Objects, subjects, bits and bytes: learning from the digital collections of the National Museums

This paper is concerned with online museum education, exploring the themes of user-centredness, digitization, authority and control. Taking as its starting point the shift of focus in museum policy from the collection to the user-learner, it suggests that this movement from object to subject – this ‘de-centring’ of the cultural institution – is further complicated by a fundamental change in the nature of the object, as a result of digitization programmes which transform material, ‘possessible’ artefacts into volatile amalgams of bits and bytes. The ability of users to take, manipulate, re-distribute and re-describe digital objects is, we suggest, a primary source of their educational value. It is also, however, a source of difficulty for institutions as they come to terms with the changing patterns of ownership, participation and knowledge production we are experiencing as we move further into the digital age

Speculating with glitches:Keeping the future moving

This paper explores the glitch as a generative problem which is capable of introducing unanticipated possibilities and futures into situations. We understand the glitch as a sociomaterial encounter rather than merely a technical error, and argue that it calls for (re)consideration of here-and-now possible futures through practices of response and repair. Exploring the ways that people seek to respond to glitches, we consider two case studies in which unexpected problems provoke those involved to speculate playfully and practically about new possibilities. In the first case, a malfunctioning ‘Teacherbot’ incites new challenges and pedagogical opportunities in an online learning environment. In the second, Hungarian activists creatively use infrastructural and political problems to make new spaces of protest and to press the government to respond to their concerns. Considering these empirical cases allows us to observe how playful and disruptive dispositions have worked to question the terms of possible futures in the real world, and to unsettle the seemingly given terms of power-relations. Glitches are not a panacea, but they can provide an impetus to act from within situations that are uncertain, and can therefore point to new trajectories and possible futures

Objects, subjects, bits and bytes: learning from the digital collections of the National Museums

This paper is concerned with online museum education, exploring the themes of user-centredness, digitization, authority and control. Taking as its starting point the shift of focus in museum policy from the collection to the user-learner, it suggests that this movement from object to subject – this ‘de-centring’ of the cultural institution – is further complicated by a fundamental change in the nature of the object, as a result of digitization programmes which transform material, ‘possessible’ artefacts into volatile amalgams of bits and bytes. The ability of users to take, manipulate, re-distribute and re-describe digital objects is, we suggest, a primary source of their educational value. It is also, however, a source of difficulty for institutions as they come to terms with the changing patterns of ownership, participation and knowledge production we are experiencing as we move further into the digital age

Making distance visible: assembling nearness in an online distance learning programme

Online distance learners are in a particularly complex relationship with the educational institutions they belong to (Bayne, Gallagher, & Lamb, 2012). For part-time distance students, arrivals and departures can be multiple and invisible as students take courses, take breaks, move into independent study phases of a programme, find work or family commitments overtaking their study time, experience personal upheaval or loss, and find alignments between their professional and academic work. These comings and goings indicate a fluid and temporary assemblage of engagement, not a permanent or stable state of either “presence” or “distance”. This paper draws from interview data from the “New Geographies of Learning” project, a research project exploring the notions of space and institution for the MSc in Digital Education at the University of Edinburgh, and from literature on distance learning and online community. The concept of nearness emerged from the data analyzing the comings and goings of students on a fully online programme. It proposes that “nearness” to a distance programme is a temporary assemblage of people, circumstances, and technologies. This state is difficult to establish and impossible to sustain in an uninterrupted way over the long period of time that many are engaged in part-time study. Interruptions and subsequent returns should therefore be seen as normal in the practice of studying as an online distance learner, and teachers and institutions should work to help students develop resilience in negotiating various states of nearness. Four strategies for increasing this resilience are proposed: recognising nearness as effortful; identifying affinities; valuing perspective shifts; and designing openings

Relationship Between Radial Compressive Modulus of Elasticity and Shear Modulus of Wood

Wood properties in transverse compression are difficult to determine because of such factors as anatomical complexity, specimen geometry, and loading conditions. The mechanical properties of wood, considered as an anisotropic or orthotropic material, are related by certain tensor transformation rules when the reference coordinate system changes its orientation. In this paper, we used our verified shear modulus model to estimate compressive modulus of elasticity in the radial direction by means of certain established tensor transformation rules. The obtained basic engineering constants form a viable set that agrees with reliable test data and the anisotropic elasticity theory