Emerging technologies for learning (volume 1)

Collection of 5 articles on emerging technologies and trend

The Inclusion of Media Literacy in the English Curriculum

Today, the digital world is ever changing. Teenagers all over the world are hypnotized by their tech-savvy devices. Their free time is spent on their smartwatches, cell phones, computers, or in front of their televisions and video games. When they arrive at school, they are expected to have the devices stored away and not have contact at all during the time they are at school. These students have lost their desire and passion for learning. The students need to have new and engaging ways to learn in the classroom, especially in English. Students have become disinterested in the teacher’s traditional ways of teaching literature. Educators need to be aware of this and adapt the 21st century skills of Media Literacy into the English curriculum in order to support success in the digital, modern, world. However, educators lack the knowledge about Media Literacy, where it should be implemented in the English curriculum and how to implement it in the classroom

Virtual Heritage

Virtual heritage has been explained as virtual reality applied to cultural heritage, but this definition only scratches the surface of the fascinating applications, tools and challenges of this fast-changing interdisciplinary field. This book provides an accessible but concise edited coverage of the main topics, tools and issues in virtual heritage. Leading international scholars have provided chapters to explain current issues in accuracy and precision; challenges in adopting advanced animation techniques; shows how archaeological learning can be developed in Minecraft; they propose mixed reality is conceptual rather than just technical; they explore how useful Linked Open Data can be for art history; explain how accessible photogrammetry can be but also ethical and practical issues for applying at scale; provide insight into how to provide interaction in museums involving the wider public; and describe issues in evaluating virtual heritage projects not often addressed even in scholarly papers. The book will be of particular interest to students and scholars in museum studies, digital archaeology, heritage studies, architectural history and modelling, virtual environments

