Museum Experience Design: A Modern Storytelling Methodology

In this paper we propose a new direction for design, in the context of the theme “Next Digital Technologies in Arts and Culture”, by employing modern methods based on Interaction Design, Interactive Storytelling and Artificial Intelligence. Focusing on Cultural Heritage, we propose a new paradigm for Museum Experience Design, facilitating on the one hand traditional visual and multimedia communication and, on the other, a new type of interaction with artefacts, in the form of a Storytelling Experience. Museums are increasingly being transformed into hybrid spaces, where virtual (digital) information coexists with tangible artefacts. In this context, “Next Digital Technologies” play a new role, providing methods to increase cultural accessibility and enhance experience. Not only is the goal to convey stories hidden inside artefacts, as well as items or objects connected to them, but it is also to pave the way for the creation of new ones through an interactive museum experience that continues after the museum visit ends. Social sharing, in particular, can greatly increase the value of dissemination

Mixed reality for cross-cultural integration. Using positive technology to share experiences and promote communication

The opinion article highlights some innovative resources to deal with the challenges of migrations, relying in the field of positive technologies and, more specifically, in the concept of mixed reality. In the contemporary society, migrations are a common phenomenon that rises cultural and psycho-social issues, as well as political and economic challenges. People move from their place of origin for educational or professional purposes or because they are forced to leave due to political, economic and social conditions, and also natural disasters which produce population flows. Whatever the push and pull factors are, when people move permanently or temporarily they tend to maintain close ties with their place of origin (with people, places, culture, practices etc.), while trying to develop attachment with the place of residence. Immigrants construct their identities in the context of a negotiation between old and new homes’ contexts. However, such a process is not free from issues and relevant consequences on immigrants’ well-being. Some psychosocial issues can be identified regarding identity re-negotiation while moving to a different place, and cultural integration: immigrants could experience feeling of isolation, estrangement and alienation, related to the difficulty to create strong social ties in the new place; the “acculturation stress” associated to adaptation to new culture, language and practices. Positive technologies offer innovative resources to deal with these challenges, by considering the human health and well-being as the main objective for technological advancement. In a broad sense, Positive technology may be used to structure, augment or replace user experience with digital content; also, positive devices may be used to promote positive emotions (hedonic technology), to support the user in the achievement of engaging and self-actualizing experiences (eudaimonic technology), and to enhance connectedness among individuals, groups and societies (social-interpersonal technologies). In such perspective, the mixed reality technology provides resources for intervention in that it is based on the addition of digital elements in the physical environment, instead of its substitution with an immersive experience which, in this case, may act as a palliative care for sadness but does not help to integrate oneself in a new, “real” physical environment and social context. Specifically, mixed reality based Positive technologies can help in maintaining the relation with the home country, and also in fostering the inclusion in and attachment to the receiving society, by providing users with sources of identification that stretch beyond the national and local contexts of their old and new homes. Addressing the social connectedness, the mixed reality can provide the medium to share the meanings that people attach to places, people and cultures, and creating belonging in the receiving society. Indeed, people can better approach the receiving society by understanding the cultural meanings connected with places, history and activities. The concept expressed in the opinion article is still in its infancy. However, it provides an innovative idea for positive technology (at the social-interpersonal level), which may guide the development of future devices and applications for enhancing health and well-being in the growing population looking for a new life in places distant from home

News Improved: NPR's Transition from Public Radio to Public Media

In 2007, National Public Radio adopted a multiyear plan to increase the organization's digital footprint and begin transforming itself from a public radio company to a public media company. Achieving that transformation required staff members to improve their digital skills and to understand the relevancy of NPR's digital news strategy and structure to their own work. In addition, it required a culture shift in the organization to break down barriers and encourage collaboration between radio and digital staff.NPR initiated the most comprehensive training in its history. Six hundred staff members, including reporters, producers and editors, were taught to write for the Web, create digital products including videos and photographs, and use the latest audio production tools. During the course of that massive effort, funded by a $1.5 million grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, NPR and Knight learned important lessons about conducting effective digital media skills training.These lessons are also relevant to other news organizations as they move from a single platform -- whether audio, print or video -- to a multimedia platform delivered via the Internet. In November 2010, the Knight Foundation retained TCC Group to evaluate the training with an eye toward identifying best practices for both NPR and other journalism enterprises. While the training's goal was to improve NPR's digital content and audience engagement, TCC's evaluation design focused on assessing direct outcomes -- including improvement in individual digital skills, integration of digital media throughout the organization and changes in attitudes toward digital storytelling -- and examining what factors matter most in achieving these outcomes. TCC administered a 360-degree evaluation survey to NPR staff members and conducted in-depth interviews with 18 people.Overall, the evaluation found that the Knight-funded NPR training resulted in a positive shift in individual and organizational attitudes toward digital news. Best practices to improve both individual and organizational outcomes included providing hands-on relevant training, applying it immediately and offering support after the trainin

