with fellowship FPU14/00136) and Conselleria d'Educacio, Cultura i Esport (Generalitat Valenciana, Spain) (grant ACIF/2014/214).Jurdi, S.; García Sanjuan, F.; Nácher-Soler, VE.; Jaén Martínez, FJ. (2018). Children s Acceptance of a Collaborative Problem Solving Game Based on Physical Versus Digital Learning Spaces. Interacting with Computers. 30(3):187-206. https://doi.org/10.1093/iwc/iwy006S18720630

Reflexiones sobre las paradojas de la formación del profesorado de lenguas: un análisis crítico del sistema

In the United States, Foreign Language Education is reshaped at a time when 75% of language teachers have retired, leaving an unprecedented vacuum. It is handicapped by paradoxes that prevent it from furthering its mission. Conjugating priority and neglect is a major challenge. Methods are often taught without epistemology, students tend to communicate without contents. Teaching of cultures is generally sanitized and stereotyped. Teacher educators professionalize student teachers who rarely understand their own cultural identity, potential foreignness and otherness. The student teachers’ reflection is enforced and their autonomy paradoxically guided. The way to deal with these contradictions is to articulate new priorities and reconceptualize the field as the inescapable branch of learning for world peace and social justice.En los Estados Unidos, la formación en lengua extranjera está siendo reformulada en un momento en el que el 75% de los profesores de lengua se han jubilado, dejando así un vacío sin precedentes. Se encuentra con la dificultad de ciertas paradojas que evitan que pueda seguir aumentando su objetivo. Conjugar prioridad y negligencia es un gran reto. Los métodos se enseñan sin epistenología; los aprendices tienden a comunicarse sin contenidos. La enseñanza de las culturas es normalmente aséptica y llena de estereotipos. Los formadores del profesorado profesionalizan a sus discípulos, quienes en pocas ocasiones entienden su propia identidad cultural, extranjería y otredad. Se refuerza la reflexión de los futuros docentes y su autonomía, paradójicamente, se guía. El modo de tratar con estas contradicciones es articular nuevas prioridades y reconceptualizar el campo la rama imprescindible del aprendizaje para la paz mundial y la justicia social

Designing for Digital Playing Out

We report on a design-led study in the UK that aimed to understand barriers to children (aged 5 to 14 years) ‘playing out’ in their neighbourhood and explore the potential of the Internet of Things (IoT) for supporting children’s free play that extends outdoors. The study forms a design ethnography, combining observational fieldwork with design prototyping and co-creative activities across four linked workshops, where we used BBC micro:bit devices to co-create new IoT designs with the participating children. Our collective account contributes new insights about the physical and interactive features of micro:bits that shaped play, gameplay, and social interaction in the workshops, illuminating an emerging design space for supporting ‘digital playing out’ that is grounded in empirical instances. We highlight opportunities for designing for digital playing out in ways that promote social negotiation, supports varying participation, allows for integrating cultural influences, and accounts for the weaving together of placemaking and play

The Mill Project

I am exploring bricolage as the primary artistic gesture in the work that supports this thesis, focusing on the history of a single site in West Vancouver, where lies a remark­able subcultural artifact: the Inglewood ‘Mill’ Skatepark - the first skateboard park constructed in Canada in 1977, and subsequently buried in 1984. The skateboard subculture is layered with three other histories: the Shields Shingle Mill (1916-1926), West Vancouver Secondary School (1927-present), and my own lived experience as a suburban skateboarder. The approach of the project has been that of a pseudo-archae­ological ‘excavation’, digging through the layers of the site's historiography, engaging with questions around authorship and authenticity, historical accuracy and objectivity. Through the detournement of archival images (photomontage), an assemblage of site-related constructions, and a series of interventions, surveys, and excavations of the site, histories are subverted and conflated. its material and intellectual capacity - to recompose dominant histories, ideologies, and mythologies. Bricolage is discussed in relation to appropriation, myth, and subcultures (specifically in the way bricolage is manifested in skateboard culture). My investigation is supported, primarily, by the following writers and their theories: on the topic of bricolage, Claude Levi-Strauss and Dick Hebdige; on the topic of subcul­tures, Dick Hebdige and Iain Borden; on the topic of myth, Roland Barthes and Claude Levi-Strauss; and on the topic of appropriation, a whole host of writers and their dis­cussions around postmodernism in the late seventies and eighties. Further examinations of these topics are found in the collage works of Martha Rosler, the pseudo-archaeo­logical site interventions of Mark Dion, the ad-hoc constructions of collaborators Folke Köbberling and Martin Kaltwasser, and in the bricolage-installation, Vancouver School, by the collective Futura Bold

A Rhetorical Journey into Advocacy

This thesis reveals how advocacy is rhetorically constructed by using several rhetorical tools such as Kenneth Burke’s terministic screens, Michel Foucault’s genealogy and archaeology, and Bruno Latour’s black box. It is told in an autistethnographic style where it is part narrative, part academic, and written by an autistic person. Advocacy is rhetorically constructed by beginning to define a label for yourself