Biohacking and code convergence : a transductive ethnography

Cette thèse se déploie dans un espace de discours et de pratiques revendicatrices, à l’inter- section des cultures amateures informatiques et biotechniques, euro-américaines contempo- raines. La problématique se dessinant dans ce croisement culturel examine des métaphores et analogies au coeur d’un traffic intense, au milieu de voies de commmunications imposantes, reliant les technologies informatiques et biotechniques comme lieux d’expression médiatique. L’examen retrace les lignes de force, les médiations expressives en ces lieux à travers leurs manifestations en tant que codes —à la fois informatiques et génétiques— et reconnaît les caractères analogiques d’expressivité des codes en tant que processus de convergence. Émergeant lentement, à partir des années 40 et 50, les visions convergentes des codes ont facilité l’entrée des ordinateurs personnels dans les marchés, ainsi que dans les garages de hackers, alors que des bricoleurs de l’informatique s’en réclamaient comme espace de liberté d’information —et surtout d’innovation. Plus de cinquante ans plus tard, l’analogie entre codes informatiques et génétiques sert de moteur aux revendications de liberté, informant cette fois les nouvelles applications de la biotechnologie de marché, ainsi que l’activité des biohackers, ces bricoleurs de garage en biologie synthétique. Les pratiques du biohacking sont ainsi comprises comme des individuations : des tentatives continues de résoudre des frictions, des tensions travaillant les revendications des cultures amateures informatiques et biotechniques. Une des manières de moduler ces tensions s’incarne dans un processus connu sous le nom de forking, entrevu ici comme l’expérience d’une bifurcation. Autrement dit, le forking est ici définit comme passage vers un seuil critique, déclinant la technologie et la biologie sur plusieurs modes. Le forking informe —c’est-à-dire permet et contraint— différentes vi- sions collectives de l’ouverture informationnelle. Le forking intervient aussi sur les plans des iii semio-matérialités et pouvoirs d’action investis dans les pratiques biotechniques et informa- tiques. Pris comme processus de co-constitution et de différentiation de l’action collective, les mouvements de bifurcation invitent les trois questions suivantes : 1) Comment le forking catalyse-t-il la solution des tensions participant aux revendications des pratiques du bioha- cking ? 2) Dans ce processus de solution, de quelles manières les revendications changent de phase, bifurquent et se transforment, parfois au point d’altérer radicalement ces pratiques ? 3) Quels nouveaux problèmes émergent de ces solutions ? L’effort de recherche a trouvé ces questions, ainsi que les plans correspondants d’action sémio-matérielle et collective, incarnées dans trois expériences ethnographiques réparties sur trois ans (2012-2015) : la première dans un laboratoire de biotechnologie communautaire new- yorkais, la seconde dans l’émergence d’un groupe de biotechnologie amateure à Montréal, et la troisième à Cork, en Irlande, au sein du premier accélérateur d’entreprises en biologie synthétique au monde. La logique de l’enquête n’est ni strictement inductive ou déductive, mais transductive. Elle emprunte à la philosophie de la communication et de l’information de Gilbert Simondon et découvre l’épistémologie en tant qu’acte de création opérant en milieux relationnels. L’heuristique transductive offre des rencontres inusitées entre les métaphores et les analogies des codes. Ces rencontres étonnantes ont aménagé l’expérience de la conver- gence des codes sous forme de jeux d’écritures. Elles se sont retrouvées dans la recherche ethnographique en tant que processus transductifs.This dissertation examines creative practices and discourses intersecting computer and biotech cultures. It queries influential metaphors and analogies on both sides of the inter- section, and their positioning of biotech and information technologies as expression media. It follows mediations across their incarnations as codes, both computational and biological, and situates their analogical expressivity and programmability as a process of code conver- gence. Converging visions of technological freedom facilitated the entrance of computers in 1960’s Western hobbyist hacker circles, as well as in consumer markets. Almost fifty years later, the analogy drives claims to freedom of information —and freedom of innovation— from biohacker hobbyist groups to new biotech consumer markets. Such biohacking practices are understood as individuations: as ongoing attempts to resolve frictions, tensions working through claims to freedom and openness animating software and biotech cultures. Tensions get modulated in many ways. One of them, otherwise known as “forking,” refers here to a critical bifurcation allowing for differing iterations of biotechnical and computa- tional configurations. Forking informs —that is, simultaneously affords and constrains— differing collective visions of openness. Forking also operates on the materiality and agency invested in biotechnical and computational practices. Taken as a significant process of co- constitution and differentiation in collective action, bifurcation invites the following three questions: 1) How does forking solve tensions working through claims to biotech freedom? 2) In this solving process, how can claims bifurcate and transform to the point of radically altering biotech practices? 3) what new problems do these solutions call into existence? This research found these questions, and both scales of material action and agency, in- carnated in three extensive ethnographical journeys spanning three years (2012-2015): the first in a Brooklyn-based biotech community laboratory, the second in the early days of a biotech community group in Montreal, and the third in the world’s first synthetic biology startup accelerator in Cork, Ireland. The inquiry’s guiding empirical logic is neither solely deductive or inductive, but transductive. It borrows from Gilbert Simondon’s philosophy of communication and information to experience epistemology as an act of analogical creation involving the radical, irreversible transformation of knower and known. Transductive heuris- tics offer unconvential encounters with practices, metaphors and analogies of code. In the end, transductive methods acknowledge code convergence as a metastable writing games, and ethnographical research itself as a transductive process

Virtual Heritage

Virtual heritage has been explained as virtual reality applied to cultural heritage, but this definition only scratches the surface of the fascinating applications, tools and challenges of this fast-changing interdisciplinary field. This book provides an accessible but concise edited coverage of the main topics, tools and issues in virtual heritage. Leading international scholars have provided chapters to explain current issues in accuracy and precision; challenges in adopting advanced animation techniques; shows how archaeological learning can be developed in Minecraft; they propose mixed reality is conceptual rather than just technical; they explore how useful Linked Open Data can be for art history; explain how accessible photogrammetry can be but also ethical and practical issues for applying at scale; provide insight into how to provide interaction in museums involving the wider public; and describe issues in evaluating virtual heritage projects not often addressed even in scholarly papers. The book will be of particular interest to students and scholars in museum studies, digital archaeology, heritage studies, architectural history and modelling, virtual environments

Body knowledge and repetition: re-conceiving ability through students' visual narratives of sport, physical education and fitness

