Pancultural-e

Next Years project

2009-09-28T14:45:00.002+09:30

Check how the ideas and practice have evolved in the AFLF 2009 Emerging Technologies trials.

We've moved to an iPhone to run the AR on so check us out:

http://redcentreway.blogspot.com

2 Audio Essays:Science & Tech in 1859 and 2015

2009-01-21T09:44:00.022+10:30

Have a go at these two interesting Audio essays, approximately 20 minutes each, and both indicating the consequences of wiring up the world.

Why 1859 was Important

By 1859 Telegraph wires were starting to snake out across the US and a mere 13 years later Adelaide will be able to text Darwin and on to the rest of the world. This first essay gives a snapshot of some of the crucial scientific inventions, technologies, research and development that underpinned the meteoric acceleration of Western tech. The essay states that for the year 2009, there is an average of 1.73 significant 150th scientific anniversaries per week. Charles Darwin changed his image forever by publishing that first book, the first Bra was patented, research underpinning the quantum nature of reality emerged and for the first time in history Aluminum became cheaper than gold... Get yourself a spare 25 mins and have a listen.

Listen On 1:

Full 30 min Podcast available at:
http://www.archive.org/details/Orr_20081012scienceAndTechnologyIn1859

As a counterpoint to these heady days, imagine a future where a silicon big brother is tracking your every move by mobile phone triangulation and gps signaling. This is the iPhone from hell!
When Talk is Cheap, silence is suspect ... Under the HAMMER
Our Pancultural-e project is about piloting new ways to guide pertinent information directly to a users mobile device as a result of their GPS grid location.
Melbourne based Andrew Herrick puts a chilling dystopian spin, similar to Orwell's 1984 novel, on the use of computer evaluated citizen location sensing technology. He imagines a social environment where our every move is tracked by our implanted GPS/Mobile Phone and analysed by a multitude silicon masters. Break the any of the rules and you're brain gets microwaved from a satellite in orbit. This is the age where the term 'surgical strike' ceases to be a metaphor...
Listen On 2:
High
Altitude
Morphographic
Monitoring
Evaluation
Response
Full 30 min Podcast available at:
http://www.archive.org/details/Orr_20081026underTheHammer
High

Progress report Aug 26-08

2008-08-26T16:01:00.001+09:30

Memestreme 2008 Progress Report. Hitting the ground running with GPS and rfid tech.

IAD students Minnie, Jackie and Naurelle have been out in the field, creek really, getting across all things GPS. We've laid in waypoints and routes on the Garmin eTrex HC and tested the ASUS Virtual Tour Logger. So that we can plot our routes onto Google Earth we've been transcribing the GIS data into a spreadsheet on the laptop and inputting the manually.

Parks and Wildlife staff Aaron Kopp, Donald Turner Graeme Horne and Dylan Wesley Cole are building the media data sets we'll be using with the NECS rfid Learning table

This involves preparing mp3 audio, jpg photos, text, video and PowerPoint presentation, caching them into discrete media presentations [multimedia slideshows] and editing them with the rfid tech so that the tags trigger specific media slideshows. By selecting the rfid tag next to an item in the museum [embedded in a laminated A4 info sheet] and swiping the sheet across the tag reader at the base of the large screen display additional media information is made available to the user.

The actual Virtual Guded tour has been completed and we are now collaboratively 'fine tuning' the accompanying media. This involves ensuring the metatagging is suitable, there's a little bit of mp3 editing with Audacity to be done, and we are still testing what is the best style of map to use. Were using 3 different maps in our field testing;

some beautiful high quality maps generously supplied by Andy Roberts at NT Dept. Lands Planning and Infrastructure
PDF visitor handout maps
google earth

Surprisingly we get excellent GIS accuracy with a PDF copy of the NT Parks and Wildlife Services Telegraph Station visitor handout sheet. Which reminds me of the zillions that NASA spent in the early 1960's developing ballpoint pens for their astronauts in zero gravity... while the soviets used pencils.
Notwithstanding, the lands and Planning maps seem to offer the best user experience [clarity and accuracy, but this is a collaborative project and we'll advise you when a firm decision has been made.

