Teaching in the iWorld: developing a repertoire of pedagogical discourse around the usage of touch screen devices in early years classrooms

 Touch-screen devices have been enthusiastically adopted by schools across Australia and Canada. Their ease of use means that they are accessible by very young children, and these children often have free access to these devices in their home, however the devices tend to be ‘domesticated’ in the school context (O’Mara and Laidlaw, 2011). In the short period of their availability, a plethora of educational applications have been developed for these devices. This paper addresses emergent themes from our 2011-2013 Canadian/Australian project, Literacy learning in playful spaces: using multi-modal strategies to develop narrative with young learners, funded by the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Insight Development Grant). In our analysis of the discourse around the introduction of portable touch screen devices into school literacy classes (published texts, teacher interviews, classroom observations), we noted that much of the public discourse is slanted towards the idea of “teacher-proofing” the curriculum. Initially the teachers we have been working with saw the apps themselves as complete, as doing all the work and the discourse around the devices was around what apps are “best”, and “is there an app for that?” It was only with more experience and time that teachers were able to harness the range of affordances of the devices—their capacity for recording audio, video, pictures etc., and start to categorise the apps themselves. In this paper we suggest ways in which current literacy models might be used to develop a repertoire of pedagogical discourse around these devices, providing language and framings for teachers to think about how these new tools might best be used to enhance literacy teaching and learning. O’Mara, J. & Laidlaw, L. (2011). Living in the iWorld: Two literacy researchers reflect on the changing texts and literacy practices of childhood. English Teaching: Practice and Critique 10 (4): 149-159. Available: http://edlinked.soe.waikato.ac.nz/research/journal/view.php?article=true&id=754&p=1

Locating learning: making connections between virtual and physical spaces with mobile touch-screen devices

This paper is concerned with the potential of mobile touch-screen devices and emerging socio-technological practices to support pedagogies of place that provide a means for young people to reflect critically on the social construction of place and to take actions that speak of and to their own locatedness. Drawing on de Certeau’s (1984) concept of space as a practiced place and Massey’s (2005) perspective of spatiality and interrelatedness, we examine two school-based examples of learning activities that bring together the virtual and physical as in experiences and representations of place. The first example is an Australian local history unit, where lower secondary school students participated in a series of field trips, planned and conducted under the guidance of an indigenous elder. They used Smartphones and iPads to capture and create personalised audio-visual records of their knowledge of place that were then used to create geo-location games. In the second example, upper primary school students worked with local authorities and environmental educators to select sites for two environmental monitoring posts, which were then installed and provided a locus for the students’ school-based environmental science learning as well as a vehicle for community engagement. Drawing on interview, video and photographic data, this paper examines the way mobile technologies were deployed for student knowledge production, engagement with place, reconstruction of place and engagement with community.

Locating learning: making connections between virtual and physical spaces with mobile touch-screen devices

This paper is concerned with the potential of mobile touch-screen devices and emerging socio-technological practices to support pedagogies of place that provide a means for young people to reflect critically on the social construction of place and to take actions that speak of and to their own locatedness. Drawing on de Certeau's (1984) concept of space as a practiced place and Massey's (2005) perspective of spatiality and interrelatedness, we examine two school-based examples of learning activities that bring together the virtual and physical as in experiences and representations of place. The first example is an Australian local history unit, where lower secondary school students participated in a series of field trips, planned and conducted under the guidance of an indigenous elder. They used Smartphones and iPads to capture and create personalised audio-visual records of their knowledge of place that were then used to create geo-location games. In the second example, upper primary school students worked with local authorities and environmental educators to select sites for two environmental monitoring posts, which were then installed and provided a locus for the students' school-based environmental science learning as well as a vehicle for community engagement. Drawing on interview, video and photographic data, this paper examines the way mobile technologies were deployed for student knowledge production, engagement with place, reconstruction of place and engagement with community.

Technics & touch: body / matter / machine

This exhibition project tested the limits of human and robot proficiencies through a series of experimental scenarios. The project explored methods of producing feedback systems through perception and action cycles. The exhibition consisted of two parallel events: a laboratory space where the artists were 'in-residence', producing drawings in conjunction with the robot; and a procedural drawing exhibition in an adjoining space, where the outcomes of this human/non-human team were exhibited alongside the work of practitioners who have been exploring rule-based drawing for some time. The aim was to make and to discuss approaches to embodied, expanded and autonomous intelligent systems.

