Children’s Augmented Storying in, with and for Nature

Drawing on a relational ontology and scholarship of new literacies, we investigate the materiality and performativity of children’s augmented storying in nature. Our study is situated in a Finnish primary school in which a novel, augmented reality application (MyAR Julle) was utilized as a digital storytelling tool for children (n = 62, aged 7–9), allowing them to explore, interact, and imagine in nature and to create/share their stories. The data corpus consists of their narrations of their augmented stories in nature, their augmented story artefacts, and video/observational data from their construction of such stories in nature. Narrative analysis reveals how the children’s augmented storying in nature was performed through playful, affective, and sensuous, identity, cultural, and critical literacies, which were imaginatively constructed into being at the nexus of their sensed reality and fantasy. These literacies make visible human–material–spatial–temporal assemblages during which the children played with/through the augmented character Julle, felt and sensed with/through Julle, and re-storied their experiences, cultural knowledge, and identities with/through Julle. They also engaged in critical thinking with/through Julle. The study contributes to knowledge on the meaning of materiality in children’s storying in, with, and for nature and the educational possibilities of augmented storying for children’s (eco)literacies

Children’s Augmented Storying in, with and for Nature

Drawing on a relational ontology and scholarship of new literacies, we investigate the materiality and performativity of children’s augmented storying in nature. Our study is situated in a Finnish primary school in which a novel, augmented reality application (MyAR Julle) was utilized as a digital storytelling tool for children (n = 62, aged 7–9), allowing them to explore, interact, and imagine in nature and to create/share their stories. The data corpus consists of their narrations of their augmented stories in nature, their augmented story artefacts, and video/observational data from their construction of such stories in nature. Narrative analysis reveals how the children’s augmented storying in nature was performed through playful, affective, and sensuous, identity, cultural, and critical literacies, which were imaginatively constructed into being at the nexus of their sensed reality and fantasy. These literacies make visible human–material–spatial–temporal assemblages during which the children played with/through the augmented character Julle, felt and sensed with/through Julle, and re-storied their experiences, cultural knowledge, and identities with/through Julle. They also engaged in critical thinking with/through Julle. The study contributes to knowledge on the meaning of materiality in children’s storying in, with, and for nature and the educational possibilities of augmented storying for children’s (eco)literacies

Annual Report: 2013

I submit herewith the annual reports from the Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station, School of Natural Resources and Agricultural Sciences, University of Alaska Fairbanks, for the period ending December 31, 2013. This is done in accordance with an act of Congress, approved March 2, 1887, entitled, “An act to establish agricultural experiment stations, in connection with the agricultural college established in the several states under the provisions of an act approved July 2, 1862, and under the acts supplementary thereto,” and also of the act of the Alaska Territorial Legislature, approved March 12, 1935, accepting the provisions of the act of Congress. The research reports are organized according to our strategic plan and by broad subject, focusing on geography, high-latitude agriculture, forest sciences, and the interaction of humans and the environment. Research conducted by our graduate and undergraduate students plays an important role in these grants and the impact they make on Alaska.Financial Statement -- Funding & Grants -- Students -- Research at SNRAS & AFES -- Publications -- Facult

FYP AR Book: Let’s Recycle

Learning on how to recycle is to be considering as one of the basic knowledge that children should have. Plus, with rapid evolve of technology nowadays mobile applications and augmented reality are merged together that it could be used as one of learning tools for children age of 7 to 9 years old to learn recycling. This document outlines the introduction of the project, literature review study of recycling and augmented reality, methodology and project activities, result and discussion and conclusion of this project. Various methods have been used to introduce the concept of recycling to young children which includes advertisements on different types of media such as television, billboard on highway, newspapers, seminar and talks. Despite these efforts, level of awareness among them is still considerably low. Thus, the habit of recycling, i.e. the transformation of awareness into action among them is almost virtually none. Children still do not know the correct way (how) and the purpose they need to recycle (why). Moreover, interesting tools for the children to learn about recycling is very much lacking. Learning through practical experience is an effective approach to learning. Thus, the main objective of this project is to create awareness among children on the importance of recycling. Furthermore, it is also to evaluate the learning of recycling using an augmented reality and traditional storybook and to introduce the augmented reality to the children. Additionally, this project aims to create recycling awareness through the development of an Augmented Reality (AR) book on Recycling. A mobile AR application and an AR book on recycling were developed using combination of a few different software and open source websites for the project. When both of the mobile application and AR book are used simultaneously, together they creates a fun and interactive environment for learning the concept of recycling which includes “practical experience” through games

Outdoor Education and Mobile Learning: an Autobiographical Narrative Using Application-Based Information and Resources

Although mobile learning using smartphones and applications or apps have the potential to inform and educate individuals in an outdoor environment, users may find that connectivity issues and basic knowledge of outdoor environments, including both physical and emotional, could be limited by what this technology provided. This study provided my perspective as both participant and researcher on a journey over 150 miles on the Colorado Trail, using my iPhone as my primary tool for navigation and information for learning how to survive in an outdoor environment. From the beginning, the physical effects were difficult to overcome, but it was the psychological toll that became my greatest obstacle and the one element where mobile learning in the outdoor environment proved to have the greatest value. While this was one perspective, in a single study, by one participant, in which mobile learning in an outdoor environment took place, there were several themes that developed in regards to data connection, the use of fluid apps, the usefulness of static apps, and the restrictions of power in rural mountainous environments. These themes were emphasized to help future researchers further develop this information to help in the continued development of outdoor education using mobile learning

FEED

Topographic and metabolic systems of our landscape have changed over time by the human influence on the earth. This change is caused by a wide range of networks causing impact on our planet, including that network of agriculture. Because of population increase of the human species, the agency of agriculture was turned into a mode of production – the law of demand; More. Quicker. Cheaper. Things got [get] messy. Additives, modifications, combinations, GMO [Object] - all unconventionally mixed in a pot to boil. Machines spreading the mix across the land, seeping into our streams and digested as we drink the water and eat the cow that ate the grass that ingested contaminants from soil and the water.This thesis investigates the impact of surface by human implication as a fusion of artificial and organic ingredients redefining scales of human reality. Where parts and pieces are augmented - took apart and fueled together forming hybrids of hybrids – rigged in such ways to get predicted results. Speculating and interrogating the farming practice in the built environment within the age of the Anthropocene

The Climate of the Great American Desert: Reconstruction of the Climate of Western Interior United States, 1800-1850

Historians have concluded that two conceptions of the West were held during the incipient stages of settlement of the plains region of the Western Interior (sensu latu). They have labeled these conceptions the myth of the desert, supposedly prevalent during the first half of the nineteenth century,l and the myth of the garden, a notion widely held during the latter decades of that century. It has been assumed by students of the American frontier that the former-in its extreme form the concept of the Great American Desert-was derived from the notions of a few men rather than from the probable reality of the environmental conditions. In a sense the reality of the desert has not concerned western historians. Some have undoubtedly assumed that the environment was described accurately by first-hand observers before 1850. Others have assumed that plains of the past environment was no different from that of recent time. Others would seem to feel that the geographic reality is identical to man\u27s contemporary conception, agreeing with Morton that geography ... is man\u27s concept of his environment at any given time. 4 While others may assume that the geographic reality of the plains before 1880 is unknowable, these and other assumptions about the past reality of the plains environment have rarely been questioned by the writers who hold them. They have been the building blocks for most, if not all, interpretations of plains history and past geography. And yet each of these assumptions appears to be false

The Palmetto State Sparkplugger June 1969

The Palmetto State Sparkplugger was the official publication of the Division of Parks and Recreation. It was produced monthly from approximately 1968-1969