AUT and #nextgenhello

WEEK TWO – Auckland (post 1 of 3): AUT and #nextgenhello

Last week was my first week in Auckland, where I’m mainly based at AUT (apart popping back over to Australia for Ascilite) until 11th December delivering mobile film talks and workshops with long-term virtual collaborators Thom Cochrane, Laurent Antonczak and Max Schleser (Massey University). I’ve also met Dan Wagner from UNITEC for the first time (another member of the ELVSS team), and it’s been a delight to finally be working alongside people I’ve known through a screen for the past three years!

I arrived here in Auckland on Sunday 17th after a week in Canberra, and had a great introduction to CfLAT (the Centre for Learning and Teaching) on Monday morning when I attended a staff meeting and met the team behind many learning innovations here at AUT. It was great spending the day with Thom and Vikram (and finally seeing the wall I’ve been staring at through a Google hangout window for three years!) before heading to the mobile film workshop delivered by Max and Laurent – which I then joined on the Tuesday, sharing some rich discussions with participants relating to social/cultural issues around the use of social, mobile platforms before we made some rather cool vids for our #nextgenhello film. Loved seeing Max and Laurent in action – they really know their stuff – and the workshop participants were all very engaged and produced some fantastic work.

On Wednesday, I went along to the CfLAT Pecha Kucha workshop, where staff presented their EdTech projects to one another. I was most impressed both by the number and range of projects coming out of CfLAT and also the quality. Excellent practice all round, so well done all.

In between all of this I was frantically trying to promote #nextgenhello which basically involved annoying people on Twitter/facebook/instagram through incessant #nextgenhello tweets and staying up until 5am so that I could keep haranguing the northern hemisphere. I was also following the Salford Media Festival at our MediaCity campus (review here), which seems to have gone brilliantly judging by the tweets! Bit tiring after 3 nights of this as I was getting up at 7am – but it was worth it in the end when we finally launched #nextgenhello on World Hello Day (21st Nov) in three locations: Salford Media Festival in the UK, the MINA Mobile Symposium here in NZ – and of course, online (YouTube). Thank you and well done to everybody involved – the contributions were wonderful, and a special thanks to Clare Wells for looking after everything at the Salford end, and Jan Bradley for the original suggestion of doing something for World Hello Day – you can read more about the project on the #nextgenhello site – and here’s the story in Storify.

Current Perspectives in Media Education

I’ve really enjoyed dipping into Current Perspectives in Media Education this week (a book for which I wrote a chapter on “Emerging Pedagogies in Higher Education”). Pete Fraser and Jonathan Wardle have put together a wonderful collection which “seeks to widen the debate and offers perspectives on where media education has been and where it might be going. With chapters from leading figures in the field, including David Buckingham and Henry Jenkins, Current Perspectives in Media Education brings together a range of viewpoints from across all sectors, from primary to university and including accounts from the UK, USA, Canada and Australia.”

The chapters are as follows:
1. Introduction: Beyond a Manifesto for Media Education; Pete Fraser and Jonathan Wardle
2. Back to the Future? Old and New Agendas in Media Education; Jenny Grahame
3. Challenging Concepts: Learning in the Media Classroom; David Buckingham
4. Media Education: A Tool for Social Inclusion; Steve Connolly
5. Educating Media Educators; Kate Domaille
6. ‘These are my photos of when I was little’: Locating Media Arts in the Primary School Curriculum; Michael Duezanni and Annette Woods
7. Public Space and Media Education in the City; Stuart Poyntz
8. From New Media Literacies to New Media Expertise; Henry Jenkins
9. Emerging Pedagogies; Helen Keegan (available from the USIR repository)
10. Cultural Disneyland? The History of an Inferiority Complex; Richard Berger
11. Not ‘philosophy of media education’, but ‘media education as philosophy’: Working With ‘creativity’; Mark Readman
12. We are the Resurrection: Media Education after the Media; Julian McDougall

Australia/New Zealand Week One: CANBERRA

I’m writing post in the air (on a chair!) between Australia and New Zealand, where I’m spending nearly six weeks hopping about due to a mix various speaking engagements (seminars, keynotes etc.), and co-delivering hands-on workshops which will mean finally working alongside (yes, as in face-to-face!) some of the people with whom I’ve been collaborating over the past three years. It’s a fantastic opportunity both to share practice with, and learn from others, so in terms of personal development I’m expecting to return to the UK with a much deeper appreciation of learning/curriculum innovation and institutional change elsewhere. The first stop was the Australian capital, where I’ve spent the past week at the University of Canberra and (a last minute addition) the Australian National University, working with staff to explore possibilities for new ways of learning and teaching through social and mobile technologies.