Out of touch

In June 2016, an Australian on minimum wage earned $656.90 per week. That is $34,159 a year, before tax. According to the Australian Tax Office’s ‘simple tax calculator’, the tax owed would be $3030, leaving a take-home salary of $31,128. Let’s call it $600 a week.It’s fair to say that many of us would struggle to make ends meet on that income – $600 a week does not go very far in modern Australia.

Reflection: humour in poetry: in praise of the light touch

While humour can be defined as something that is fun or amusing, it can also reference something much darker, such as l’humeur noir. André Breton’s Anthology of Black Humor, the first of its kind, was intended to “showcase…the Surrealist conception of humor” according to his translator, Mark Polizzoti (1997: v). The prose poems in this selection are often surreal and use a kind of gallows humour to discuss death and abandonment.

Psychological correlates of perception of sexual intent in women

In a sample of 183 men and 186 women, the authors assessed (a) the relative contributions of gender and level of nonverbal social cues to the perception of a female actor's sexual intent during a videotaped social interaction with a man and (b) the association between those variables and personality traits implicated in faulty sexual-information processing. The authors assessed those variables while the participants viewed 1 of 3 film segments depicting a female-male interaction. The authors experimentally manipulated eye contact, touch, physical proximity, and female clothing. At all levels of those nonverbal cues, the men perceived more sexual intent in the female actor than did the women. The perception of the female actor's sexual intent increased as the nonverbal cues in the film segments were magnified: Both actors displayed more eye contact, touch, and physical proximity, and the female actor wore more revealing clothing. Relative to the women, the men demonstrated greater sexual preoccupation and reduced sociosexual effectiveness, variables associated with inferring greater sexual intent in the female actor.

Blairgowrie: the meaning of place

Defining the meaning of a specific place is difficult. Blairgowrie is a peaceful and naturally protected beach haven on the Nepean Peninsula on the tip of the Mornington Peninsula, in Victoria, Australia. When a major development is perceived as threatening the quality of place, it is perhaps already too late to begin to name its characteristics or particular attributes. The evocative and poetic qualities of Blairgowrie do not reveal themselves immediately. Only over a period of time, and by visiting at various times of the day in all seasons, can one begin to fathom its moods, its soul, its many colours; and to touch its memories. Here sea and sky can meet, or divide, totally unobstructed, depending on climatic conditions, seasonal weather patterns and diurnal changes. It is still possible to get a sense of scale and wide-angle limitless vision. When a Safe Boat Harbour was proposed for Blairgowrie, residents came out in force to voice their objections or their support. A tribunal hearing was put in place. In light of the dismissal of qualitative data, of reflective experiential material, of community opinion, of values of the 'other' in planning tribunal hearings, this paper attempts to build a case for putting into words 'the meaning of place'. The Safe Boat Harbour proposal was the catalyst for this exploration of 'meaning of place', and is not itself primarily the subject of this paper. This very personal paper begins to examine the meaning of this place. Through images, perceptions, and representations; through time; history, topography; flora and fauna: it attempts to find a way of coming to terms with this extraordinary land/seascape. In the long term this project aims to produce relevant, authoritative, and defensible research that provides the context and rationale for the selection and assessment of places of outstanding heritage significance. Further, it will provide a case study in support of new planning regulations for 'place' zones (Mant, 2001) rather than the generic land use zones, which are current in Victoria.

Howard, Downer and the Liberals' realist tradition

The successive Howard Governments sought not only to make foreign policy in response to new regional and global agendas, but to respond to and to seek to manage new forms of electoral challenge with new forms of nationalism. This has resulted in a set of important departures from the major Liberal tradition in international affairs, the claim to a realist approach to foreign policy, and has led to the need to manage the consequences of those departures. The boundary that realism sought to draw between the domestic and international politics, as the spheres of values and interests respectively, became increasingly blurred. In relations with the Asian region the expression of strong domestic (nationalist and internationalist) agendas led initially to distancing from Asian engagement. However, from 2002, a more realist-focused external policy led to new forms of state to state re-engagement in pursuit of national interests. In the commitment to military operations in Iraq, the Anzac legend is interpreted to supply nationalist legitimation which would not normally be required for wars fought for realist (i.e. defensive) reasons. A future Liberal prime minister would lack Howard's touch here. In the debate in the Liberal Party over defence doctrine, an attempt by the Defence Minister to reformulate the realist doctrine of Defence of Australia into an expeditionary construct was rejected.