Investigating situated cultural practices through cross-sectoral digital collaborations: policies, processes, insights

The (Belfast) Good Friday Agreement represents a major milestone in Northern Ireland's recent political history, with complex conditions allowing for formation of a ‘cross-community’ system of government enabling power sharing between parties representing Protestant/loyalist and Catholic/nationalist constituencies. This article examines the apparent flourishing of community-focused digital practices over the subsequent ‘post-conflict’ decade, galvanised by Northern Irish and EU policy initiatives armed with consolidating the peace process. Numerous digital heritage and storytelling projects have been catalysed within programmes aiming to foster social processes, community cohesion and cross-community exchange. The article outlines two projects—‘digital memory boxes’ and ‘interactive galleon’—developed during 2007–2008 within practice-led PhD enquiry conducted in collaboration with the Nerve Centre, a third-sector media education organisation. The article goes on to critically examine the processes involved in practically realising, and creatively and theoretically reconciling, community-engaged digital production in a particular socio-political context of academic-community collaboration

Exploiting tacit knowledge through knowledge management technologies

The purpose of this paper is to examine the contributions and suitability of the available knowledge management (KM) technologies, including the Web 2.0 for exploiting tacit knowledge. It proposes an integrated framework for extracting tacit knowledge in organisations, which includes Web 2.0 technologies, KM tools, organisational learning (OL) and Community of Practice (CoP). It reviews a comprehensive literature covering overview of KM theories, KM technologies and OL and identifies the current state of knowledge relating to tacit knowledge exploitation. The outcomes of the paper indicate that Internet and Web 2.0 technologies have stunning prospects for creating learning communities where tacit knowledge can be extracted from people. The author recommends that organisations should design procedures and embed them in their Web 2.0 collaborative platforms persuading employees to record their ideas and share them with other members. It is also recommended that no idea should be taken for granted in a learning community where tacit knowledge exploitation is pursued. It is envisaged that future research should adopt empirical approach involving Complex Adaptive Model for Tacit Knowledge Exploitation (CAMTaKE) and the Theory of Deferred Action in examining the effectiveness of KM technologies including Web 2.0 tools for tacit knowledge exploitation

Using Technology to Support At-Risk Students' Learning

A new report finds that technology - when implemented properly -can produce significant gains in student achievement and boost engagement, particularly among students most at risk

Crossovers: Digitalization and literature in foreign language education

Digitalization produces increasingly multimodal and interactive literary forms. A major challenge for foreign language education in adopting such forms lies in deconstructing discursive borders between literary education and digital education (romance of the book vs. euphoric media heavens), thereby crossing over into a perspective in which digital and literary education are intertwined. In engaging with digital literary texts, it is additionally important to consider how different competencies and literary/literacy practices interact and inform each other, including: (1) a receptive perspective: reading digital narratives and digital literature can become a space for literary aesthetic experience, and (2) a productive perspective: learners can become “produsers” (Bruns, 2008) of their own digital narratives by drawing on existing genre conventions and redesigning “available designs” (New London Group, 1996). Consequently, we propose a typology of digital literatures, incorporating functional, interactive and narrative aspects, as applied to a diverse range of digital texts. To further support our discussion, we draw on a range of international studies in the fields of literacies education and 21st century literatures (e.g., Beavis, 2010; Hammond, 2016; Kalantzis & Cope, 2012; Ryan, 2015) and, in turn, explore trajectories for using concrete digital literary texts in the foreign language classroom

Smart Conversational Agents for Reminiscence

In this paper we describe the requirements and early system design for a smart conversational agent that can assist older adults in the reminiscence process. The practice of reminiscence has well documented benefits for the mental, social and emotional well-being of older adults. However, the technology support, valuable in many different ways, is still limited in terms of need of co-located human presence, data collection capabilities, and ability to support sustained engagement, thus missing key opportunities to improve care practices, facilitate social interactions, and bring the reminiscence practice closer to those with less opportunities to engage in co-located sessions with a (trained) companion. We discuss conversational agents and cognitive services as the platform for building the next generation of reminiscence applications, and introduce the concept application of a smart reminiscence agent

Knowledge as Culture

Culture must not be seen as something that merely reflects an organization’s social reality: rather, it is an integral part of the process by which that reality is constructed. Knowledge management initiatives, per se, are not culture change projects; but, if culture stands in the way of what an organization needs to do, they must somehow impact