It’s been a fantastic experience so far, and I’m blown away by the talent involved in #ucsaffire – the University of Canberra’s campus-wide project which aims to remodel learning and teaching across disciplines and faculties through integration of digital literacies and pedagogies. The #ucsaffire team come from a diverse range of backgrounds, and between them they cover pretty much everything you’d want in a Teaching and Learning Centre (and then some), including some cutting-edge AR work, an award-winning cinematographer and an amazing woman who alongside specialising in interactive/digital performance has also hitched her way around the world on yachts… (Cynthia, next time I’m coming too! 😉

It’s been a most thought-provoking, challenging and rewarding experience exploring current (and future) practice over here, and I’m genuinely excited about the possibilities for learning and teaching at the University of Canberra, which closely parallels Salford in many ways – so I’ve found myself drawing on not only my own personal experiences, but also the drivers behind learning innovation at my home institution. I look forward to maintaining our relationship virtually as both a critical friend and an ardent supporter of #ucsaffire now that this week has come to an end.

Before sharing some goodbye drinks at the end of the day on Friday (Jean *waves*!), I was whisked over to the Australian National University to present to staff there, and again was heartened by the openness and the attitude towards experimentation with emerging (and in this case, risky) pedagogies. Again, I look forward to keeping in contact and sharing experiences in relation to curriculum design – in this case we were specifically considering simulations and alternate realities in the legal disciplines. Exciting stuff!

It’s not been too bad working in opposite time-zones, as I’m able to do ‘Salford work’ in the early mornings and evenings, with ‘Oz work’ in between. More than ever, I’m appreciating Instagram for ambient social connectivity, and I love being able to stay connected with students back on home turf through photo-sharing – in fact, I’ve found myself referring to Instagram on many occasion this week, as a platform that both academics and learners are using in unanticipated ways to share knowledge and sustain connections over time and space…

Thank you to everybody I’ve met, talked at and talked with this week. You’ve all been wonderful (and a special thanks to Jonathan Powles for inviting me over in the first place and Traci Ward who has looked after me every step of the way), and I’m leaving Canberra feeling rather excited about the road ahead. I probably say this way too much but I’m going to have to say it again…

#ilovemyjob

(pics on Flickr)

The Rest Is Noise: immersion in learning

I’m inspired, energised and brimming with ideas after attending another Rest Is Noise weekend at London’s Southbank. The Rest Is Noise festival (inspired by Alex Ross’ book) is running throughout 2013, and so far I’ve managed to make it to three of these superbly curated weekends of talks, debates, films and performances which “help to explain the relationship between classical music and the social and political changes of the last century”, allowing us “to see the music of that period ‘in the round’ – bringing in the history of science, technology, philosophical and political movements”.

While that (possibly) sounds a little weighty, the programme is so brilliantly put together and accessible that it’s far from elitist. All presentations are engaging, often with some weird and wonderful titbits of information that stick in the mind (“Nazi Porno Kitsch” anybody?). Expertly overseen by the wonderful Jude Kelly, who has an obvious passion not only for the audience experience, but also a deep grasp of the diverse range of topics in the programme, The Rest Is Noise is without doubt my favourite way to spend a weekend in the UK.

There are usually around 5 parallel sessions every hour, but to give you a flavour, highlights so far (for me) have included:

ELVSS13 – State of Being

The ELVSS collaboration/community of practice is now in it’s 3^rd year. Since #ELVSS12’s excursion into internationally collaborative mobile filmmaking on the topic of global sustainability, we’ve taken a different turn – and the community has extended as we’ve now welcomed the University of Bogota (Colombia) into the mix.

This year (#ELVSS13), over 100 learners from the UK (Salford), New Zealand, Colombia and France were brought together to further explore creative practice through mobile filmmaking.

Their brief?

