Teen playlist: music discovery, production, and sharing among a group of high school students

The purpose of this investigation was to determine if a select group of adolescents exhibited behaviors and practices regarding digital music discovery, production, and sharing that influenced their classroom music instruction. The qualitative study focused on ways in which a group of adolescents informally engaged with digital music in relationship to learning music in their classroom. A constructivist–interpretivist viewpoint framed the theoretical perspective that a person’s knowledge constructions take place within the context of social interaction. In the early 21st century, young people interacting via digital social networking can experience and share music in ways previous generations could not imagine. Peer learning and exchange occur when adolescents share musical ideas and digital artifacts. In addition, autonomous learning takes place while interacting with a digital device. I used Mayer’s (2002) cognitive theory of multimedia learning to support an understanding of the learning effects associated with content-rich digital experiences. Linking social-constructivist and multimedia educational theories provided the conceptual framework needed to extrapolate meaning from adolescents’ preferences, influences, and feelings regarding digital musicking. In an instrumental case study, I followed four high school participants and their music teacher over the course of 6 months. The data consisted of participants’ detailed reflections and perspectives regarding digital music media discovery, production, and sharing. Detailed accounts collected from interviews and observations illustrated the behaviors of the participants, building a thick description. Although the research focused on adolescents, viewpoints of others emerged throughout the study, including those of peers, colleagues, and family members. Consequently, the investigation also considered what music teachers understood about their students’ out of school digital music discovery, production, and sharing. Findings show the convergence and divergence of digital music engagement in a high school music setting. Themes of experiencing music for personal identity, creativity, and popular culture intermix in classroom and informal learning environments. I present outcomes indicating direct implications for music curriculum development and suggest paths to connect in school and out of school music learning via digital music experiences. This study might help contemporary music teachers take advantage of students’ out of school digital music media practices to strengthen in school music programs

I Had to Do the Reading: A Phenomenological Case Study of College English Students

The purposes of this qualitative phenomenological case study were to investigate multiple student experiences in a general elective introduction to literature course when music was added as an autonomously structured assignment. Music and song lyrics are no strangers to the classroom setting, but there is a gap in the literature examining the space where students can create meaningful links between music they enjoy and assigned course readings in college English. Informed by social constructivism and English studies theories this study was designed to investigate any impact that autonomously driven music-link assignments may have on students. The structured assignments were called music-link assignments. The music-link assignments were designed to encourage student criticality while interacting with an assigned reading and locating a link to a song of their choosing. Study documents included semi-structured and informal interviews, artifacts including music-link assignments that include an experiential portion for student reflection, and reflections taken in class during small group class discussions. Data and findings from this study indicated that many students cited positive affects in their experience, a greater feeling of agency in the class, and relatability to the assigned readings. Also, some students noted difficulty in completing the assignments. Overall, this study demonstrates the need for further research in combining facets of popular culture, such as music, in different content areas, and settings

GlobalFestival: Evaluating Real World Interaction on a Spherical Display

Spherical displays present compelling opportunities for interaction in public spaces. However, there is little research into how touch interaction should control a spherical surface or how these displays are used in real world settings. This paper presents an in the wild deployment of an application for a spherical display called GlobalFestival that utilises two different touch interaction techniques. The first version of the application allows users to spin and tilt content on the display, while the second version only allows spinning the content. During the 4-day deployment, we collected overhead video data and on-display interaction logs. The analysis brings together quantitative and qualitative methods to understand how users approach and move around the display, how on screen interaction compares in the two versions of the application, and how the display supports social interaction given its novel form factor