Where was JFK when I got shot?

2008-08-10T14:44:00.054+09:30

OR: 'Placing the 1872 Completion of the Australian Overland Telegraph Line in historical context.

Please use the comments area to add YOUR recollection of histori

cal events either side of the 1872 date, for example;

1908 Henry Ford's first Model T motor car rolls of the production line in Dearborn Michigan ushering in another epoch of mass production [remember the Colt 45?].

1746 Wired Monks

1844 May 24, Morse sends a telegram from Washington to Baltimore, the 1st message...'What hath God wrought! [He died July 1872, 7 weeks before Charles Todd connected the final piece of line, Aug 26 1872]

1857 16th August completion of the first transatlantic cable, Queen Victoria sends a telegram to president Buchanan.
1859 The solar superstorm of 1859 was the fiercest ever recorded. A

uroras filled the sky as far South as the Caribbean, magnetic compasses went haywire and telegraph systems failed....

1861 US East West overland telegraph line completed

1872 Brigham Young is arrested for polygamy (28 wives).
1872 July 2, Samuel Morse [the father of open source software?] dies about 7 weeks before Charles Todd completes link for the Aussie overland telegraph line Aug 26 1872.

1873 Eadweard Muybridge, yep the spelling is correct, settled a bet on whether the hoofs of a horse galloping are ever all in the air at once. Wagers aside, collaborating with John D. Isaacs, the resultant photographic apparatus ushered in the very start of that Leviathan we've all come to love, motion pictures.

1873 Jesse James and James Younger gang's 1st train robbery (Adair Iowa)

Mike Smith Archaeologist-environmental historian on Central Australia around 1870 [www.abc.net.au/rn]

If you can add to this article [Use Comments please] by suggesting important events that happened in this general milieu it will be appreciated.

3 Iterations: Global Communications

2008-08-07T16:15:00.016+09:30

History doesn't repeat itself [but it rhymes sometimes], and contrary to my own expectations, I'm really enjoying the history behind this technological marvel of it's day. Several recent books about history of the telegraph rollout: 'The Victorian Internet' [Global], and Alice Thompson's 'The singing line', about the Oz rollout. [she's the Great great grand daughter of Charles Todd and, appropriately enough, now works for the London Daily Telegraph.

So, lets start with a potted history of global communications first 3 iterations, and as our "memestreme" Flexible Learning Framework steps into second gear cop an optic on this for starters...

Iteration 1 has got to be the wire that stretched around the world, the Telegraph.

Time: August 1872

Location: Central Mt Stuart, 220Km North of Alice, and according to the best cartographers of the day, this put him at the Mountain closest to our geographical centre.

The Man: Charles Todd

Iteration 2 for my money is the World Wide Web.

Time: according to Kevin Kelly in 07 it’s age was about 5000 days old.

Location: A nexus near you

The man/kind of: Tim Berners-Lee was the Internet ? so maybe no one individually, and a whole bunch of humans collectively.

Iteration 3: The ‘semantic web’ and various other epithets

Time: Nowish

Location: Any computer connected to the net and/or a 3G network plus a variety of mobiles; iPhone, Blackberry or similar PDA’s

The mankind: The mankind
Aurora (Part 1) from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

Flexible Learning Framworks Project Start

2008-07-13T19:09:00.004+09:30

Pancultural-e Blog

Well, the wait is over, everything is coming together for our ‘Memestreme’ project, so… where to start?

Metro/Urban Prelude The two modes of operation for our product]

I’m of the opinion that the July 11 iPhone launch will usher in a new interconnected, location specific ITC epoch. Location sensing WiFi 3G hand-helds with high processing capacity making use of push technologies to sync data with minimal IP traffic will change the urban/metro connectivity landscape.

