Teachers’ beliefs about the possibilities and limitations of digital games in classrooms

Teachers’ beliefs about what it is (or is not) possible to achieve with digital games in educational contexts will inevitably influence the decisions that they make about how, when, and for what specific purposes they will bring these games into their classrooms. They play a crucial role in both shaping and responding to the complex contextual factors which influence how games are understood and experienced in educational settings. Throughout this article the authors draw upon data collected for a large-scale, mixed-methods research project focusing on literacy, learning and teaching with digital games in Australian classrooms, to focus explicitly on the attitudes,understandings and expectations held about digital games by diverse teachers at the beginning of the project. They seek to identify the beliefs about games that motivated teachers’ participation in a digital games research project while focusing, as well, on concerns that teachers express about risks or limitations of such a project. The authors’ aim is to develop a detailed picture of the mindsets that teachers bring to games-based learning environments, and the relevance of these mindsets to broader debates about the relationship between games, learning and school.

An accuracy assessment of ASTER stereo images-derived digital elevation model by using rational polynomial coefficient model

The along-track stereo images of Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) sensor with 15 m resolution were used to generate Digital Elevation Model (DEM) on an area with low and near Mean Sea Level (MSL) elevation in Johor, Malaysia. The absolute DEM was generated by using the Rational Polynomial Coefficient (RPC) model which was run on ENVI 4.8 software. In order to generate the absolute DEM, 60 Ground Control Pointes (GCPs) with almost vertical accuracy less than 10 meter extracted from topographic map of the study area. The assessment was carried out on uncorrected and corrected DEM by utilizing dozens of Independent Check Points (ICPs). Consequently, the uncorrected DEM showed the RMSEz of ± 26.43 meter which was decreased to the RMSEz of ± 16.49 meter for the corrected DEM after post-processing. Overall, the corrected DEM of ASTER stereo images met the expectations.

Generation and assessment of accuracy of Digital Elevation Model by using Pcigeomatica (10.3)

This study aims to assess the accuracy of Digital Elevation Model (DEM) which is generated by using Toutin’s model. Thus, Toutin’s model was run by using OrthoEngineSE of PCI Geomatics 10.3.Thealong-track stereoimages of Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection radiometer (ASTER) sensor with 15 m resolution were used to produce DEM on an area with low and near Mean Sea Level (MSL) elevation in Johor Malaysia. Despite the satisfactory pre-processing results the visual assessment of the DEM generated from Toutin’s model showed that the DEM contained many outliers and incorrect values. The failure of Toutin’s model may mostly be due to the inaccuracy and insufficiency of ASTER ephemeris data for low terrains as well as huge water body in the stereo images.

Citizen’s right to the digital city: Urban interfaces, activism, and placemaking

Edited by thought leaders of the fields of urban informatics and urban interaction design, this book brings together case studies and examples from around the world to discuss the role that urban Interfaces, citizen action, and city making play in the quest to create and maintain not only secure and resilient, but productive, sustainable, and liveable urban environments. The book debates the impact of these trends on theory, policy, and practice. The chapters in this book are sourced from blind peer reviewed contributions by leading researchers working at the intersection of the social / cultural, technical / digital, and physical / spatial domains of urbanism scholarship. The book appeals not only to research colleagues and students, but also to a vast number of practitioners in the private and public sector interested in accessible accounts that clearly and rigorously analyse the affordances and possibilities of urban interfaces, mobile technology, and location-based services to engage people towards open, smart and participatory urban environments.

Using digital projection to evoke aesthetic ideas in performance

This practice-led research project investigated the use of digital projection as a compositional tool in live performance. The project was carried out through the creation of a new Australian theatre work called Genesis that poetically integrated digital projection and live performance. The investigation produced a framework for creating powerful theatrical sequences where the themes and ideas of the show were embedded inside particular performance gestures prompting an expanded aesthetic perception of the content.

