Mobilizing learning: mobile Web 2.0 scenarios in tertiary education

Based upon three years of mobile learning (mlearning) projects, a major implementation project has been developed for integrating the use of mobile web 2.0 tools across a variety of departments and courses in a tertiary education environment. A participatory action research methodology guides and informs the project. The project is based upon an explicit social constuctivist pedagogy, focusing on student collaboration, and the sharing and critique of student-generated content using freely available web 2.0 services. These include blogs, social networks, location aware (geotagged) image and video sharing, instant messaging, microblogging etc… Students and lecturers are provided with either an appropriate smartphone and/or a 3G capable netbook to use as their own for the duration of the project. Keys to the projects success are the level of pedagogical and technical support, and the level of integration of the tools into the courses – including assessment and lecturer modelling of the use of the tools. The projects are supported by an intentional community of practice model, with the researcher taking on the role of the “technology steward”. The paper outlines three different scenarios illustrating how this course integration is being achieved, establishing a transferable model of mobile web 2.0 integration and implementation. The goal is to facilitate a student-centred, collaborative, flexible, context-bridging learning environment that empowers students as content producers and learning context generators, guided by lecturers who effectively model th

Unitec Arboretum

Greening of cities has become a significant motivation for landscape architects, urban designers, and architects, as well as a growing public expectation. While there is need for the development of new technologies to accomplish some of this greening, a reappraisal of traditional New Zealand parks (19th century), often modelled on the English Landscape parks of earlier centuries, such as found at the Unitec campus, may also offer innovative contributions to the understanding of green networks (or urban forest) in the city, through their plant selection, management, promotion and evolution. Unitec Institute of Technology, in Auckland, New Zealand, is well known locally for its park like grounds. Unitec’s campus and tree collection can also be understood in its wider urban vegetation context, and has potential to be developed into a more widely recognised and utilised arboretum resource. The tree collection has been documented by the institute, assisted by research from botanist Mike Wilcox (1996) and senior lecturer Penny Cliffin (2001). This paper will illustrate the project progress to date, and reflect on the impact of these developments in relation to urban vegetation values, such as biodiversity, green infrastructure and watershed management, public recreation, amenity and education. Students are currently developing concepts for the arboretum including improved path networks, connections to the wider community via pedestrian and cycleways, and planting proposals for enhancing Arboretum themes such as bird habitat and fruiting trees as well as experiential aspects of spatial design. Along with this design exercise, students are undertaking campus tree research and documentation, by updating and enhancing the campus database, including the addition of photographs and Geotagging. Online and direct mapping and visitor interpretation such as a brief history of the campus and tree labels, is also being developed to promote the arboretum as a resource for staff, students and the public, in order to better understand urban vegetation values and provide student with experience for their future practice

Unitec campus history : notions of therapy

One of the great things about working in one place for a long time is that you really get to observe it in detail, in all the seasons and over the years and you get opportunities to soak up the character of the place. I have taught at Unitec for 20 years and Landscape Architecture has been in 3 different buildings during that time. Before that I worked for Brian Halstead & Assoc architects and landscape architects who were involved in repurposing some of the Carrington Psychiatric Hospital buildings and grounds for the then Carrington Polytechnic to use for educational purposes. I also live locally. So I have a long association with the site. My seminar today centres on unpacking some of the layers of history of this place. This is in order to consider the notion of the therapeutic landscape from the 19th century and how this has evolved over time to ideas today that the landscape is in need of therapy. The campus can be seen as a microcosm of these changing ideas

Online Plant Databases

Landscape architects have a prominent role in designing and specifying plantscapes across a wide range of project scales, from gardens to urban streetscapes and parks to large-scale conservation revegetation. Both scientific and design plant data is essential to facilitate appropriate and creative planting design. At present there is a gap in the availability of comprehensive and up-to-date plant selection data for landscape students and the landscape profession. Each year students research and compile plant selection information from a wide range of sources as part of their course requirements. Each year the research leaves with the students, and is not captured or expanded in its use. This paper reports on a survey of online plant databases, seeking to answer the question “What does an ideal plant database look like for landscape design purposes?”, and secondarily “Can the plant data collected by students be used to grow such a database?”. Databases are an effective way of storing plant selection data in an easily retrievable format. The development of on-line resources allow for instant and convenient sharing of information. However databases tend to cater well for the scientific aspects of plant data, but less well for visual / design data. The changing dynamic design characteristics of plants as they grow are also important to represent. Planting design is fundamental to landscape architecture and landscape architects require an understanding of the values of plants, and knowledge of a wide variety of plant types in order to design appropriate plantings for components of the vegetated urban landscape (Clouston 1994; Robinson 2004). Three frameworks at different scales are useful to consider here. The first is to understand vegetation as part of global systems and biodiversity (Given 1994). The second is vegetation as a form of environmental infrastructure in urban areas (Robinette 1972). The concept of the ‘Urban Forest’ contributes to this understanding, as described by American authors (Grey 1996). The third framework is to understand plants in design terms, both in spatial and aesthetic terms (Robinson 2004). The survey seeks creative ways in which plant knowledge and data may be presented by students while they are studying, and then shared as a larger collaborative resource with the profession. A summary of best practice in this field will be presented, with the aim of development of such a resource for Unitec students and practitioners in the future

Therapy in translation : landscape Ideas from the Whau Lunatic Asylum and Unitec Campus.

As noted by Julian Raxworthy,1 landscape architecture is different from other design discourses, notably architecture, because of its utilisation of ‘dynamic’ construction media such as plant materials, soils and water, compared with the ‘static’ materials of architecture, colloquially described as bricks and mortar. This dynamic of plant growth and performative ecological processes leads to representation of change over time in any landscape. The psychological benefits of gardens and landscape have been well documented. 2 The Unitec landscape is a field of remnants and features remaining from the days of the psychiatric hospital, such as the trees, landform modifications, productive gardens, and orientation to views. Along with historical photographs and texts the landscape reveals evidence of therapeutic intent in the design of the hospital grounds.3 This paper investigates how the therapeutic landscape of the 19th century can now itself be considered to be under therapy. 1 Julian Raxworthy, “Writing Gardens – Gardening Drawings: Fung, Bruier and Gardening as a Model of Landscape Architectural Practice,” in Landscape Review Special Issue: CELA 2001: Here and There? (Christchurch, Canterbury: Lincoln University Press, 2004), 196–200. 2 Diane Relf, ed., The Role of Horticulture in Human Well-Being and Social Development (Portland: Timber Press, 1992); Rachel Kaplan, “The Psychological Benefits of Nearby Nature,” in The Role of Horticulture in Human Well-Being and Social Development, ed. Diane Relf (Portland, Oregon: Timber Press, 1992) 3 Jeremy Treadwell, “Therapeutic Landscapes,” in Society of Architectural Historians Australia and New Zealand 15th Annual Conference (Melbourne: Society of Architectural Historians Australia and New Zealand, 1998)