A great marketing innovation from iPhone was to provide a commercial website mechanism to allow end-users/geeks/nerds to develop then upload their own apps, using the open Source Development Kit code[SDK]. This [free] completely web based business mechanism allows new uploaded apps for all to trial, and as best applications percolate to the top of the user chain, evolution and entropy reign. Hence, user voted successful widgets are then marketed from the site so that the developers themselves get around 70% of sales revenue,Apple takes 10% and the rest goes to the website operators. This new-ish marketing paradigm [ask yourself where the factory outlet for eBay is located] is sure to spawn so beautiful tools, toys and trinkets.

Be aware though that the majority of these electronic appliances [laptops, mobile phones, PSPS, digital TV receivers, Digital Radios, Bluetooth devices etc] will need to be fully or partially bathed in the plethora of electromagnetic frequencies that bounce around our metro urban landscapes. Out in remote areas we have weak GPS signals and expensive sat-nav services. We’re going for the low cost remote service.

In Remote areas no one can hear you beam [unless your prepared to fork out $10 a minute for sat-nav coms, plus prohibitively expensive units to talk on and extra ‘extras’ to transact with fax, email GIS data and the like.

Off the beaten track though, where our ‘Memestreme’ Virtual Tourism project runs Metro tele-communications tech will have minimal influence. 3G, WiFi, WiMax, Phone landlines and such will hold no sway in the great Australian outback. Sure, sometime in the future, satellites may one day be able to up/download digital media content wherever one is on the planet. Until then though the tech we are developing will be one of the only available and affordable ways to allow for user interaction with remote locations off the beaten track.

After the Glossary below read on for a concise overview of the project objectives.

Glossary:

*CoA*	Commonwealth of Australia [Who will own copyright of our final products]
*Framework*	The Flexible Learning Framework. [Who fund/disseminate our learning]
*Cyberspace*	Events and Info portrayed in online environments
*Meat space*	Events enacted in the physical world [normal reality]
*PDA-GPS*	Hand-held media player able to sense its location on the earths surface
*Geo-reference*	A set of math and map coordinates that fix a point on the earths surface
*rfid*	Radio Frequency Identification Tags that transact wirelessly with computers
*Second Life*	A Virtual environment that models real life existence
*Avatar*	The GUI persona one uses to experience existence in a virtual world
*Mutual reality*	The capacity for multiple avatars to interact in an online environment
*Augmented reality*	Basically, a PDA-GPS unit that continuously computes your location and then provides you with on-screen information relevant to that Geo-reference
*Cloud Computing*	This is where our personal or corporate data are housed on server farms or other non-local hard drives. In this way we have a wealth of data available aad rather than access it from our limited space personal hard drive, we connect over IP or WiFiand pull it of internet based servers. For example, people make a 2^nd email account and upload aafew gig of faamil piics and movies .up there’ to store it.
*Push computing*	This tech is designed to reduce the amount of IP traffic a hand-held has to download [mainly] to synch with other interdependent machines. Small streams of data are pushed over IP to all your computing devices to

Objective One; Virtual Guide Tourist Mode

A Virtual Guided tour from Snow Kenna park in the Alice CBD meanders along the 4Km NT Parks and Wildlife signed “Riverside walk” track along the banks of the Todd River into the Telegraph Station and then from point to point along the historic buildings in the Telegraph Station compound.

Objective Two: Virtual Guide Science Mode

A field operatives utilization of the same technology. Where we’re targeting Tourist organizations, Town Councils, Mining Exploration companies, Geological surveys, Traditional owners, Ecologists etc who would need to make recurrent trips into given areas to report, record, analyse and act on the various facets of their data sets.