To work in international teams in order to co-create the visual backdrop for Warwick Blair’s 8-act opera which was premiered at the Tete-a-Tete Festival at the Hammersmith Riverside in London:

“State of Being is an inspiring, sometimes harrowing, journey through the human psyche. The opera presents a powerful series of emotional states of being that depict an individual’s struggle for survival and redemption. The opera interpolates live and recorded music with video and theatre to produce a compelling synaesthetic experience.”

In order to produce the video element, the learners were divided into 8 teams, and once again had to negotiate not only time and space, but also a challenging creative brief. Each team was assigned an act and given the ‘soundtrack’ with a one-word descriptor (real right-brain stuff). They then had to produce the visual backdrop for their act, entirely filmed and edited on mobile devices.

This meant that learners from across disciplines and cultures had to negotiate not only the creative process, but also meaning, e.g. What is truth? How can we represent truth visually? As you can imagine, this is extremely challenging not only from a organisational/temporal perspective (as we had even more timezones to deal with this time around), but even more so from an aesthetic perspective.

As with #ELVSS12, the process was exhilarating, scary, frustrating and at times quite painful – but WE DID IT! Warwick Blair’s State of Being was premiered in August, accompanied by a stunning visual backdrop that had been co-created by over 100 students from across the globe. Congratulations to all involved!

You can see the final output here.

#PLEconf Collaborative (un)Keynote

The PLE Conference, now in it’s 4^th year and running simultaneously between Europe and Australia, is one of the most innovative conferences out there. I can’t think of any other conference that pushes the boundaries quite so much when it come to the keynotes – or in #PLEconf terms – UNkeynotes.

UNkeynotes are about interaction and audience participation, moving away from the idea of the ‘sage on the stage’ towards a model which is collaborative and energising, drawing on the knowledge of the room, not just the ‘main speaker’.

When I was invited to UNKeynote this year’s PLE, I was genuinely delighted – and also intrigued by the overall theme: Personal Learning Environments in the Cities of the Future, or ‘smart cities’ as they’re often termed. Having been working with colleagues across the globe for several years now on mobile filmmaking projects, I thought it would be pretty cool to do a collaborative keynote. After all, if we’re connecting learners across the globe, co-creating through mobiles and Google everything, what better way to demonstrate our global PLN/PLE than using a Google Hangout? What can possibly go wrong? Hehe…

So we did it. I’m still breathing. Just*

Smart Cities and Personal Learning Environments from Helen Keegan

We started by exploring the range of smart city initiatives from the top-down, centralised initiatives led by the big beasts of IT through to bottom-up citizen-led, grassroots initiatives. Drawing on Dan Hill’s Manifesto for Smart Citizens (a city can only be as smart as it’s citizens, right?), we discussed the complexities and tensions between these ‘extremes’. Most importantly, we asked “what will the PLE of the future, in smart/future cities, look like? What about the idea of the whole city as a PLE?”

My co-presenters were Max Schleser and Dan Wagner, two awesomely creative people with whom I’ve been working for the past 3 years on a range of mobile/PLE-driven projects, bringing together students across the world to make short films on topics including global sustainability. Dan and Max are both based in New Zealand, although Max is from Germany originally and Dan is from LA. They are amazing to work with and they were amazing in the unkeynote – both joined via Google hangout and spoke about global collaborations such as 24 Frames 24 Hours (a constantly evolving film ethnography where participants across the globe contribute 2 minute mobile films representing their life/day/city), and ELVSS (which I wrote about here last year – and there’s more to come as this year’s project pushed the boundaries even more… yes, we ‘gone done’ a visual opera backdrop with over 100 students from New Zealand, France, Colombia and the UK), sharing their thoughts on mobile PLEs and the potential for connecting people across the world through co-creation.

We then invited the audience to contribute 15 second clips on THEIR ideas in relation to future PLEs using instagram along with the conference hashtag #PLEconf13films. Yes, we actually tried to make a film DURING a keynote (I’m still in the no man’s land between ‘never again’ and ‘I can’t wait to do that again’ i.e. slightly shellshocked). If you go to this URL http://web.stagram.com/tag/pleconf13film/?vm=grid you should be able to view the short videos as they come in. This is a living, connected, mobile film project. We have just over 24 hours to produce a short film composed of multiple clips from people across the globe – so we’re really hoping that our friends at the Australian #PLEconf will also contribute! We’re looking for either a) abstract shots relating to PLEs/future cities, or b) 15 second (max) talking head videos responding to the following question:

What do you think our learning environments will look like in the cities of the future? What will we use them for?