Mapping the unmappable

Mapping the Unmappable? the Choreography Shared Material on Dying through the Lens of the Technogenetic Dancer. If choreographic movement is a trace, which is already behind at the moment of its appearance, the impulses that move the dancer could be understood to reside in the virtual. Whether they are the internalized instructions of the choreographer, the inscriptions of concepts on the dancing body which shape how the dancer moves, or movement material that has been incorporated over time, this gestalt is somewhat mapped before is materialized. Erin Manning describes the moment before it manifests as the preacceleration of the movement, when the potentialities of the gesture collapse and stabilize into form. This form is transient, appearing as a trace that is dissolving as soon as it appears. In her critique of some approaches to collaborations between dance and technology she describes technology as a prosthetic that constrains the dancer's movement by inducing this collapse into stability and thus limiting the potentiality of the technogenetic body of the dancer. Thus the technology becomes the focus rather than the sophisticated sensorial skills of the dancer in movement. Using this challenge as a provocation, I have explored methods for mapping a choreographed phrase of movement from the piece entitled Shared Material on Dying by Irish choreographer, Liz Roche. I will explore the virtual space before this dance is materialized, through the frame of a technogenetic body. I will uncover, through phenomenological enquiry, the constituent elements that are embedded in this virtual map, that is, the associations, sensations and spatio-temporal reference points that have been incorporated over time. The purpose is to point to possible directions in mapping the virtual dance space and to understand choreographed movements not just in terms of their material trace but also in terms of the associations, sensations and perceptions that give a specific choreography its identity. This undertaking has relevance for archiving dance. This presentation will involve danced choreography alongside documented material to explore multiple perspectives on the piece and the experience of dancing it.

The building blocks of digital media literacy: Socio-material participation and the production of media knowledge

This article outlines the knowledge and skills students develop when they engage in digital media production and analysis in school settings. The metaphor of ‘digital building blocks’ is used to describe the material practices, conceptual understandings and production of knowledge that lead to the development of digital media literacy. The article argues that the two established approaches to media literacy education, critical reading and media production, do not adequately explain how students develop media knowledge. It suggests there has been too little focus on material practices and how these relate to the development of conceptual understanding in media learning. The article explores empirical evidence from a four-year investigation in a primary school in Queensland, Australia using actor–network theory to explore ‘moments of translation’ as students deploy technologies and concepts to materially participate in digital culture. A generative model of media learning is presented with four categories of building blocks that isolate the specific skills and knowledge that can be taught and learnt to promote participation in digital media contexts: digital materials, conceptual understandings, media production and media analysis. The final section of the article makes initial comments on how the model might become the basis for curriculum development in schools and argues that further empirical research needs to occur to confirm the model’s utility.

A space for spirituality : Dutton Park Community House. Kuril dhagun, State Library of Queensland

A Space for Spirituality: Dutton Park Community House Exhibition of QUT Student Design Work for Murri Watch Men’s Shed, Dutton Park. As designers it is important to work with communities to develop inclusive spaces and be mindful of the diversity of cultures, histories and indeed spirituality. This exhibition includes a selection of proposals from QUT Interior Design students for the adaptation of the Murri Watch Men’s Shed, Dutton Park. The designs respond to local community narratives and environmental qualities, such as site texture, landscape and light to propose a dwelling space for spirituality and gathering.

Jugglers Arts Space Containers

The design and installation for the Jugglers Arts Space Containers was an invited commission by Jugglers Arts Space for the Containveral Festival at Northshore Hamilton (EDQ). The community festival involved a suite of custom designed and fitted shipping containers for the use by retailers and arts groups alike, focusing upon re-use and low cost design fabrication approaches. Containerval, inspired from shipping container projects such as Sean Goodsell's 'Future Shack' (1985-2001)and Buchan Group's Re:Start Mall, Christchurch (2011), celebrated design testing and exploration of found and recyclable materials to plan and enrich an otherwise severe hardstand area formally attached to Portside docks. The design proposed use of 4 containers, planned to focus on both the interior displays and external in-between spaces, for live performance of Jugglers Arts Space artists. Experimentation of recyclable materials such as onion bags and plastic milk bottles, informed the development of innovative low-cost canopies which sutured the containers together. The Containerval Festival contributed to the now highly successful 'Eat Street Markets' at Hamilton Northshore.

Figuras de Espaço na Arquitectura de um Vazio [Figures of space in the architecture of a void]

This text discusses the production of space as performance, space as the architecture of a void in relation to Fernanda Fragateiro's art work 'Caixa para Guardar o Vazio'

Comparison of the gate drive parameter space for driving power MOSFETs using conventional and cascode configurations

Conventional voltage driven gate drive circuits utilise a resistor to control the switching speed of power MOS-FETs. The gate resistance is adjusted to provide controlled rate of change of load current and voltage. The cascode gate drive configuration has been proposed as an alternative to the conventional resistor-fed gate drive circuit. While cascode drive is broadly understood in the literature the switching characteristics of this topology are not well documented. This paper explores, through both simulation and experimentation, the gate drive parameter space of the cascode gate drive configuration and provides a comparison to the switching characteristics of conventional gate drive.