The way we see this happening is envisaged into four linear sequences:

[1] A new trip to say the Davenport ranges is made by a Parks and Wildlife ranger to report on a variety of circumstances; weed ingress, bush fire damage, feral pest infestations. Similar to the way we log in points along a tourist route, the ranger logs point all along the trail from start to finish. This in itself serves as the road map for subsequent field trips. And as the Geo-referencing is accurate to about 6 meters it also doubles as a very clever way to stop folk getting lost out in the harsh and unforgiving wilderness. Back to method 1…

Evidence is plotted against some of these points [accurate to 6 metres] which can include inexpensive cameras that also log the GIS coordinates, mp3 audio ‘reports’ that can be recorded onsite to describe some aspect of the territory, video can also be laid in to further describe geo-features that are relevant and of course text can be inserted. At tours end yuo press a button and the tour is finished.

[2] Once back at HQ this trip is loaded into a multimedia database containing all the media about the trio, and it is time stamped. This interfaces with the standard GIS topographical maps so this other layer of info is included in the tour.

[3] Some time later a Ranger re-visits the logged trip and updates the journey, perhaps adding new log points of significance, taking photos and videos from the same Geo-referenced points to show any changes that have occurred over time and adding audio and text to amend info and append info.

[4] Back at HQ these extra ‘layers’ of information are superimposed into the existing database utility to gradually build up a time based description of , in this case, of how a land is healing.

Objective Three: Second Lifeâ [2L] Reflection Mode.

Text, Audio [mp3], Photos [jpg] and Video [mp4] are the composite products of the above two objectives. Each logged point will make available multimedia information that will add value to each geographic coordinate. Team member Georgina Nou has researched and liaised with an island owner in 2L to construct a virtual representation of the Alice Springs Telegraph Station tour. Virtual Buildings are being constructed that will allow 2L users to enter and viewing screens and objects are enabled so that users can watch videos, listen to audio clips, call up teal-time maps, see commercial promos and generally interact with our media and get a virtual taste of the physical tour.

Objective Four: Giving it up for the CoA and the Framework

At projects end we transfer copyright ownership of the project deliverables to the Commonwealth of Australia on a Share 2 license arrangement [LINK to License information]. Our Innovations project is then made available across the Frameworks National Training Network and in the Commonwealth of Australia’s archives. [Where we fervently hope it will be of use to others engaging in this line of research]

Modelling the project for use and view on the networks’ creates something of an artistic and technical challenge: how do we ‘model’ our media to represent a meat space Augmented Reality tour and a cyberspace virtual reality tour?

Meat Space Tour

e.g A GPS synched software program [LINK INFO Virtual Guide from New England Computer Solutions] provides a compass and/or a map to guide to steer a user along successive points on the tour. At each grid reference point media information pertinent to each GPS coordinate is made available to the user on the PDA screen. [To augment their experience and knowledge of that exact spot on the Worlds surface].

So how can we model this to provide an accurate representation of a users experience? After careful consideration we have come up with this idea, and whilst not set in stone, Richard Waring , who manages the tele-conferencing operations from CDU Alice Springs and myself can collaborate to better explain the practical applicationnof the technology.

Yochai Benkler

2008-06-03T16:38:00.000+09:30

Yochai Benkler explains how collaborative projects like Wikipedia and Linux represent the next stage of human organization.

Yochai Benkler has been called "the leading intellectual of the information age." He proposes that volunteer-based projects such as Wikipedia and Linux are the next stage of human organization and... Read full bio »

Northern Territory E-learning Innovations Success!

2008-05-12T13:48:00.004+09:30

The Innovations project I submitted on behalf of the Institute For Aboriginal Development [IAD] and NT Parks and Wildlife [P&W] has been accepted.
Over the next 3 months IAD and P&W will collaborate to bring two 'Augmented Reality' virtual tourism guides to publication.
IAD will fashion an Alice Springs CBD tour and P&W will work on their Alice Springs Telegraph Station virtual tour.
End users will ramble around either of the above venues with an ASUS PDA that senses a users location to within 3 metres. Information specific to that location will be set to display as the user nears designated points on the tour.

