It's my pleasure to update you on some recent changes to the ACID Research Leaders Group.
Following Professor Greg Hearn's resignation from the role of interim Director of QUT's Institute for Creative Industries and Innovation, he has also resigned as our Research Leader representing QUT. Greg's contribution to ACID was significant, and we will miss his input.
Greg has been replaced as QUT's representative on the ACID Research Leaders Group by Margot Brereton, who has moved from the University of Queensland to QUT to take up a position as Professor in the Faculty of Built Environment and Engineering.
Margot's previous role as UQ's representative on the Research Leaders Group has been taken up by Dr Stephen Viller, who has worked with ACID over a number of years.
Professor Ernest Edmonds of the University of Technology, Sydney, has taken on the role of Project Leader on one of ACID's major programs, Our Content. To avoid any potential conflict of interest, Ernest has stepped down from the ACID Research Leaders Group. Professor Kees Dorst joins us as Research Leader representing UTS.
We welcome Dr Viller and Prof Dorst to the ACID Research Leaders Group, congratulate Prof Brereton on her move to QUT, and look forward to working with the new Research Leaders Group in 2008.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone in the ACID family for a great year. We've worked hard, gone through a number of significant changes, delivered a number of successes, and finalised a strong research program for the future.
2008 promises yet more hard work, much of which will be associated with the new CRC funding bid, and many more solid successes including commercialisation of some key projects.
I wish everyone a restful and re-energising holiday season and look forward to working with you all again in the new year.
ACID's Kelvin Grove office will closed on Friday 21 December 2007, and re-open on Monday 7 January 2008.
and built the 'amazing garden' event.
and up to five hints.
the students played each other's events.
ACID researchers Deb Polson, Colleen Morgan and Sherwin Huang conducted a major participant trial of the latest version of MiLK, the Mobile Informal Learning Kit, in Adelaide in late November.
MiLK allows participants to design event paths that lead players through a location. Questions and hints, sent by SMS to mobile phones, direct players to checkpoints within the location.
The trial involved teachers and students from three Adelaide high schools testing MiLK 0.5 in the Adelaide Botanic Gardens. Each group of three students played an event created by the MiLK team, created events of their own, and played each other's events.
The MiLK team collaborated with Paul Doherty of the SA Department of Education and Children's Services and with Steve Meredith, Education Officer with the SA Dept of Environment & Heritage, Botanic Gardens & State Herbarium.
"The trial was vital to our research on MiLK," said project leader Deb Polson.
"We're looking into tools and literacies that link schools to other dynamic learning spaces and ultimately the everyday lives of students. This trial generated lots of positive, valuable participant feedback from both students and teachers."
What do you like best about MiLK?
"... you can create your own game, publish it, and then it is amazing that people can so simply and get text messages back when we haven't even touched a phone."
"... all the information is in the palm of your hand..."
"... it combines learning with new technology."
"This is so much fun, so much better than sitting in a classroom."
"I think it was just as fun making the games as playing them."
"I know a lot of people wouldn't even bother looking at the signs on the plants and when you transfer it to this game it makes them look at it, makes it a bit more interesting..."
"... if you are working in a space you're not familiar with you learning a lot more about it because you actually have to go out and look for that stuff."
Who would you make a game for?
"Our principal ... if we do it for her she will endorse it."
"... the computer technician because he blocks all the games and thinks they are stupid."
"It is that move from lower order thinking, just answering questions, recall and finding information, to actually understanding and interpreting it, and actually being able to synthesise.
"If you want to look at Blooms taxonomy, you are going right up from a lower level up high really quickly and that is where we have always tried to get kids to move to, from the basic recall to thinking about it.
"So it is a great tool for that I think."
Janelle Williams of Trinity Bay State High School in Cairns has been awarded an ICT Pedagogical Licence under the Queensland Government's Smart Classrooms strategy.
The license acknowledges teachers who effectively integrate ICT into teaching and learning.
A large part of Janelle's application was her use of ACID's MiLK platform. She said "the relationships I strengthened with my students are perhaps the thing I found most powerful about the project."
The MiLK team and everyone at ACID congratulate Janelle on her award. See the MiLK blog for more info.
The Apple University Consortium has awarded Andrew Brown and Steve Dillon from the ACID Network Jamming project a grant for a set of four Apple laptops and an iPod.
Project leader Dr Steve Dillon of QUT said the equipment will be used for field trials.
"The Network Jamming project explores the way collaborative creativity – like networked music performances – enhances learning and community, particularly for novice users such as children and people with disabilities," Steve said.
"The systems are connected to digital social networks that facilitate creative collaboration in community contexts, and allow us to develop enhancements to digital networking and to develop new tools that support creativity."
Steve said the Apple University Consortium's grant would allow the project to extend its field trials and text the podcasting of jams as part of the social experience being designed around the jamming activity.
Keep up to date with media works made by jam2jam and iJam users at www.jam2jam.com.
Calling all ACID Researchers: If you’d like to let others at ACID know when and where you’re publishing, just send the details to Litmus.
Andrew Sorensen of QUT has joined ACID's Adaptive Media project as a Research Fellow, exploring the opportunities presented by generative content creation in public displays, film, television and other creative industries.
In addition to his research focus, Andrew is a member with ACID's Andrew Brown of aa-cell, a live coding duo that performs ambient/electronica/experimental music via computer code in real time. Visit aa-cell's MySpace page for links to recent performances.
An international symposium defining graphic design for the future.
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