Mobilities and moorings in cyber education

Professor Richard Edwards, The Stirling Institute of Education

17 February 2011, 12.30-2pm (lunch provided)
Room 1.37, Paterson's Land, School of Education

There is much discussion of the impact of the internet on education and the ways in which virtual learning breaks down the 'spaces of enclosure' of the institution, classroom, and curriculum. The potentialities for education seem expansive, yet alongside this sit the inevitable limitations of curriculum, assessment and audit regimes, existing cultures of teaching and learning, the humanistic values embedded in much education, and resource issues.

In this seminar, I want to respond to this tension by drawing upon aspects of spatial theory to examine the ways in which cyber education may be enacted as an assembling of the human and non-human in space-time, whereby we might think of education less as a fostering of learning with all the cognitive baggage associated with this concept, and more a set of mobilities and moorings. If we take spatial theory seriously, then perhaps we need to rethink what we enact learning as, moving from a focus on a capacity to learn, to developing practices of assemblage.

Richard Edwards is Professor of Education and Head of The Stirling Institute of Education. He has researched and written extensively on many aspects of lifelong learning. His most recent books include, with Robin Usher, Lifelong Learning - Sign, Discourses, Practices (2007, Dordrecht: Springer), and Globalisation and Pedagogy (2008, London: Routledge, 2nd edition), edited with Gert Biesta and Mary Thorpe, Rethinking the Contexts of Learning and Teaching (2009, London: Routledge), with Roz Ivanic et al., Improving Learning in College: Rethinking Literacies Across the Curriculum (2009, London: Routledge) and, with Tara Fenwick, Actor-Network Theory in Education (2010, London: Routledge).

Ethnography as Play

Dr T L Taylor, Associate Professor in the Center for Computer Games Research at the IT University of Copenhagen
Author of Play Between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture (MIT Press, 2006)

Thursday 13 May 2010, 12-2pm (lunch provided)
Room 1.37, Paterson's Land, School of Education

Ethnography is a kindred of play, its near neighbor, and thus it is no surprise how potent a method it has been for game studies thus far. Drawing on several examples from my ethnographic work in massively multiplayer online games, this talk will examine the notion of ethnography as play. Drawing on my own experience of play while researching I will discuss how as an ethnographer I am enlisted into the activity of gaming in ways that are productive for research, but also at times unruly, unpredictable, laden with emotion, and negotiated via the body. Several parallels between the work of ethnography and the work of play will be teased out, including entering the field/game, experimentation and learning, surprise and discovery, and even failure. The intent of this talk is two-fold. On the one hand it seeks to make visible in a concrete way the nature of ethnographic work in game spaces. It additionally will try to open up a discussion about what might be fruitfully gained by framing our research practices through a lens of play.

Digital Heritage: designing the personal, programme and public channels of a new degree

Dr Ross Parry, Lecturer in Museums and New Media, University of Leicester
Programme Director of the Digital Heritage Masters programme
Chair of the Digital Heritage Group
Author of Re-coding the Museum: Digital Heritage and the Technologies of Change (Routledge, 2007)

Friday 16 April 2010, 12-2pm (lunch provided)
Room 1.37, Paterson's Land, School of Education

How do we reconcile the branded, authenticated, teacher-controlled and (largely) fixed institutional virtual learning environments that many of us use in our teaching, with the liquid, live, syndicated and user-driven ecology of the social Web that our learners inhabit day to day? And once we have found a way of connecting these two spaces, what is the technology needed for (and what is the reasoning behind) differentiating between 'personal', 'programme specific' and 'public-facing' interactions? The presentation will share the lessons learned in the development of the new Digital Heritage Masters degree at the University of Leicester, not least how much the development team learned from looking at its subject matter - the culture heritage sector.

IASH Speculative lunch: the uncanny

Friday 9 April 2010, 1-2pm (sandwiches provided)
Ground Floor Room, IASH, 2 Hope Park Square [map]

The Institute of Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh is hosting a speculative lunch sponsored by Sian Bayne and Jen Ross, on the theme of 'the uncanny'.

The themes and concerns addressed by the concept of the uncanny, emerging from psychoanalysis, have significance across multiple disciplines. While powerful readings of the uncanny have been applied from the visual arts, literary and cultural studies, film studies and architecture, the theme has gained additional momentum from its resonances with contemporary technology, and in particular with the nature of being in a digital age. Science and technology studies, robotics and online education all have to do with 'uncanniness' in different ways.

This speculative lunch will provide a space for colleagues to discuss ghostliness, bodies, automata, uncertainty, 'time out of joint', strangeness, the double, deathliness and 'intellectual uncertainty' in a joint exploration of the many dimensions of the uncanny.

Space, Place and Mobility

Thursday 11 February 2009

The latest in an occasional series that Hamish Macleod and Jen Ross have organised for colleagues at the University of Edinburgh over the past few years, and the first to be under the auspices of DiCE. This event will look at the theme of 'space, place and mobility', including locative media, navigation, borderless mobile learning, and how learning might change as our experience of space and place becomes increasingly mediated by technology. The afternoon will be structured to allow everyone the maximum amount of time for discussion, with two experienced researchers in the field of mobile learning and locative media to get things started:

Dr Akiko Hemmi from the DiCE group at the University of Edinburgh: The growing sophistication of mobile communicative devices and hand-held game consoles has led to the emergence of a variety of forms of mobile learning. Akiko will draw upon her on-going project (in partnership with the Department of Asian Studies at UoE) which is using the Nintendo DSi as a language learning platform for Edinburgh's undergraduate students of Japanese during their year in Japan. The project aims to enrich students' learning experiences by providing them with regular tutorial support beyond 'place' in a flexible way, while also creating a supportive social 'space' through the use of social networking sites which are accessed through the DSi.

Dr Chris Speed from the Edinburgh College of Art: Networked digital technology is altering the way we plan to get about, how we navigate getting about and the way we get back from getting about. From personal, to private, to public, to group travel – we are starting to do things differently and this may be the start of a cultural shift in the business of navigation. Chris will reflect on the impact of locative media and its implications upon how our understanding of 'place' is changing.