Recent ace_dac09_pedagogy items

Networked Artworks: Complex Connections in New Media Art Education

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This paper draws upon the notion of the networked artwork in order to suggest possibilities for new media art education, informed by research in complexity and systems theory, participatory media, and critical pedagogy.

Exploring the Potential of Computational Self- Representations for Enabling Learning: Examining At-risk Youths' Development of Mathematical/Computational Agency

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This paper reports on a study conducted within an alternative high school for students evicted from the mainstream and that utilized the virtual world (Teen Second Life or TSL). The use of selfrepresentations in virtual worlds to enable and facilitate Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) learning is a promising endeavor. At the same time, it is not clear how the ability to construct imaginative self-representations can impact students’ abilities to view themselves as STEM learners and doers. Furthermore, questions over whether students should view avatars instrumentally to accomplish virtual tasks, as virtual selves for playful identity construction and performance, or to what degree the avatars should accommodate representing aspects of students’ real selves vs. extraordinary fantastic characters. This paper provides pilot evidence, elicited using grounded theory techniques on data collected in a three-year design-based research study into fostering at-risk...

Tinkering with the Archive: Pathways to Conceptual Thought and Digital Practice

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Our aim in nurturing cross-pollination between the Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art and the Tinker Factory is to move between the creative and research worlds in new media arts, and to continue to forge innovative, groundbreaking initiatives that will expand our notion of the archive itself and the range of relational artistic interventions in its midst. Parallels between Sound Culture and Connections lays the future conceptual groundwork for cross-disciplinary international ventures where the value of conceptual tinkering with technical and physical tinkering opens the possibilities of inventive research in new media.

The Loop ... Lifecycle: Empathy and Design for Complex Processes.

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

A dynamic pedagogical shift in CCA’s interdisciplinary studio curricula is exemplified by the class: Lifecycle: Empathy and Design for Complex Processes. Within this hybrid design studio environment, the complex interaction between an object and our material and digital environments is addressed through a life-cycle assessment. This was formulated through an analysis of traceable inventories, archives of (i/o) inputs and outputs of industrial, socio-economic and cultural processes that occurs within the life cycle of a selected object. The lifecycle of any object, the path it takes from concept, production, distribution, use, potential reuse, and ultimately as a collectible, e-waste, or landfill is critically demanding by its very nature.

Echoes of Social Presence: A Case Study of A Cross- Disciplinary Pedagogical Experiment

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This case study reviews the use of an ambient display system, dubbed Echo, for encouraging cross-disciplinary exchange about the design and role of technology systems. The study begins with a review of Echo: from the initial participatory interviews to the reflections and discussions generated by the installation. The second half of the case study analyzes why the experiment succeeded and where it fell short. To answer open questions about the experience, we look to the practice of dialogic aesthetics advanced by Grant Kester. We ask what it would mean to use the concept of the ‘character of exchange’ as a guide for the evaluation and design of cross-disciplinary exchanges.