We also have a Google doc set up here http://bit.ly/11B92HM for crowdsourcing general thoughts and ideas, so if anybody would rather contribute to that (or even, as well as a video clip) then please do so! We’d love to end the conference with a manifesto of sorts – alongside a really cool short film starring YOU!

So thanks again #PLEconf for giving us the opportunity to experiment with a connected, collaborative, (un)keynote idea that was technically challenging, chaotic, and slightly scary at times – it was rather ambitious, but I’m hoping that tomorrow we’ll (and when I say WE, I mean ALL OF US!) look at the outputs and think ‘damn, we managed to produce something pretty special’. Judging by the contributions so far, I think we stand a good chance…

#PLEconf? We’re ALL the PLE Conference! Let’s make it happen 🙂

 

*a few unanticipated technical glitches 😉

Teamwork: Interdisciplinarity and Pedagogical Beliefs

A few days ago I attended an ‘away day’ along with my academic colleagues who deliver modules on our BSc Professional Sound and Video Technology degree (PSVT). We’ve been running the PSVT programme for over 10 years now. It is a combined technical/creative degree with elements of audio, video and web. It’s less ‘technical’ than our other course offerings within Computing, Science and Engineering – such as Digital Broadcast Technology and Acoustic Engineering – and while it used to be seen by many as a poorer sibling to the more technical degrees, as our organisational culture has gradually shifted towards interdisciplinarity (resulting mainly from a general shift towards renewed appreciation for interdisciplinarity in HE along with our move to MediaCity) it’s now really coming into its own. Entry tariffs are increasing year-on-year, and our students are building up fantastic portfolios and blurring the boundaries between education and industry through a smorgasbord of live briefs and student placements. And yes, our students ARE awesome.

I’ve never opened up in an online space when it comes to PSVT as a programme – or as a team of educators. Nowadays, our academic identity can be played out over so many spaces; from our personal learning networks (blogs, twitter), to international collaborations (in my, case I often work alongside colleagues in New Zealand and other countries more than I work with colleagues in my own institution). While we work and often socialise together, I’ve certainly never shared deep discussions with most of my immediate colleagues on the PSVT team in relation to THEORIES of learning – and crucially, our personal beliefs. The reason? Partially, time – but also, we’re so damn different…

This is why Tuesday’s meeting was so special. We spent 3 hours together with the sole intention of learning more about one another’s approaches to assessment and module content in order to identify areas for improvement in terms of curriculum, pedagogy and overall coherence. We’re already very proud of the PSVT programme which we review/refine every year, but thanks to ‘Our Leader’ Dave Eustace (sorry Dave, hope I’ve not embarrassed you) we all came away from this meeting with a much deeper understanding of one another’s practice, identifying emerging relationships between modules and discussing the strengths and weaknesses of the broad range of pedagogies that the students experience on the programme, which is highly interdisciplinary in nature. Upon entering the room, we were greeted by guitar music played and recorded by members of the group – enjoyed by us mere mortals while the audiophiles critiqued the production (there’s an insight into the team right there – I love that we can rib one another in this way). Dave had peppered the walls with quotes and articles from educational research/reports designed to get us thinking, and opening up about our practice and how it fits (or not) with the rest of the group.

I feel truly honoured to be part of a team who are able to open up and articulate their beliefs and pedagogies in the complex space that characterises PSVT (traditionalists… progressives… scientists… arts… teaching vs. learning curriculum), and it was basically the perfect end to the academic year for me. These are the kinds of discussions that would be commonplace in a school of education – less so in a science faculty (which is where we ‘belong’). Our discussions were illuminating, informed, respectful, and genuinely rewarding. I feel extremely positive about our team and our programme, and in all honesty it’s great to feel this way after what has been a turbulent time both within our institution and the HE sector in general.

