The Visual Effects Research Lab : Herding Cats to Infinity

In the paper I outline the current findings of the research undertaken at the VERL. The three-year project links the worlds of film, art, technology and computer science. In sharing methodologies and promoting cross, trans and inter disciplinary understanding the project challenges established notions of visual thought and creates new synergies between scientists, artists, and film-makers. In 1985 painter David Hockney was invited by Quantel to experience its TV computer graphics system Paintbox. Hockney worked for 8 hours nonstop creating artworks with the ‘tablet’ and ‘pen’ set up. He described the system as like ‘painting with light’. In the spirit of Quantel’s project VERL and Creative Scotland invited artists to propose fantastical moving image projects un-realizable with incumbent technology. VERL worked with the four selected artists to shoot high resolution (up to 4K) and post-produce in Nuke and Maya a series of innovative film projects for cinematic exhibition. The projects pushed the lab’s facilities and team to its limits creating impossible ornithological stunts, buildings rising from burning embers, real and imagined robots and visceral fantasy worlds. This project has had a great deal of publicity in the National and International media, and has been widely acknowledged to be of great significance to the European research community in film media. The UK Film Council, Broadcast Magazine, OFCOM Scotland, The European Union RDF, Nordmedia Germany and Film Fyn Denmark have all quoted findings from the project. It was awarded “Best Practice in Media / Science” at the Creative City Challenge Awards 2011 in Bremen Germany.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Why I Teach

Thoughts about teaching by Linfield College facult

Caravan At The Edge Of The World

During a windswept caravan holiday with Dean’s parents Sara has to decide between true love and her place at Universit

School Budgets and Student Achievement in California: The Principal's Perspective

Presents the results of workshops conducted with 45 elementary, middle, and high school principals from California public schools. Documents the variety of resource allocation strategies used by principals to maximize student academic performance

Creating virtual communities of practice for learning technology in higher education: Issues, challenges and experiences

The need for a Web portal to support the rapidly growing field of learning technology has been well established through a number of national surveys and scoping studies over recent years. The overarching vision has been the provision of a virtual environment to assist in informing and developing professional practice in the use of learning technologies. This paper outlines the issues and challenges in creating such a portal through the experiences of developing the RESULTs Network. In the paper, design and participation issues are considered within the wider context of online and networked approaches to supporting practice and professional development. User participation methodologies and technical developments for RESULTs are described in relation to a review of existing representations of practice and a comprehensive survey amongst the learning technology users’ community. An outline of key achievements and experiences is presented, followed by some conclusions regarding the cultural and political issues in creating a viable and sustainable facility and suggestions for possible future direction in national provision

The north Randfontein Chinese Miners' 'Strike' of 1905

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented July 1975On the 1st April 1905, on the North Randfontein gold-mine in the Transvaal, a simmering dispute between the Chinese Indentured labourers and the mine management erupted in open violence. The whole of the Chinese work force on the mine premises was involved and mounted European police were used to quell the outbreak. As a result of this incident, described by the Conservative Colonial Secretary as a dangerous dispute over wages, fifty-three Chinese were arrested and charged with public violence and assault with intent to do harm. Following these arrests the Chinese returned to work. On the 4th April, however, they received a wage offer which formed not only the basis of the settlement at the North Randfontein, but was to serve as a model upon which the Transvaal Chamber of Mines based its wage policy towards all Chinese, for the latter's remaining period on the Rand

Graduate expectations and experiences: Business degrees delivered through vocational and academic partnership

Non-traditional ways of achieving a business qualification are becoming more common and popular internationally. In this case study from New Zealand, a joint delivery model including full credit between two higher education institutions, a vocational-based polytechnic and a traditional university, shows the strong foundations that can be built to assist a diverse student group moving into higher levels of study. A representative sample of graduates (2009-2014) from the New Zealand Diploma in Business taught at a polytechnic who then progressed to a business or management degree with a partner university were surveyed to gauge student expectations and experiences of both study environments. In particular, the survey focused on how the diploma programme assists the students in transitioning from a vocational based introductory programme to an academic business degree. Graduates’ employment outcomes were then compared to their initial enrollment expectations and key contributors to success were identified.The paper describes the findings from the study and discusses the implications for those who are managing and teaching the qualifications at both levels. The overall purpose of the inquiry is to ensure that the quality of the student experience is enhanced and the teaching and learning delivery options offered through this inter-institutional approach are aligned to the needs and expectations of the learners. Of particular interest are the comments from students around both content knowledge and skills generated through their studies that have directly contributed to their current work role and the connection they make between the polytechnic and university experience and their longer term career aspirations. Key skills graduates gained as outcomes of the NZ Diploma in Business qualification were identified relative to their current employment.Other findings discussed include: Maori graduates are less likely to be employed and less likely to continue on to degree studies. Male graduates are less likely to use the diploma skills in their employment. Lower age group students rate the diploma more highly for preparing them for degree studies and in assisting them with completion of their degree than do mature students.Overall the majority of participants were highly satisfied with the learning foundation that they built as a result of transitioning from a diploma programme into a fully-fledged university environment

A closer walk: a cognitive linguistic study of movement and proximity metaphors and their impact on certainty in Muslim and Christian language

Conservative religious believers often make use of language that represents the perception that there are clear, fixed differences between their view of the world and the worldview of others, and that their view is unambiguously true and other views are not. This thesis explores the validity of that notion through an analysis of conservative religious language from a cognitive linguistic perspective. It first examines the research relating to what is involved in the process of categorising the environment around us and applies it to how that process can lead to and even encourage the perception of conservative religious believers that reality can be simplified into sets of fixed, binary categories. It then investigates whether there are clear, fixed differences between a 15,225 word collection of Evangelical Times Christian testimonials and a 29,067 word collection of islamfortoday.com Muslim testimonials in terms of their use of movement and proximity metaphors to express their way of believing. This thesis concludes with an analysis of the language of three pairs of conservative Muslims and Christians during a videoed discussion focusing on the differences in their experience as believers. In contrast to the first study`s focus on collections of texts, this analysis focuses on individual differences in their use of proximity and movement metaphors and empathetic language. The results of these studies suggest that, despite the fact that such believers perceive their views of the world as clear and fixed, the expression of their perceived experience of interacting with a divine agent can only be accurately described in terms of varying patterns of emphasis. In addition, not only is it sometimes quite difficult to mark out clear differences between different belief communities in terms of this type of language, it is also possible for individuals within the same communities to exhibit as much divergence as individuals from two different communities