Augmenting the field experience: a student-led comparison of techniques and technologies

In this study we report on our experiences of creating and running a student fieldtrip exercise which allowed students to compare a range of approaches to the design of technologies for augmenting landscape scenes. The main study site is around Keswick in the English Lake District, Cumbria, UK, an attractive upland environment popular with tourists and walkers. The aim of the exercise for the students was to assess the effectiveness of various forms of geographic information in augmenting real landscape scenes, as mediated through a range of techniques and technologies. These techniques were: computer-generated acetate overlays showing annotated wireframe views from certain key points; a custom-designed application running on a PDA; a mediascape running on the mScape software on a GPS-enabled mobile phone; Google Earth on a tablet PC; and a head-mounted in-field Virtual Reality system. Each group of students had all five techniques available to them, and were tasked with comparing them in the context of creating a visitor guide to the area centred on the field centre. Here we summarise their findings and reflect upon some of the broader research questions emerging from the project

Introduction to location-based mobile learning

[About the book] The report follows on from a 2-day workshop funded by the STELLAR Network of Excellence as part of their 2009 Alpine Rendez-Vous workshop series and is edited by Elizabeth Brown with a foreword from Mike Sharples. Contributors have provided examples of innovative and exciting research projects and practical applications for mobile learning in a location-sensitive setting, including the sharing of good practice and the key findings that have resulted from this work. There is also a debate about whether location-based and contextual learning results in shallower learning strategies and a section detailing the future challenges for location-based learning

Technologies and trust

What is trust and how new technologies are changing or affecting the concept of trust? This publication offers insights from researchers working in educational technology and distance education, collected in the frame of the European FP-7 Marie-Curie People project “Stimulators and inhibitors of a culture of trust in educational interactions assisted by modern information and communication technology”, and provides examples of implications of trust for successful learning experiences in distance education. The research goal is to understand how trust has changed or is changing: this is related not only to the modification of the meaning, but also indicators upon which people built their judgements

Wherever You Go, There We Are: Tourism in a Society of Ubiquitous Connectivity

This document is synthesis and analysis of literature from tourism and computer-mediated communication. While the discussed concepts have been addressed similarly in both fields, little direct interdisciplinary interaction has existed. There is much that each field can learn from the other, and current research regarding computer-mediated communication and mobile communication technologies have the ability to make profound contributions in how we understand the role of tourism in the future. As such, the issue of defining the modern touristic experience, the social science research in mobile information and communication technology which holds relevance to tourism, why this nexus of disparate fields matters to tourism researchers and practitioners, and the prospects for future research are specifically examined

Reflecting back, looking forward: the challenges for location-based learning

This final section of the report has been reproduced from “D3.1 The STELLAR Rendez-Vous I report and white papers”, published in 2009 by the STELLAR Network of Excellence. It is included here for completeness; we, as co-authors, felt that it was important to look back at the main contributions to theworkshop and also where the challenges lie for the future. This chapter addresses two critical questions: - What has been learned from this workshop, especially in respect to the STELLAR Grand Challenges (“Connecting learners”, “Orchestration” and “Contextualisation”)? - What are the new research questions and issues for location-based learning, with respect to the Grand Challenges (“Connecting learners”, “Orchestration”and “Contextualisation”)

Pervasive Media and Eudaimonia: Transdisciplinary Research by Practice

As mobile technologies and prolific digital media saturate and intrude upon daily reality for many people, this research practice provides an alternative pathway in which creative engagement with pervasive media offers a holistic experience of oneself in relation to the people, place and technologies of our time. This thesis introduces the concept of eudaimonia as creative well-being, in relation to pervasive media. The dual meaning of eudaimonia as an individual’s own right path of flourishing and as the good-daimon, muse or guardian who guides and inspires the action of walking such a path, highlights the tensions implicit in the work. Tensions that embrace user and author, inside and outside, urban and rural, movement and stillness – until a common ground of symmathesy occurs. Taking a transdisciplinary approach to this phenomenological enquiry, the work of community arts facilitation is brought into dialogue with Grove’s Clean toolkit, originally developed in the field of clinical psychology. The thesis is presented as a phenomenological text with online creative portfolio and appendices. Other artists’ works are described subjectively as part of the practice-based method. Research findings are presented in relation to themes of Space, Presence, Community and Iteration from which emerge the framework of creative practice and the researcher’s conceptual model of Anthroposensory Sculpture. Four public art projects were delivered with diverse communities, landscapes and foci of attention, from which a framework of creative practice is revealed that supports eudaimonic engagement with personal and collective, metaphoric and geographic landscape: Soundlines (2009-10, North Somerset, UK), Experimental Walks (2010-14, UK and Canada), Hunter Gatherer (2010-11, Yorkshire Dales, UK), Living Voices (2011-13 Wiltshire, UK). Through the Experimental Walks project, a Colour Grid methodology developed, that invites sensory noticing and notation, subsequently produced as iPhone app Hunter Gatherer (2011). This research which will be of value to researchers and practitioners seeking to understand engagement of people with place, media and technology. Pioneering in its use of Clean as an arts methodology, this research adds to a growing interest in Clean methodology for research. The thesis contributes to ongoing debates about how to build a more caring society in which each individual can flourish; as such it will be of interest to others exploring the multiple dimensions of well-being and the use of emergent platforms for digital media and art

The Routledge Handbook of Museums, Media and Communication

Museums today find themselves within a mediatised society, where everyday life is conducted in a data-full and technology-rich context. In fact, museums are themselves mediatised: they present a uniquely media-centred environment, in which communicative media is a constitutive property of their organisation and of the visitor experience. The Routledge Handbook of Museums, Media and Communication explores what it means to take mediated communication as a key concept for museum studies and as a sensitising lens for media-related museum practice on the ground. Including contributions from experts around the world, this original and innovative Handbook shares a nuanced and precise understanding of media, media concepts and media terminology, rehearsing new locations for writing on museum media and giving voice to new subject alignments. As a whole, the volume breaks new ground by reframing mediated museum communication as a resource for an inclusive understanding of current museum developments. The Routledge Handbook of Museums, Media and Communication will appeal to both students and scholars, as well as to practitioners involved in the visioning, design and delivery of mediated communication in the museum. It teaches us not just how to study museums, but how to go about being a museum in today’s world