Metcalfe's law

2008-04-30T12:50:00.006+09:30

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Metcalfe's law states that the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of users of the system (n²). First formulated by Robert Metcalfe in regard to Ethernet, Metcalfe's law explains many of the network effects of communication technologies and networks such as the Internet, social networking, and the World Wide Web. It is related to the fact that the number of unique connections in a network of a number of nodes (n) can be expressed mathematically as n(n-1)/2, which follows n² asymptotically.

The law has often been illustrated using the example of fax machines: a single fax machine is useless, but the value of every fax machine increases with the total number of fax machines inthe network, because the total number of people with whom each user may send and receive documents increases. [It can also be argued that the FIRST person to buy a Fax machine was an idiot as there was no other bugger around to fax to]

In fact, Metcalfe's law measures the potential number of contacts, i.e. the technological side of a network. However the social utility of a network depends upon the number of nodes in contact. For instance, if Chinese and Non-Chinese users don't understand each other, the utility of a network of users that speak the other language is at zero, and the law has to be calculated for the two networks separately.

Citizens Media and Web 3.0

2008-04-17T11:01:00.011+09:30

Bloggers and Mash, New Scientist mag 15 Mar 08

When everybody can be a journalist or a film maker, what happens to the media?... Were finding out right now says Dan Gilmour.

August 2007 the I-35 Bridge across the Mississippi river in Minneapolis collapses. December 2004 the Boxing Day Tsunami sweeps around the Pacific Rim. London Bus bombs etc. Events like these trip the Global Media into a reporting frenzy. Reporting of such events these days goes well beyond the gaggle of newspaper, radio and TV reporters. Scores of non-journalistscreating content [photos, videos etc] and sharing it across the globe and with large media organisations such as reuters, BBC, ABC and so forth. also join in

This phenomenon goes by many names but the one I prefer is Citizens Media. People who used to consume media now create it, publish it and comment on it. More than 100 Million people have started blogs; millions more publish video and pictures on the web, write and edit Wikipedia entries, create Mashups, post comments on mainstream media sites and so on.

As digital gear becomes more powerful, ubiquitous and affordable, the tools of media creation are increasingly in everyone’s hands. [new-media]Consumers are becoming creators. Creators are becoming collaborators. People talk about the ‘read-write web’. “The most important constituency of Journalism is what I like to call the former audience, the folk who once passively consumed media but can now actively participate in its creation”. So this is not only just passively reading news on the web, but commenting on it via blogs, focus groups etc. This [real-time] interaction is the difference as we move from exposure to media to interaction with media.

