Visual Literacy and New Technologies

This body of research addresses the connection between arts, identity and new technology, and investigates the impact of images on adolescent identities, the relationship between online modes of communication and cyber-bullying, the increasing visualization of information and explores the way drawing and critical analysis of imagery develops visual literacy. Commissioned by Adobe Systems Pty Ltd, Australia (2003) to compile the Visual Literacy White Paper, Bamford’s report defines visual literacy and highlights its importance in the learning of such skill as problem solving and critical thinking. Providing strategies to promote visual literacy and emphasizing the role of technology in visual communication, this report has become a major reference for policy on visual literacy and cyber-bullying in the UK, USA and Asia

Limited resources? Let the habitat priority planner help!

In this time of scarce resources, coastal resource managers must find ways to prioritize conservation, land use, and restoration efforts. The Habitat Priority Planner (HPP) is a free geospatial tool created by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Coastal Services Center that has received wide praise for its ease of use and broad applicability to conservation strategic planning, restoration, climate change scenarios, and other natural resource management actions. Not a geographic information system (GIS) user? Don’t worry―this tool was designed to be used in a team setting. One intermediate-level GIS user can push the buttons to show quick results while a roomful of resource managers and stakeholders provide input criteria that determine the results. The Habitat Priority Planner is a toolbar for ESRI’s ArcGIS platform that is composed of three modules: Habitat Classification, Habitat Analysis, and Data Explorer. The tool calculates basic ecological statistics that are used to examine how habitats function within a landscape. The tool pre‐packages several common landscape metrics into a user‐friendly interface for intermediate GIS users. In addition, HPP allows the user to build queries interactively using a graphical interface for demonstrating criteria selections quickly in a visual manner that is useful in stakeholder interactions. Tool advocates and users include land trusts, conservation alliances, nonprofit organizations, and select National Estuarine Research Reserves and refuges of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Participants in this session will learn the basic requirements for HPP use and the multiple ways the HPP has been applied to geographies nationwide. (PDF contains 5 pages

Acconci’s Pied-à-terre: Taking the archive for a walk

To kick the habit of conventional scholarship this article appeals to the affective draw of the archive via an imaginative pedestrian peregrination. It takes a walk through the uneasy spaces of Vito Acconci's 1972 work Anchors and listens to the dialogue of conflicting voices which still demand to be heard, forty years after their construction. It becomes unclear who is initiating the dialogue; the text is hard to read and perverse. The resulting disorientation of Anchors is matched by a later, larger, exhibition in Paris: Les Immatériaux, co-organised by French Philosopher Jean-François Lyotard. Here the labyrinthine confusion of spaces, sounds, smells and sights acts out an excess of information, echoing the affective intensity of Acconci's Anchors. However, the parallel between Acconci and Lyotard comes through a stumbling manner: eager to avoid the foot-fall that forms a well-trodden path the aim is to keep moving. We cannot dust off these archives whilst reclining in a recumbent posture; we must leap to our feet and become participants in their performance. Neither must we aim to decode the unarticulated voices which grunt and girn their way into our reading. Such bodily emissions were termed the ‘affect-phrase’ by Lyotard, not in order to decipher their meaning, but to acknowledge their effect in leaving conventions of communication provocatively unfulfilled. Let us proceed on foot

A Late Performance: Intimate Distance (Yingmei Duan)

A written account of a performance by Yingmei Duan translated to video. How does this attempted return relate to that which Lyotard termed the affect-phrase, anamnesis, gesture

Groupwork assessments and international postgraduate students : reflections on practice

Groupwork is a common learning and assessment method in Business Schools throughout the UK. It has recognised pedagogic benefits, increases active or deep learning of a subject and, although it often appears to be unpopular amongst students, for these reasons it is popular among academic staff in Business Schools. The cultural diversity of a particular cohort of students (especially those who have received no previous education in the UK) arguably has an impact on teaching method and assessment methods. It brings another dimension to the debate of ‘traditional’ versus ‘innovative’ teaching approaches and is worth further examination, particularly as the increasingly multicultural aspect of the present UK higher education environment is not a well researched field. The impact of the increasing numbers of international students dictates that issues relating to the appropriateness of teaching and learning methods must be considered within a multicultural perspective. The preference of certain international students, particularly those from the Far East, is for the more traditional teaching methods; groupwork is unpopular (Bamford et al 2002). This adds weight to the argument for maintaining traditional methods in the multinational classroom. The issue is explored here through a case study on the use of a group assessment with a cohort of international students at postgraduate level

Lightweight universal joint transmits both torque and thrust

A lightweight universal joint uses a thin steel flexure plate to transmit torque and a steel rod to transmit thrust. Both the plate and rod are independently mounted and can act individually