Mobile Learning with Micro-content: A Framework and Evaluation

Micro-learning (ML) combines micro-content delivery with a sequence of micro interactions which enable users to learn without information overload. This has the potential to enable better learning results in terms of retention of propositional content. Learners familiar with Web2.0 technologies, like Tweets and SMS, expect a personalized learning solution and the KnowledgePulse (KP) system researched and developed by the RSA FG delivers this in a work context. ML has potential for enhancing mobile learning which has lacked success despite the explosive popularity of mobile devices. This paper presents the micro-learning approach and the KP sytem that delivers micro-content on mobile devices and allows learning anytime, anyplace and any pace. Three case studies of different product stages of KP are reported with 100+ users in three settings. Results show high usage levels and good satisfaction of learners. These preliminary results provide encouraging signs for the further development of micro-learning systems. Future research needs to expand to a much large scale and also develop an evaluation framework which can serve as standard to investigate how micro and mobile learning can be integrated to create more effective learning

Gothic urbanism in contemporary African fiction

This project surveys representations of the African city in contemporary Nigerian and South African narratives by focusing on how they employ Gothic techniques as a means of drawing the African urban landscape into being. The texts that comprise my objects of study are South African author Henrietta Rose-Innes's Nineveh (2011), which takes as its setting contemporary Cape Town; Lagoon (2014) by American-Nigerian author Nnedi Okorafor, who sets her tale in present-day Lagos; and Zoo City (2010) by Lauren Beukes, another South African author who locates her narrative in a near-future version of Johannesburg. I find that these fictions are bound by a shared investment in mobilising the apparatus of the Gothic genre to provide readers with a unique imagining of contemporary African urbanity. I argue that the Gothic urbanism which these texts unfold enables the ascendance of generative, anti-dualist modes of reading the contemporary African city that are simultaneously real and imagined, old and new, global and local, dark and light - modes that perform as much a discourse of the past as a dialogue on the future. The study concludes by making some reflections on the future-visions that these Gothic urban-texts elicit, imaginings that I argue engender useful reflection on the relationship between culture and environment, and thus prompt the contemporary reader to consider the global future - and, as such, situate Africa at the forefront of planetary discourse. I suggest that Nineveh, Lagoon and Zoo City produce not simply a Gothic envisioning of Africa's metropolitan centres, but also a budding Gothic aesthetic of the African Anthropocene. In contrast to the 1980's tradition of Gothic writing in Africa, these novels are opening up into the twenty-first century to reflect on the future of the African city - but also on the futures that lie beyond the urban, beyond culture, beyond the human

A Network of One’s Own: Struggles to Domesticate the Internet

This thesis is a design research practice-led inquiry into the domesticated Internet. It first seeks to complicate simplistic corporate and academic visions by naming some of the struggles it encounters – not least to assert a private home and network of one's own. It is argued that a century of domestic technologies has emphasised invisibility, ubiquity, and automation in ways that obscure a network of exploited people and finite resources. Furthermore, these technological ambitions are met through machine surveillance, in ways newly enabled by the domesticated Internet, that threaten the privacy of the home. In response, this thesis seeks some practical ways to design alternatives that assert a network of one's own and makes the work it implicates visible. The methodological approach is broadly Research Through Design supplemented by a practice described as designerly hacking through which hidden technical potential is revealed and given meaning. Two empirical studies are described that together make an account of the technical possibility and social reality of the networked home: an autobiographical technical exploration of the author's home and network with the making of hacks and Research Products privately and in public; and a cultural probe engagement with six rented households surfacing contemporary accounts of the domesticated Internet and in particular the challenges and opportunities of wireless networking. Together this yields a series of technical and social insights for design and two forms are offered to communicate these: a framework for understanding change in the networked home (The Stuff of Home) and a set of 30 design patterns for a network of one's own; each invites different analyses. The conclusion then draws together the multiple threads developed through this thesis and offers some reflection on the complexity of doing contemporary technical design work

A Theory Kit for World History

This report presents a “kit” of theories regarding major processes in human history formed into a whole, a “theory kit”, with the aim to understand how these processes unfold over thousands of years. The theory kit has an underlying fundamental theoretical approach concerning dialectical, contradictory, processes as a core of the complex matrix that shapes human history. In the kit, history is presented in three spheres that are given equal importance: material culture, social structure and societal mentality. An enigma in world history is the common rhythm: different parts of the world tend to move at the same time and in the same direction. The claim here is that the enormous interacting complexity is one explanation of this relative unity in change. In the theory kit a number of issues are discussed, such as: Axial Ages, class struggle, empires, expansion-stagnation-crisis, agricultural world systems, technological complex(es), mentality world systems, invention-innovation