I’d be really interested to hear from others who work in highly interdisciplinary teams. What are your experiences? How to do articulate your practice to one another? How do you resolve tension and conflict in terms of pedagogical beliefs (assessment is an obvious one here)? How do you negotiate the terrain between traditional and progressive approaches, between diverse/competing epistemologies?

So many questions… would love to hear your thoughts.

alt.media : Create to Engage

Today I presented an Open Media/Creative Activism seminar at the University of Coventry. It was great to finally meet the team behind some of the most intriguing and innovative open courses in the UK, including #phonar, #creativeact, and #picbod.

Here are the slides/abstract for the talk:

alt.media : Create to Engage from Helen Keegan

ABSTRACT: “I will describe the use of alt.media to create learning experiences for undergraduate and postgraduate cohorts in a transdisciplinary context. Exploring themes around identity, creativity, engagement, remix culture, spreadable media and curiosity, I will present a series of projects which centre on open educational practices where formal education and informal learning practices collide, subverting traditional methods through folk creativity, identity play, performance and transmedia intertextuality. Following Jenkins et. al. (2013) in their critique of the notion of ‘virality’, and developing ideas around ‘spreadability’, I will highlight our use and exploration of memes and remix culture through open production practices and crowdsourced research. I will also present an experiment in Alternate Reality Gaming to introduce mystery and intrigue into the curriculum, raising questions around produsage, identity play, and hoaxes online. Through highlighting a range of practices, many of which resonate strongly with open media and creative activism, I will encourage participants to consider everyday creativity, audience engagement and media production, consumption and critique.”

Thanks to everybody for coming along, and also to Dave Kernohan (JISC) for making the initial introductions last year. It’s always a pleasure to connect with kindred spirits in an increasingly chaotic space – and we’re already thinking about ways to connect Coventry/Salford students for some creative excursions into digital cultures… should be fun!

Futures of Entertainment 2012 – #FoE6

audiences : culture : curation : spread : content : creation : innovation : activism : slactivism : remix : production : storytelling : engagement : copyright : collaboration

These are the words that I highlighted on the programme for this year’s Futures of Entertainment conference at MIT, from which I’ve just returned. I actually did this on the outbound flight, using a pen, on a paper programme. Obviously these would have been hashtags had there been wifi on the flight (and no, I’m not complaining).

Looking back at these tags now, I can safely say it more than lived up to expectations. Launched 6 years ago through the Convergence Culture Consortium and Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT, Futures of Entertainment brings together leading media scholars and industry practitioners for an intensive 2-day programme of panels and debates focused on media and audiences. The blend of academics and digital media types is invigorating – not interdisciplinary in the strictest sense, but the mix in background/focus certainly leads to a uniquely rich and inspirational event. Always a stellar line-up, Futures of Entertainment is a real melting pot of digital media/audience/fandom/participatory culture researchers and practitioners.

This was the first time I’ve attended, although as I’ve followed past proceedings online I knew it would be a great experience. The reason I had to attend this year is that I’m working with both undergrad and postgrad students on a series of projects based around ‘spreadable media’. ‘Spreadability’ was the buzz-concept of FoE5, and I think it’s a brilliant and welcome challenge to the tired and misleading ‘viral’ metaphor. From a pedagogical perspective it’s incredibly rich as not only is there potential for all kinds of creativity in terms of learners producing artefacts, but also there’s real scope for critical thinking and theoretical developments around content, audiences, agency and networks. Gold dust as far as digital media literacies are concerned, therefore this was pure personal learning/development rather than a speaking gig – a welcome respite as I was able to immerse myself in everybody else’s thoughts and words rather than worrying too much about my own. I do believe that it’s crucial to keep abreast of what’s happening ‘out there’ in order to keep developing relevant, transmedia pedagogies, and I often find that I get the most of out conferences that aren’t necessarily focused on learning as it encourages me to contemplate, and frame, things differently.

Anyway, on to the conference… the standout sessions (for me) were:

Maria Popova and Joshua Green in a brilliant one-to-one conversation around The Ethics and Politics of Curation in a Spreadable Media World. This was an energetic and passionate discussion much of which focused on the definition of curation and the role of the curator i.e. semantics and power relations. Being a fan of brainpickings.org I knew this would be interesting, but both Maria and Joshua were so incredibly incisive in the way that they challenged one another and this was one of those sessions where one hour feels like ten minutes. Seriously good stuff.

