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Watch this Episode, which is a vodcast in three parts; files are mp4 format, playable on an iPod. To download please right-click links:
Panel members (L to R above): Prof Roly Sussex, facilitator (University of Queensland); Prof Paul Draper (Griffith University); Dr. Kate Foy (late of University of Southern Queensland); Prof Phil Long (University of Queensland). Analogue and digital have re-defined their relationship in artistic production over the past two decades. This panel raises as many questions as it attempts to answer. What a perfect opportunity to use the feedback facility offered by this site! Digital reigns for recording, the placing of output on permanent record in the performing arts. And it has won the day for dissemination for all the arts. True, one attends an exhibition. But what exhibition of note does not have a website, the better to project its work to an international audience? In the visual arts, oils, paper, pastel, lithography, stone are surely still fundamental, not only to the artistic object, but also to its means of conception and production. And yet there are digital resources for graphic production, from CADCAM to drawing programs to digital printing, which meansthat the artist’s output is not just disseminated digitally, but is directly Nonetheless, there are many practices which will remain ‘analogue’. In fact it is the extended relationship between the new and the old that makes both traditional and now niche practices more effective and sustainable. And then there are hybrids – a cross-mixing of analogue and digital. The panel asks many questions:
Help formulate the responses to these questions. Watch these episodes and then go to the comment board to contribute your ideas. |
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Entries Tagged as 'Education in Virtual Worlds'
Conjectures in Digital Aesthetics …
December 22nd, 2008 · 1 Comment
Tags: Education in Virtual Worlds · Research in the Creative Arts
A post card from Second Life
December 21st, 2008 · No Comments
Listen to the Episode:
Second Life and Engagement
It seems Second Life is popping up everywhere. Hot on the heels of Jason Zagami’s Second Life presentation at Create World 2008, reported on in our earlier blog came Jenny Grenfell’s discussion of the Second Life initiative at Deakin University, and its capacity to enhance student participation and engagement. In the Deakin implementation, the idea is to provide virtual forums for peer-to-peer and teacher-to-student collaborative engagement and to promote the development of multiple learning channels. The Deakin island on Second Life is closed to the public, but you can see some screen shots of it in this YouTube video, put together by Gary Hayes:
(By the way, if you want to see this in a bit more detail a medium res version of the presentation (mp4, 105MB) is also available. Alternatively see it frame by frame, with comments, on Gary Hayes Flickr site.)
In this podcast episode Cat Hope talks to Jenny about potential problems with Second Life as a learning platform. Do students just want these sorts of systems for their own social networking purposes, and not for formal learning? What are some tips for those trying to set up these networked environments in their own university? Do virtual environments like Second Life draw students out of real life tutorial scenarios and into an asocial, virtual realm?
Participants Comments
Listen to the commentary:
Managing Change to Second Life
Inspired by Jenny’s presentation, Catherine Duncan (University of Ballarat) and Malcom Riddoch (Edith Cowan University) had a wide-ranging chat with Allan Carrington, starting out with some reflections on Second Life.
Tags: Education in Virtual Worlds
Caryl Shaw on SPORE – the inside story
December 20th, 2008 · 1 Comment
Listen to the Episode:
Caryl Shaw and a journey into SPORE
Developed by Maxis, the same outfit that gave the world the legendary SimCity and Sims games, Spore appears to have gone gangbusters since its release just a couple of months ago. Maxis set out to make a game in which players could design and evolve their own creations, building them up from small cell-like entities into larger and more social beings, building and creating along the way, and sharing those creations with others. It is a game that can be played either socially or more aggressively, but the emphasis is always on creativity and the telling of one’s own story. As Will Wright, creator of Spore, puts it, the aim of the game is to turn out a generation of George Lucas’s, rather than a generation of Luke Skywalkers. Will expounds further on the game in this YouTube video:
OK, so lots of kids love it, so lots of adults love it too, and so families can sit around getting quality creative time together. But is it educational, or can it be adapted usefully to educational, especially higher educational, purposes? … Well, we might have to wait a while to get a definitive answer on that one. As Caryl Shaw, Online Producer for Spore, and a keynote speaker at Create World 2008, points out in this podcast episode, it is early days yet; good educational applications can take 12 months or so to emerge, and, after all, the game wasn’t designed primarily as an educational tool.
In the meantime, the debate within the teaching and learning community is beginning to heat up, with some commentators hailing Spore’s huge educational potential, while others express some serious concerns about just what kind of science the game may be communicating.
Find out more about Spore in this interview with Caryl Shaw, and get the real inside story.
And for a broader overview of the whole Games & Education interface, this Futurelab site on Games & Learning is probably not a bad place to start.
Tags: Education in Virtual Worlds · Gaming & Education
Second Life as an Arts Education Environment
December 18th, 2008 · 1 Comment
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Jason Zagami (Griffith University) has been investigating online 3D virtual environments and their potential as learning spaces, and he and his team have just completed a study into the effectiveness of Second Life in training of a group of pre-service primary school teachers. In the study Second Life was used to support the development of primary school arts education, focusing specifically on the Queensland Education Department’s key learning areas of dance, drama, media, music, and visual arts. Which key areas do you think responded most positively to exploration through Second Life? Have a listen to this podcast episode – the results that have emerged from testing might surprise you. A number of universities and tertiary insitutions in Australia have bought real estate in Second Life and are delivering programs in that virtual space. The growing interest in the platform is reflected in the fact that at the recent ASCILITE 2008 conference there were three papers on it, by Muldoon et al (USQ), Butler & White (QUT), and Saeed et al (Swinburne). John Lester, of Linden Labs, developers of Second Life, is reported as saying that it “gives both students and faculty a new medium for exploring things like distance learning, experiential learning, simulation, and scientific visualization in a fundamentally collaborative environment.” For those interested in following up further on Second Life educational applications, Jeremy Kemp’s SimTeach site, which covers a range of multi-user virtual environments, might prove useful.
Listen to the commentary: Deirdre Russell Bowie (University of Western Sydney) & Mark Foster (University of NSW) were at Jason’s talk, curious to find out more about Second Life. During the presentation Deirdre suggested conducting a follow-up study that might compare the learning outcomes of students who studied in virtual space to those of conventionally taught students. And in this commentary, Deirdre and Mark discuss whether virtual space students will get sufficient experience in the real world practice of such skills as singing and dancing to be able to actually teach them; it has to do with confidence, they say. They also offer other reflections on the platform, and formulate a range of interesting questions for further investigation. |
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Participants Comments
Allan Carrington is a Learning Designer with the Centre of Learning and Professional Development at the University of Adelaide. 
Dr Ian Green teaches and researches in areas of researcher education, elearning and linguistics at the University of Adelaide. 
Dr Kate Foy is a freelance creative arts consultant and practitioner, and an e-learning researcher. She was until recently Associate Professor and Deputy Dean Faculty of Arts, University of Southern Queensland. 
Cat Hope runs the composition, music technology and postgraduate programs in music at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA) at Edith Cowan Univeristy in Perth, WA. She is a composer, performer, installation artist and active music researcher and writer. 