The palace is no fun - Disparate and diffuse ideological backgrounds of technologically augmented architectures

This master’s thesis is a comparative analysis of four case studies which represent ideologies of technologically augmented architectures. The first two case studies are an artist’s utopian vision of a city called New Babylon by Constant Nieuwenhuys and the prescient cybernetic plan for the Fun Palace by architect Cedric Price, both taking place in the 1960s. These projects are then juxtaposed with two smart city projects under construction at the time of writing this thesis: Masdar City in Abu Dhabi and Songdo in South Korea. The goal of this thesis is to trace the ideological backgrounds of the aforementioned case studies and to explore the ideological development of this technological mindset . How are the projects presented by their background organizations and designers? What kind of values do they claim to represent and can these values be found in the actual designs? Do contemporary smart cities put civic life first or are there other motivations behind their conception? New Babylon was to be an environment for a nomadic human existence that would consist of infinitely variable spaces with controls to alter atmospheres. Fun Palace was an enormous machinic building, with cranes and other devices making it possible for visitors to rearrange every part of the structure. Neither projects would look the same from one day to the other, but would be everchanging in nature. The projects were never realized. The former remained one artist’s single most comprehensive project spanning more than a decade. The latter did file for building permits and had hundreds of people involved in its design process but eventually never got built. Masdar City and Songdo are so-called ubiquitous cities that share many qualities. They are both cities that are not retrofits of already existing urban fabrics, but are built from the ground up. Smart grids and infrastructures embedded with digital sensors are built into the fabric of the cities from the start. Both cities claim that this will not only provide for efficiency and controllability of resources and utilites, embedded technology and computation will also substantially cut emissions and create a better functioning civic environment. The research points out a difference between stated and unstated goals of the contemporary cases compared to the historical ones. All of the cases are envisioning environments where technology is embedded into the built environment, enabling new kinds of interactions between citizen and city. In the earlier cases the goal was to create environments for the creation of a critically engaged citizen. Most notably, they would put the citizens themselves in charge of their environments. In the contemporary cases the control is put in the infrastructural systems and their operators. At the same time, the legibility of the existence of these infrastructures is obscured. The shape of urban environments remains conventional and the underlying systems that sense, compute and enact on citizens behalf disappear from citizens’ perception. These layers of infrastructure and intensions, both visible and hidden, stated and unstated, suggest that there is more than meets the eye to the technological optimism of the smart city movement. Examining past visions of technologically augmented environments offer us a point of reflection for the values at play in these kinds of developments today.Tämä maisterin opinnäytetyö on vertaileva analyysi neljästä tapauksesta, jotka edustavat teknologisesti augmentoidun rakentamisen ideologioita. Kaksi ensimmäistä ovat 1960-luvulta: taitelija Constant Nieuwenhuysin utopistinen projekti New Babylon sekä arkkitehti Cedric Price Fun Palace, kauaskatseinen aikainen kyberneettinen arkkitehtuuriprojekti. Näitä projekteja vertaillaan kahteen tätä opinnäytetyötä kirjoittaessa rakenteilla olevaan älykaupunkiprojektiin: Masdar Cityyn Abu Dhabissa sekä Songdoon Etelä-Koreassa. Tämän työn tavoite on paikantaa edellä mainittujen tapausten ideologiset lähtökohdat ja selvittää miten teknologisesti orientoituneet ajatusmallit ovat kehittyneet. Miten taustatoimijat ja suunnittelijat esittävät projektinsa? Millaisia arvoja projektit väittävät edustavansa ja onko arvot mahdollista paikantaa itse suunnitelmista? Asettavatko nykyhetken älykaupunkiprojektit kaupungin elämän ja asukkaat etusijalle vai onko taustalla toisia motivaatioita? New Babylon oli ympäristö uudenlaiselle nomadiselle kulttuurille. Se koostui loputtomasti varioitavista tiloista joiden tunnelmia ja ’atmosfääriä’ oli mahdollista muokata. Fun Palace oli valtava konemainen rakennus, jonka osia kävijät pystyivät järjestelemään uudestaan rakennukseen sisäänrakennettujen nostokurkien avulla. Kumpikaan näistä suunnitelmista ei näyttäisi päivästä toiseen samalta vaan olisi jatkuvassa muutoksen tilassa. Projekteja ei koskaan toteutettu. Ensimmäinen jäi yhden taiteilijan merkittävimmäksi projektiksi jota hän työsti yli vuosikymmenen ajan. Jälkimmäinen eteni rakennuslupahakemuksiin asti ja sen parissa työskenteli vuosien saatossa satoja ihmisiä, mutta rakennustöitä ei koskaan aloitettu. Masdar City ja Songdo ovat nk. ubiikkikaupunkeja joissa on monia yhtäläisyyksiä. Molemmat kaupungit on rakennettu puhtaalta pöydältä. Kaupunkien pohjaksi rakennetaan älykkäitä utiliteettiverkostoja joihin on sisäänrakennettu digitaaliset seurantajärjestelmät. Molemmat kaupungit väittävät, että tämä mahdollistaa paitsi kaupungin resurssien tehokkaamman käytön ja kontrolloinnin, myös päästöjen minimoinnin ja paremmin toimivan sosiaalisen kaupunkiympäristön. Tutkimustyö osoittaa, että käsiteltyjen tapausten julki tuotujen ja tuomatta jätettyjen tavoitteiden välillä on eroja. Kaikissa tapauksissa rakennettuun ympäristöön integroitujen teknologioiden uskotaan tuovan mukanaan uudenlaisia vuorovaikutuksen mahdollisuuksia kaupunkilaisten ja kaupungin välille. New Babylonissa ja Fun Palacessa tavoitteena oli luoda ympäristöjä, joissa kansalainen voisi harjoittaa kriittisyyttä ja ennen kaikkea kontrolloida ympäristöään itse. Masdar Cityssa ja Songdossa kontrolli annetaan infrastruktuureille ja niiden operoijille. Samaan aikaan infrastruktuurien luettavuus häivytetään. Urbaanin ympäristön muoto säilyy entisellään ja taustalla toimivat sensorit ja algoritmit toimivat kansalaisten havainnoinnin ulkopuolella. Nämä kerrostumat infrastruktuurien ja tarkoitusperien kerrostumat, näkyvät ja piilotetut, julkituodut ja sanomatta jätetyt, ovat merkki siitä, että älykaupunkiliikkeen teknologinen optimismi kätkee taakseen muutakin kuin tekemiään lupauksia. Menneiden teknologisten visioiden tarkastelu tarjoaa heijastuspisteen nykyhetken kehityksen arvopohjan tarkasteluun