Fostering digital participation in regional and rural Australia

The deployment of high speed broadband around Australia offers opportunities to extend digital participation among and between regional and rural communities. Full realisation of these opportunities requires a greater understanding about community members’ current digital participation and development needs, to underpin innovative community-driven initiatives. This paper outlines the Fostering Digital Participation Project’s initial undertakings to determine current digital participation and the future digital aspirations of a number of regional and rural communities.

Children participating in science through digital-media literacies

This article outlines the findings of a research project in which primary school students in Queensland, Australia undertook science learning through media arts pedagogy. The project was a component of the URLearning Project. We found that students' development of digital media literacies allowed participation and communication in science in ways that were otherwise unavailable to them.

Digital strategy in airports

As airports continue to become more ‘customer-centric’ their digital customer-facing technologies are increasingly embedded within the passenger journey. This study takes a customer-centric view of airport digital technology by exploring the ways that digital technologies are being applied within airports to improve passenger perspectives of service quality during their journey. The literature review develops a framework encompassing the themes of airport service quality (function, interaction and diversion) and digital strategy. This framework has been applied to six airports exhibiting high service quality. Currently, the findings suggest that the improvement of customer function involves the use of automated and self-service technologies providing passengers greater efficiency and effectiveness during processing points. Additionally, technology to improve experience during wait times may entail either aesthetic qualities, or provide some form of productivity to passengers. Alternatively, customer interaction is influenced by digital technology through constant passenger engagement during their journey. As the research nears completion, the influence of these themes on the framework will become more apparent.

Reterritorializing multimodal design in the classroom through a socially mediated Indigenous heritage

National or International Significance Flows of cultural heritage in textual practices are vital to sustaining Indigenous communities - a national and international priority (Commonwealth of Australia, 2011). Indigenous heritage, whether passed on by oral tradition or ubiquitous social media, can be seen as a "conversation between the past and the future" (Fairclough, 2012, p. xv). Indigenous heritage involves appropriating memories within a cultural flow to pass on a spiritual legacy. This presentation reports ethnographic research of social media practices in a small independent Aboriginal school in Southeast Queensland, Australia that is resided over by the Yuggera elders and an Aboriginal principal. Quality of Research The purpose was to rupture existing notions of white literacies in schools, and to deterritorialize the uses of digital media by dominant cultures in the public sphere. Examples of learning experiences included the following: i. Integrating Indigenous language and knowledge into media text production; ii. Classroom visits from Indigenous elders; and iii. Publishing oral histories through digital scrapbooking. The program aligned with the Australian National Curriculum English (ACARA, 2014), which mandates the teaching of multimodal text creation. Data sources included a class set of digital scrapbooks collaboratively created in a preparatory-one primary classroom. The digital scrapbooks combined digitally encoded words, images of material artifacts, and digital music files. A key feature of the writing and digital design task was to retell and digitally display and archive a cultural narrative of significance to the Indigenous Australian community and its memories and material traces of the past for the future. Data analysis of the students' digital stories involved the application of key themes of negotiated, material, and digitally mediated forms of heritage practice. It drew on Australian Indigenous research by Keddie et al. (2013) to guard against the homogenizing of culture that can arise from a focus on a static view of culture. The interpretation of findings located Indigenous appropriation of social media within broader racialized politics that enables Indigenous literacy to be understood as a dynamic, negotiated, and transgenerational flows of practice. It demonstrates that Indigenous children's use of media production reflects "shifting and negotiated identities" in response to changing media environments that can function to sustain Indigenous cultural heritages (Appadurai, 1696, p. xv). Impact on practice, policy or theory The findings are important for teachers at a time when Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures is a cross-curricular policy priority in the Australian Curriculum (ACARA, 2014). The findings show how curriculum policies can be applied to classroom practice in ways that are epistemologically consistent with Indigenous ways of knowing and being. Theoretically, it demonstrates how the children's experiences of culture are layered over time, as successive generations inherit, interweave, and hear others' cultural stories or maps. Practically, recommendations are provided for an approach to appropriating social media in schools that explicitly attends to the dynamic nature of Indigenous practices, negotiated through intercultural constructions and flows, and opening space for a critical anti-racist approach to multimodal text production. Timeliness The research is timely in the context of the accessibility and role of digital and multimodal forms of communication, including for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.