Another standout session was Curing the Shiny New Object Syndrome: Strategy Vs. Hype When Using New Technologies. The panellists were Todd Cunningham, Jason Falls, Eden Medina, David Polinchock, Mansi Poddar, and it was brilliantly moderated by Ben Malbon from Google Creative Lab. The discussion was a great mix of laughs, scholarly musings and industry insights on innovation and I loved how @edenmedina brought a more academic slant to proceedings. While there was much talk of SNOS (Shiny New Object Syndrome), they also explored the fetishisation of failure and the problems of assuming that what works in one culture can be easily transported elsewhere – which led to the important point that for all our talk of the importance of being able to fail and not fearing failure, that failure is indeed a privilege.

I also loved the session From Participatory Culture to Political Participation. The panellists here were Sasha Costanza-Chock, Dorian Electra (new to me, and I was instantly blown away by her Economics music videos on YouTube), Lauren Bird from the Harry Potter Alliance (was already a fan of Lauren’s as I’ve known about her work for a while, and Bassam Tariq, the co-creator of 30 Mosques in 30 Days. Again the moderation was excellent thanks to Sangita Shresthova. This session was fascinating due to the conversation around activism and using fandom and fan practices to highlight issues, awareness and encourage action. However, what I found most interesting was the reluctance of the three (Dorian, Lauren and Bassam) to define themselves as political or as activist, leading the audience to question whether there was some kind of generational shift (very mixed views from the crowd as to whether their reluctance to define themselves as political or as activist was a help or a hindrance).

Finally, another session which remains deeply embedded in my mind (although not for the same reasons) was the panel on Rethinking Copyright, with T Bone Burnett, Henry Jenkins and Jonathan Taplin. Burnett and Taplin put forward the classic ‘music industry’ viewpoint, which wasn’t shared by the audience. This would be an interesting session to relive through both the first and second screen. Voices were raised and tensions were rising (although Henry stayed calm and reasonable throughout). The Twitter backchannel was going crazy, but kudos to Sasha Costanza-Chock for standing up on several occasions to offer well-informed perspectives on alternative revenue/licensing models – and also to the guy who stood up to admit that he was the one who closed down Napster. This was a pretty intense session, to say the least…

I’ve just chosen a few highlights here, but I urge you to watch the all the videos on www.convergenceculture.org when they become available. Rachel Clarke did a brilliant job of live blogging each session, while @huey pulled together tweets in Storify which also offer a neat perspective. My usual low-grade instagram pics are here, while there are much better pictures here.

While FoE brings together media scholars and industry practitioners who share the same passions around content, audience and participation, the diverse perspectives on topics such as copyright or activism (and the generational, political, or financial motivations) meant that this conference couldn’t be anything but thought-provoking and invigorating. At times, I found myself nodding vigorously at speakers who used particular terminologies/frame of reference, while I’d have an equally visceral (negative) reaction towards the few who spoke in marketing language and yet they were talking about the same phenomena. Terminology and meaning, ontologies and epistemologies… it was fascinating to reflect on what was being said from different perspectives, and what our choice of language says about us. The great thing about Futures of Entertainment is that it’s the kind of environment where you can say “oh, I’d say xxxxxxx to describe that” and there’s no jostling for position of battles of ownership, just insightful and positive dialogue. However, while we all might have been talking about the same things, jargon does matter. As @henryjenkins tweeted during a particularly lively debate: “it is NEVER just jargon!”.

Thank you, Futures of Entertainment 2012.

Aaron Koblin: Artfully visualizing our humanity

“An interface can be a powerful narrative device. And as we collect more and more personally and socially relevant data, we have an opportunity, and maybe even an obligation, to maintain [our] humanity and tell some amazing stories.” (Aaron Koblin)

Not sure how I managed to miss this when it came online back in May 2011 – but thankfully came across it this weekend: a brilliant presentation from the artist Aaron Koblin, who specialises in data and digital technologies, using real-world and community-generated data. You may be familiar with his work from The Johnny Cash Project and the Wilderness Downtown music video. In this talk, he presents these along with other projects – all stunning examples of crowdsourcing, collaboration and visualisation. If you haven’t seen it already, it’s definitely worth checking out.