PG Cert Learning & Teaching in Higher Education

Started the PG Certificate for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education the other week, and today was the first peer learning group meeting. It was interesting to meet the others and hear about the different backgrounds and concerns. The perceived contrasts between Art and Science for example will provide some interesting discussions in my opinion.

The most important thing for me for now is to find a way to log my reflection. It might be this blog, but it may just be an old fashioned sketchbook or notebook. I may yet create another blog, more tailored to the subject.

The other important thing is to decide on some activities and units I will be focussing on, drawing on the MA Design for Digital Media. I have already made some valuable changes to some of the units on there, which may be written up for this assignment. Art & Design has a wealth of interesting teaching modes and delivery methods, I have noticed this on the DCQE workshops I have been attending over the years - a lot of issues about active learning and experiential learning are inherent in Art & Design teaching practice. This came up today in the conversation about the reflective practitioner, which is an essential idea in design education - iterative processes, problem posing and solving, peer critique are part of the design process and also of design education.
Additionally, my own philosophical standpoint could be identified as within the enactive learning camp, where all thought is intrinsically linked to the body and therefore activity and reflection is paramount.

Oh yes, got one of the books out that I said I would have a look at from the reading list - Light & Cox "Learning & Teaching in Higher Education - The Reflective Professional" (the other relevant one was out). On first glance I am not inspired and I might look to bring in other ideas that I find particularly interesting, such as designing learning for complexity and multimodality.

Steampunk Gadgets

This is interesting - some intriguing gadget design fusing "intersection of technology and romance where the future meets the past: Victorian era inventions clash with often dark alternate realities." This might feature well in the Critical Design aspect of the unit 'Research * Development'. These designs are obviously unnecessary, but they force us to confront our notions of what technology should look like.

http://oddee.com/item_96830.aspx

Inspiring Visuals - Liquid splashes

Just came across a selection of 'Amazing Liquid sculptures" - photographs taken in the moment of liquid splashes. I love this kind of stuff and would like to create my own. I like the 3D and almost tactile quality, and the ephemerality of it. It just makes it really special, the thought that this only existed for a split second - and was formed organically.

http://funlok.com/index.php/creativity/unbelievable-liquid-sculptures-10102008.html

Technology... with personality?

Anna's Transformation project on the acceptance of technology and the phenomenon of Robots has caused me to blog this article. It is written from the point of view of interaction/experience design and gives a few good examples (looking at visual anthropomorphism for example) as well as insights into how to convey emotion. Turns out Experience Designers Shedroff and Noessel back up my point about R2D2, even though a practical non-anthropomorphic robot, appeals to the human emotion through his sound.

http://johnnyholland.org/2009/12/09/does-technology-need-personality/

Digital Magazine Experiments pt 2

This project by one of the MA DDM students, Anna, is really shaping up to be interesting - and looking at the recent developments could be a more than pertinent investigation. As Paul pointed out, the fact that Apple is intending to release a handheld tablet device could breathe new life into the e-reader and digital reading experience...

A more traditional (!) attempt by Wired Magazine, recreating page-turns and adding interactivity

http://www.wired.co.uk/promotions/sampler200907.aspx

Sports Illustrated designed to be viewed and interacted with on a handheld tablet device... the real estate of the screen is really being used in a clever way, and appropriately to the functionality of Digital Media. The interaction design is reflecting the essence of magazine reading - e.g. browsing, focusing - and not just copying the physical act of page turning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntyXvLnxyXk

Hopefully, Anna will find out more in her research about our relationship with and experience of magazines....

Creative Blogging

This is an interesting blog, as the author designs each entry according to its content. He has adapted a content management system that allows more than a steady trickle into the same old template layouts. His new system allows him to make " fast design direction based on the needs of the content". He says that this might mean the quality suffers occasionally, however I don't think this is the case at all.

http://jasonsantamaria.com/

German government raises concerns about Google Wave's data protection efforts

The Bundesamt fuer Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik (roughly translates as 'Federal office for Security in Information Technologies) in Germany mainly voiced concerns about the loss of control over data once subscribed to the service Google Wave. Google has reacted surprised to this, mainly at the fact that the institute is passing judgement on a service that has not been publicly released yet. Unfortunately, so far I have not found any english language articles or news items on this yet.

http://www.tomshardware.com/de/Wave-Google-BSI-Datenschutz,news-243460.html

Along slightly different lines, but on the same subject - Blogger Jeff Jarvis has criticised the new Google service "Sidewiki", which collects user comments from other websites and saves it on Google Servers. The website authors thereby lose control over the content, and Internet critic Andrew Keen has suggested this might be a thinly veiled attempt by Google to take ownership of the whole Internet.

http://www.focus.de/digital/computer/chip-exklusiv/tid-16076/google-die-unheimliche-supermacht_aid_450985.html

Digital Magazine Experiments

I came across a blog post yesterday, reporting on an experimental online magazine. This lead me on a quick stab journey, also inspired by Anna's interest in the experience of reading magazines and how this could change, be supported or enhanced through digital media.
A Portuguese success story: could i be the future of newspapers?
http://www.editorsweblog.org/analysis/2009/11/a_portuguese_success_story_could_i_be_th.php

Time offering 'customized' experimental magazine
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.70cafb3720e94be3c92af2caf941a9aa.b31&show_article=1

fusion is an experimental magazine that is developed at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, Department Media Design. The issues have individual subjects – ranging from identity to typography – and are finalized on an irregular schedule. 
http://www.experimental-fusion.de/

Using Ethnography for User Experience Research

Here is an article making the link more directly between Ethnography and User Experience Research, as a step before Usability Testing. This relates to recent discussion in the Research Methods unit which dealt with Ethnography (Michele-Anne's session) and then linked to User Experience Research.

http://www.cxpartners.co.uk/thoughts/using_ethnography_to_improve_user_experience.htm