Mobile Life: A Research Foundation for Mobile Services

The telecom and IT industry is now facing the challenge of a second IT-revolution, where the spread of mobile and ubiquitous services will have an even more profound effect on commercial and social life than the recent Internet revolution. Users will expect services that are unique and fully adapted for the mobile setting, which means that the roles of the operators will change, new business models will be required, and new methods for developing and marketing services have to be found. Most of all, we need technology and services that put people at core. The industry must prepare to design services for a sustainable web of work, leisure and ubiquitous technology we can call the mobile life. In this paper, we describe the main components of a research agenda for mobile services, which is carried out at the Mobile Life Center at Stockholm University. This research program takes a sustainable approach to research and development of mobile and ubiquitous services, by combining a strong theoretical foundation (embodied interaction), a welldefined methodology (user-centered design) and an important domain with large societal importance and commercial potential (mobile life). Eventually the center will create an experimental mobile services ecosystem, which will serve as an open arena where partners from academia and industry can develop our vision an abundant future marketplace for future mobile servíces

Mobility is the Message: Experiments with Mobile Media Sharing

This thesis explores new mobile media sharing applications by building, deploying, and studying their use. While we share media in many different ways both on the web and on mobile phones, there are few ways of sharing media with people physically near us. Studied were three designed and built systems: Push!Music, Columbus, and Portrait Catalog, as well as a fourth commercially available system – Foursquare. This thesis offers four contributions: First, it explores the design space of co-present media sharing of four test systems. Second, through user studies of these systems it reports on how these come to be used. Third, it explores new ways of conducting trials as the technical mobile landscape has changed. Last, we look at how the technical solutions demonstrate different lines of thinking from how similar solutions might look today. Through a Human-Computer Interaction methodology of design, build, and study, we look at systems through the eyes of embodied interaction and examine how the systems come to be in use. Using Goffman’s understanding of social order, we see how these mobile media sharing systems allow people to actively present themselves through these media. In turn, using McLuhan’s way of understanding media, we reflect on how these new systems enable a new type of medium distinct from the web centric media, and how this relates directly to mobility. While media sharing is something that takes place everywhere in western society, it is still tied to the way media is shared through computers. Although often mobile, they do not consider the mobile settings. The systems in this thesis treat mobility as an opportunity for design. It is still left to see how this mobile media sharing will come to present itself in people’s everyday life, and when it does, how we will come to understand it and how it will transform society as a medium distinct from those before. This thesis gives a glimpse at what this future will look like

Music Therapy Techniques for Memory Stabilization in Diverse Dementias

Music contains certain unmistakable healing properties pertaining specifically to the matured body and soul affected by various types of dementia. Music therapy aids in memory retention or the retarding of the loss of mental function as a result of Alzheimer\u27s disease, Dementia with Lewy bodies, and Senile Dementia. Music can help subjects access lost memories through interaction with a music therapist. Certain music therapy techniques have been shown to yield additional physical, communicative, and psychological benefits. The disease progress of Alzheimer\u27s disease, Dementia with Lewy bodies, and Senile Dementia may be further delayed by music therapy when paired with pharmaceutical interventions such as previously established memory enhancing medications

Students’ interpersonal connections with peers and staff at the start of higher education

Establishing positive social relationships is important for students’ success and retention in higher education (HE). This can be especially challenging during the transition into HE since students often move to a larger educational setting and need to build relationships with new peers and staff. Research is needed to better understand social connections during this critical time, including the role of demographics, curricular and extracurricular participation, and how peer and staff connections predict academic achievement. Surveys of 290 first-year students at a large US public university assessed with whom students were interacting, how often, for what reasons, and with what modes of communication. Results include a detailed description of students’ interpersonal connections at the transition into HE, differences by demographics, curricular, and extracurricular participation, and the associations between students’ patterns of relationships and their academic achievement

