Beyond the Map: Issues in the Design of a Virtual 3D Knowledge Space for Aboriginal Knowledge.

This paper examines the role of Virtual Reality technologies (in particular, the Digital Songlines Environment), in the expression of a sustainable Aboriginal landscape knowledge base. The effectiveness of these new kinds of knowledge practice is framed by their sustainability and how they complement existing cultural knowledge practices. These issues of sustainability and complementarity need to be addressed in the design and implementation of the VR product. This paper frames the process and product of Digital Songlines Environment as a performative, cross cultural knowledge space, which has the potential to negotiate the controversies between Western techno-science and Aboriginal knowledges. The twin themes of reflexive design and respectful cross cultural engagement and trust, are seen as imperatives for the process and product to align with the authenticity, ownership and purposes of Aboriginal knowledge traditions

Database and Narratological Representation of Australian Aboriginal Knowledge as Information Visualisation using a Game Engine

Current database technologies do not support contextualised representations of multi-dimensional narratives. This paper outlines a new approach to this problem using a multi-dimensional database served in a 3D game environment. Preliminary results indicate it is a particularly efficient method for the types of contextualised narratives used by Australian Aboriginal peoples to tell their stories about their traditional landscapes and knowledge practices. We discuss the development of a tool that complements rather than supplants direct experience of these traditional knowledge practices

Theoretical considerations regarding social work education: do ethics matter and if so how do you teach them?

The professional capabilities that are required of practicing social workers include an understanding of ethics and the capacity for ethical practice, yet rather than facilitating procedural knowledge transfer, this paper emphasises the acquisition of ethical knowledge as a process of critical, transformational and political education. This paper considers the trends towards internationalising Social Work in respect to student learning needs regarding Social Work ethics. It considers cross cultural politics against an implicit, static, relativist philosophical framework, for ethics. Relevant Social Work education, rather than being a process of learning professionally endorsed context-specific, ethical practices, might be a process of developing comfort with explicit examination of group power-relations within dynamic practice contexts. It might examine a, relationist philosophical approach by considering ontological questions that underlie the relationships between professionals and other stakeholders that are involved in ethical decision-making. By making explicit, a relationist framework there can be description and analysis of the power-relations between Social Workers and client populations as they change and develop. This approach promotes critical reflection as an essential process for personal and professional transformation, when dealing with the ethical complexities of cultural relativism, humanitarian evangelism and risk management