"The tools of citizens journalism:
Blogs
The most prominent feature of the read-write web is blogging. 10's of millions of people have started these online journals, assisted by free and easy to use online tools such as Google's Blogger. [IAD platform of choice for Cert 1 IT students]. To answer a common question: Most blogs are not journalism, and some are. The best journalistic blogs have appeared in niche areas, such as technology, and have won large audiences coveted by advertisers" The important thing to remeber is that blogs are only as useful as their comments. It's a collaborative, peer reviewed space: This aint about protecting your privacy as much as publishing your passions: get as many folk to link/comment as possible. [see metcalf's law]
Media Sharing
The likes of Flikr and youtube have heralded a revolution in visual media. They have given everybody easy-to-use, low cost venues to publish their creations.
Digital Images
Digital still and video camera are nearly ubiquitous, but the real shift is in the migration of the camera to the mobile phone. With the connection of phones to networks, they have become powerful tools for sharing what we see. Most of the canonical images of the 2005 London bombings were taken by amateurs, including the famous grainy, green tinged image of a man exiting from a smoky underground train with a cloth over his mouth.
Mashups
Mashups take data or services from more than one place and combine them. Online software such as "Wayfaring" makes them easy to create. One notable mashup is the Tinisian prison map project which mashes together maps and information from political activists to highlight human rights issues. Another kind of mashup combines media; one of the most popular pieces of political satire is a brilliantly edited mashup by Sweedish film maker Johan Soderberg showing GW Bush and Tony Blair singing "Endless Love" to one another.
RSS
Standing for Really Simple Syndication, RSS is a file format that allows you to subscribe to many different "feeds" such as blogs and news and have them delivered to your aggregator on your computer or phone. Blogging software automatically converts blogs into RSS to make them easily accessible by others.
Wiki's
The most famous "User generated" site is Wikipedia, the encyclopedia that now has more than 2 million articles in English. Wikis can be written and edited by anyone, and when they work well they become authoritative repositories of shared knowledge.
For the radio podcast excerpts below:
You need the shockwave flash plugin to cop an ear on this. Anywho, the top selection is a researcher explaining how he would like ABC radio national to open up their media archives. Its gonna happen.
The second one is a great Podcast excerpt from ABCrn's Media Report. Basically talking about the shift in attitudes and copy that Pommie Journo's are now affording we the Oz public. No longer are we all called Bruce, etc, actually seems there's more of an appreciation about just how lucky this country is. So, a big thing in the Pommie gutter press [News of the World, Daily Express etc], and the high end [Guardian, Time etc] is Oz animal stories, from Steve Irwin to errant kangaroos. The second story is about 2 erstwhile pomms on a cricket tour of Oz. On the way from one test to another they run over and stun a kangaroo, have a listen, its a hoot.

Propriocentrics: Creating tech marvels out of a $50 Wii Remote

2008-04-13T10:31:00.010+09:30

Convergence widgets
I see the location sensing component of the Wii remote as one of the functions of our future palm sized media players; PDA/3G/GPS/IP/WiFi/TV.

A PDA with the graphics performance delivered by the chip architecture in the Sony Playstation Portable [PSP], the user interface and connectivity of the iPhone, the personal location sensing capacity of a Nintendo Wii type remote and the Geo location sensing that GPS and 3G bring, will enable a unit with these bundled attributes ready to seamlessly absorb what is now technically available to be stremed.

Sony PSP have released a Linux based programmable interface so that Astronomers, Robotocists, climate modellers etc can pout their unit to other tasks.
iPhone has already been cracked and again is being used for unintended purposes, though Apple are slower to jump onto the open source collaborative model. Nintendo Wii [largest gaming unit sales in the US above Xbox and Playstation] seem likely to embrace the 'emergent consequences' of whatever uses the Wii remote will be put to. [Science, Gaming, Location Specific-On demand Content services]
The great thing about Second Life is that it is easy to conceptualise and model how such 'live connectivity aides' work for our personal avatar, and by extension, how we of the meat space can leverage our reality via them.

Collaboration ,Photon Blockade and Entanglement

2008-03-19T16:35:00.007+10:30

I'm just experimenting in this blog with memes that I have come across. Until I hear back from www.abc.net.au/rn I can't upload short segments taken from abc podcast but I live in hope. To get started though have a go at this, if anything describes the benefits that are emergent from cooperation watch below to catch Howard Rehingold's vodcast on the rise of collaboration from www.ted.com.
[there's another ripper embedded in last weeks science show, the blind mens socks riddle, hope to bring it to you sometime but if your interested just go and listen to the entire incredible podcast at : http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/

I'd like to include 'tasters' from ABC radio National that are whole chunks of information taken straight from their original podcasts. As such any ABC/rn stuff you hear would be unmodified by me, and I would use only selected contextualised chunks. [a full segment in grammatical and intellectual terms]
The concept I want to develop for passing this media around to my friends and collaborators is what I call taste-full.
I give you guys a taste, and provide a link to the full podcast. Be aware though that downloadable podcasts are currently only kept on their server for 4 weeks after broadcast.