Northern Lights Ceilidh:playful digital interventions in a Scottish tradition

Northern Lights Ceilidh (NLC) was a one-off event which added a modern twist to traditional Scottish dancing, music and performance and added a digital infusion of technology mediated interactions to proceedings. The event marked the end of an international games competition hosted in Dundee each year, Dare to be Digital (DtbD) inviting the participants in the games competition and the general public to attend. In total 208 people attended NLC, 75 of whom were participants in DtbD.It is not possible to determine how many of the participants were external to Abertay University. However, 50% of respondents to a survey relating to NLC1 (the survey was completed by 12% of the total attendees) cited they found out about the event through sources external to Dare to be Digital which could suggest that there were attendees who had no link to Dare to be Digital and Abertay University.The Ceilidh was part funded by the year of Homecoming Scotland, and thus sought to weave historical Scottish traditions with new traditions in Scotland (i.e. weaving ceilidh, poetry and dance with new forms of design including 3D printed jewellery and interactive technology). NLC was held in a high-tech marquee in Dundee City Square on the 8th of August 2014. The marquee had been used for four days as the site of the DtbD games showcase and was transformed into a dance hall for the event.NLC aimed to, through digital mediation, provide participants with agency commonly associated with digital media. Participants were able to contribute to the creation of a digital aesthetic which was layered upon the physical ceilidh experience through projection and real-time manipulation of live video feeds. The participants could alter and manipulate their movement to change what happened on screen, co-creating not only the dance elements of the ceilidh but also the digital spectacle.The ceilidh was designed Lynn Parker, and Clare Brennan. Ryan Locke provided imagery which was used as the setting for digital animation production by Lynn Parker. A jeweller, Elizabeth Armour, was commissioned to create custom jewellery for the event, a 3D printed brooch and two digital artists, Stuart MacBean and Yana Hristova were commissioned to create an animated ‘peep’ board with which attendees were encouraged to take photographs. During the event itself, the band Whiskey Kiss called the dances and provided the music whilst a performer recited poetry to open the event. Quartic Llama, an interactive media company were commissioned to create a digital app to promote the event, titled Lightstream (Quartic Llama, 2014).Lynn Parker led the design of interactive media interventions into the event, the creation of animation sequences and live visuals during the event, developed branding for the event, carried out client facing work with Quartic Llama and collaborated with her colleagues in the facilitation and organisation of the event.Northern Lights Ceilidh as practice-led-research work offers insight into design approaches to support and facilitate social interaction. The social nature of the ceilidh event provides a template for community creation and the layering of digital intervention provides a basis from which the mediation of interaction through both human and technology mediated play can be evaluated.The addition of a digital layer to the ceilidh setting provides an extra level of participation in the event, where the participants can not only make the event come to life through participating in the dances but also in their manipulation of their movement to shape the digital visualisations on screen. The experience of the participants of both the ceilidh setting and of digital mediation provides valuable underpinning for the evaluation of these factors through practice-led-research

A Phenomenology of the Practice of Music Therapy with Children

Music therapy has been demonstrated as an effective mode of therapeutic intervention for children in recent literature. There is extensive research suggesting benefits for various populations of children, namely: children in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), children who have experienced trauma, and children with disabilities. The current study served to address gaps found in the literature by conducting a phenomenology of professionally trained music therapists. Four board certified music therapists near major cities on the east coast were interviewed to comment on how they understand music therapy, and how they live out those understandings in their practice. It was found that music therapy is professional counseling, music therapy is goal based and individualized, and music therapy is often misunderstood in the general public. A comparison of these findings with results from previous studies was addressed. Limitations and suggestions for further study within the realm of utilizing music as a therapeutic tool were discussed

Issues and techniques for collaborative music making on multi-touch surfaces

A range of systems exist for collaborative music making on multi-touch surfaces. Some of them have been highly successful, but currently there is no systematic way of designing them, to maximise collaboration for a particular user group. We are particularly interested in systems that will engage novices and experts. We designed a simple application in an initial attempt to clearly analyse some of the issues. Our application allows groups of users to express themselves in collaborative music making using pre-composed materials. User studies were video recorded and analysed using two techniques derived from Grounded Theory and Content Analysis. A questionnaire was also conducted and evaluated. Findings suggest that the application affords engaging interaction. Enhancements for collaborative music making on multi-touch surfaces are discussed. Finally, future work on the prototype is proposed to maximise engagement