The quiet remedy: A dialogue on reshaping professional relationships

This article begins with an overview of the current context for the delivery of social/welfare services and goes on to consider client-worker relationship boundaries that fall within and outside conventional ethical parameters in professional practice. Alternative interpretations of "relationship" are discussed, noting in particular what consumers of services have identified as being beneficial qualities demonstrated by professional "helpers." Using touch and adopting notions of compassion, love, and reciprocity are discussed, noting how these ideas collide with the current ethical thinking commonly used to guide Western social work practice. Finally, a reexamination of "professionalism" is proposed, including ways to facilitate worker-client connectivity. Throughout, the complex tensions between balancing ethical considerations with ideas relating to trust, risk, and authenticity are articulated.

Old Tom, new Tom

This presentation will Involve a discussion of Canadian fringe artist Mike Hoolboom's experimental narrative Tom (2002 75 minutes, Digital Video) The presentation will Include a short excerpt and stills from the film Tom is a biography of experimental filmmaker Tom Chomont who tells of his struggle with HIV and Parkinson's disease and disarmingly recounts confronting memories of infanticide, incest, fetishism and death It is how these revelations are innovatively processed through excerpts of Chomont's films, home movies, photos, Images lifted straight form Video Busters, archival and found footage that is so telling it is as If the surface of cinema itself is the body that is being marked and reconstituted and "the personal" forever changed by the Infection of this material Into our psyche.

This work is offered as exemplary evidence of the strong link between an experimental non-narrative cinema that flourishes In North America and new media art

The presentation will touch on the following areas:

> The Innovative marking out of the self In terms relevant to a new media practice.
> The correspondence between this film and media theorist Arthur Kroker's Ideas about panic bodies and excremental culture.
> An examination of erasure and loss In non-narrative forms.
> The historical context of Hoolboom's work as part of a North American experimental tradition and as a shared non-narrative tradition With New Media.

The presentation Will conclude With some comments about the relationship between experimental film and new media In this country and how the failure to Identify this relationship constructively here may have contributed to the current "death of the new" The concept of new media and New Australian Will be contrasted to attain some Insight Into the Ideological underpinnings of "Creative Nation".

Deborah Walker : hommage to the infinite

Spirtuality is at the heart of Deborah Walker's enigmatically engaging works. Drawing on the interpretive nature of a philosophical world view, Walker presents a figurative structure imbued with a calmness, stillness, and sophistication. Elegantly dressed characters are warmly depicted witha touch of theatre and drama, their serene gaze gentle, sometimes melancholy and reflective. 

This story wants to be danced : creative writing, dance, convergence and confluence

I suggest ways the discipline of dance can enrich and challenge the discipline of creative writing. I focus particularly on improvisation in dance, relating this to creative writing pedagogy, classroom structure and activities. Much possibility exists in utilising moments when creative arts disciplines touch. How might creative writers and creative writing courses use such fusions? I draw on material theory and briefly upon transformative and collaborative education theories in my exploration of these ideas.

Peace processes in Aceh and Sri Lanka: a comparative assessment

The 2004 tsunami provided a catalyst for peace talks over the separatist conflict in Aceh, Indonesia, leading to its eventual resolution in 2005. As Aceh was going to peaceful elections in 2006, Sri Lanka, which had also been affected by the tsunami, appeared to be returning to full-scale separatist war. This article assesses some of the underlying similarities and differences between the conflicts in Aceh and Sri Lanka. Within this, it will touch upon claims to self-determination, human rights and political participation, representation, transparency and accountability, more commonly referred to as 'democracy'. In particular, it will acknowledge these values as both challenges to the (restrictive) state, and the means of securing (nonrestrictive) state cohesion. Originating in the local and specific, these claims necessarily transcend the local and come to reflect elements of the normative global. In more concrete terms, the Aceh conflict was largely resolved by introducing greater local autonomy within a more democratic space. This paper similarly proposes that a resolution to the Sri Lanka conflict can only come about through the introduction of greater autonomy and democratic plurality. However, with conceptual and strategic hostility growing between Sri Lanka's conflicting parties, it appeared that such resolution was likely only after further protracted bloodshed.