The purpose of this dissertation study was to investigate how students enrolled in two different undergraduate core kinesiology courses conceived knowledge of the body through visual storytelling, a mode of writing that uses visual elements, like photographs, to tell a story. For the purposes of the study, body knowledge (Evans and Davies, 2004) was constrained to sport, physical education and fitness. This dissertation study had three research questions and one practical purpose. One, how did students chose to tell their stories, what images and storylines were included and which were left out? In other words, what repetitive or reoccurring themes about the body in the contexts of exercise, physical education and sport emerged from these visual narratives? Two, how did these repetitions (Kumashiro, 2003) construct knowledge of active body and what were the obstacles to addressing them? In other words, did the students select images or themes that overemphasized particular gender, racial, or economic groups, or body sizes, and if so what are potential road blocks to remedying them? Three, why are these repetitions of body knowledge needed? After addressing these three questions, this study aimed to provide kinesiology and HPE educators with practical pedagogical strategies for addressing (visual) repetitions of body knowledge within the curriculum. Following Norman Fairclough's (2005) critical discourse analysis (CDA) methodology, this study analyzed 18 visual narratives and found that gender and physical ability was an overarching theme in the students' narratives

The Relationship Between Fun And Learning: An Online Embodied Ethnography Of Coaches Across Continents

In a time when learning is often reduced to skills acquisition and outcomes, this inquiry provides a sensory exploration of the concept of ‘fun’, showing that ‘fun-ing’; a state of attentiveness and becoming, can spark an experiential attitude and practice, through embodied learning. This transdisciplinary, socio-cultural-material ethnography, of fun and learning, took place within an educational charity that uses the concept of ‘Purposeful Play’, Coaches Across Continents (CAC). It considers how CAC pivoted, during the COVID-19 pandemic, towards synchronous online learning experiences. This ethnography explores how fun is socially constructed; how it relates to online learning; and whether fun is a meaningful concept within CAC and beyond. Findings show that fun-ing is an embodied, creative phenomenon associated with themes including vibrant embodiment and embracing contradictions. By opening possibilities of knowing, through the body, not just the mind, findings also convey participants’ and researcher’s sensations and feelings: by introducing the ‘laughter critical incident’, as an entry point for discussions on roles of fun; and a spoken poem, which strives to capture the non-verbal, felt moments. Ultimately, this inquiry develops an innovative model for fun-ing, bringing together how types and roles of fun, embodiment, and socio-cultural-material learning interact alongside Six Principles: practical guidance to cultivate fun learning. These consider learning spaces; novel ways of relating; spontaneity; verbal and non-verbal communication; online-offline capabilities; and alternative concepts for measuring learning. The Six Principles and model, both generated from this research, show that simultaneous online and offline embodied experiences are equally important, through conceptualisations of presence, movement, and mediating artefacts. Focusing upon ways of knowing through the body, together they catalyse activities that generate qualities of experience, often associated with being well. Furthermore, they encourage the use of the imaginary (often unfamiliar), alongside material experience, which can disrupt, bracketing and transforming future educational experiences

Beyond game worlds: Story-ing storied space & the hope-full endeavour

This thesis explores the entangled stories in software artefacts and design. An apparently simple problem of participation in a digital approach to telling cross-cultural stories and communicating identity through use of game making software reveals potential dilemmas in the wider fields of participatory culture and new literacies, participatory design and contemporary approaches to designing. The thesis weaves a research narrative around six publications. By questioning the possibilities of crafting digital environments, that genuinely keep, tell, and reflect the experience of diverse cultural groups, the research demonstrates that the way design tells stories about itself is an increasingly important object of study

Netprov

Netprov is an emerging interdisciplinary digital art form that offers a literature-based “show” of insightful, healing satire that is as deep as the novels of the past. This accessible history of Netprov emerges out of an ongoing conversation about the changing roles and power dynamics of author and reader in an age of real-time interactivity. Rob Wittig describes a literary genre in which all the world is a platform and all participants are players. Beyond serving as a history of the genre, this book includes tips and examples to help those new to the genre teach and create netprovs