Doing advisory work: the role of expert advisers in national reviews of teacher education

The role and activities of national advisers engaged in the translation of globally mobile ideas on effective teacher education has received little attention. Drawing on in-depth semi-structured interviews, this article explores how government appointed advisers acted as intermediaries in the translation of policy ideas in national reviews of teacher education in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (2010-2015). Three themes are addressed: (1) the localisation of international good practice; (2) the significance of time and temporality in local policy deliberation; and (3) the autonomy-engagement dynamic in government commissioned reviews of public policy fields. The article reports how advisers exhibited transgressive competence in the re-assembly of policy ideas in local spaces. With attention to time, space and positionality, the article concludes by emphasising the significance of localised political strategies in shaping policy choices and prospects for enactment

"The World Goes One Way and We Go Another": Movement, Migration, and Myths of Irish Cinema

The dissertation considers Irish films through the valence of movement and migration to conceptualize a cinema that can account for how films function locally and transnationally. I consider various forms of migration in films produced in Ireland to interrogate how identity and the nation are presented. Considering forms of migration opens a different approach to the films that enables questioning of the myths of the nation-state within globalized capital and culture. In Ireland, the land has given shape to the physical boundaries of imagined identity; land is understood as a material trace denoting a linear history of invasion, conquest, and ultimately independence - an evolution from colonial oppression to postcolonial identity. Movement and migration make the boundaries defining subjectivity permeable by demonstrating how place, identity, language, and consciousness are located in the intermezzo. Using a case study approach that considers diverse films, including big budget, small budget, documentary and popular genre films, I demonstrate how changes in conceptions of national cinema and identity occur on aesthetic and epistemological levels, resulting in multiple points of entry for transnational audiences. I examine the movements of people, the landscape, and storytelling as forms of mobility. Analyses of the films and their context focus on exiles, internal émigrés, nomads, disaffected young people, and Travellers to shift the consideration of migration from emigration toward a conception of epistemological mobility. A double consciousness is elicited though the use of legends derived from earlier Irish history, redefining the relationship between myth and nation. The resultant fluctuating and mobile sign systems refuse strict adherence to any one mode of narration or style, often breaking down boundaries between reality and fantasy. I discuss Irish films in terms of censorship, funding and distribution, arguing that these issues must inflect an understanding of the dispersed form this cinema exhibits. The transformations to genre conventions and meanings are an effect of the necessary movement toward international co-productions. The dissertation culminates in a discussion of how the heterogeneous body of recent films shifts, metamorphoses, and defies definition, indicating transformations in the time, space, and body of the nation