Right then, I think there's a charming symmetry between and among the following 3 memes and I'd be happy to discuss this with any of you that have the time to listen to them:
The Rise od Collaboration, Howard Rheingold
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/216
Solid Light, Andrew Greentree. http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/current/audioonly/ssw_20080315.mp3
Entanglement primer.
http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/current/audioonly/ssw_20080315.mp3

bye for now

Virtual Earth: Lawler @ Microsoft

2008-03-17T17:16:00.004+10:30

This ties in nicely with how we are developing our Augmented reality tours. This and the preceding post [J Haris, metaverse weaver] allow the reader to explore in greater depth the ways in which we can express ourselves with Web 2.0 tech.

Cool tools to enhance our projected propriocentricity.

J Harris, verse weaver

2008-03-17T17:06:00.003+10:30

Hi, have a go at this, I am intrigued [but] not sure whether to be frightened, petrified or reaching for my soma.

Creative Commons/Digital Commons

2008-02-21T13:37:00.007+10:30

Learnscope 08
Just getting my head around the new-ish direction the 08 funding application is moving towards. One aspect that will require some careful consideration is that the Commonwealth funding body will assume copyright over the deliverables. We've been toying with the idea to split our project into two distinct parts, a commercial section and a common [free to air] section but this may need a re-think.
Underpinning this is Web 2.0. It's all about social networking and online collaboration. Trouble is it's a minefield out there in terms of what we want to use, and what we can legally use.
Learnscope 08 will drill down into the Digital Commons and Creative Commons, share info legally, and learn about transacting in this realm.
We're also about generating $'s for IAD so in 08 we'll be looking at ways of distributing memes on a pay per view basis. This will be Online from our web, and with location sensing media players [PDA/GPS, NextG mob Ph's, Bluetooth, WiMax etc] we'll be researching how to garner payments from "new media" distribution.
So, back to the commons, cop an optic on this Youtube vodcast from the Creative Commons.

So Long Pancultural-e

2008-02-08T13:49:00.009+10:30

Howdy the Alic-e Memestreme

An Ainslie dreamscape.
The overall theme for 08 is the generation on an evolving entity, namely Pancultural-e Alic-e [PAlic-e].
PAlic-e will skip and grow along the songlines of the "New Media" domains: Blogs, Wikis, Youtube, Facebook, MySpace, the Digital and Creative Commons, PayPal, 2nd Life, Online Education. PAlic-e is off and running on web two point zero. Or as 'Neuromancer' author Will Gibson put it "Count Zero Interrupt"

Ainslie Laughter at Dawn ,

There's someting spooky about Virtual Tourism...
We've all heard the refrain "Doe's art imitate nature or does nature imitate art?" The answer is 42, and to get back to my original point, there we were last week, GPS enabled PDA in hand tripping across the Alice Springs Overland Telegraph Station historical reserve [ASTS]. The Virtual Tourism guide software has the real-time map called up, my next point on the tour is marked as a green dot on the map, I'm the red one. Now this GPS is so sensitive [+- 3 to 4 metres] that, God Like, your able to watch yourself walking across the face of the earth as you draw ever nearer to the next tour point. [approaching this point a bunch of 'new media' is triggered onto your player to Augment your reality]. In terms of this capacity to get feedback on what we may be doing in the real world [Meat Space] or Cyber Space: 'Propriocentricity'

David Levine in a presentation at the 2007 Learnscope conference discussed this term. The terms current usage describes the feedback one experiences from internal tissue, muscle and neurons. It gives one tactile, time and location specific feedback about where a part of the body is.

In cyber space and meat space there are a wealth of tools that serve to perform this function. Raised cones set into a pavement inform blind folk they are approaching a crossing, audio signals at traffic lights cue one in, Nintendo Wii remote control units allow you to perfect your golf swing, decapitation etc, 2^nd life avatars and GPS devices also serve this function. I feel it will be the marriage of this feedback coupled with instant communication/collaboration that will define the boundries of how we commence to work with each other

Google Earth Alic-e ans 2nd Life
Here comes the spooky bit. Georgina Nou brought this up at the learnscope 07 show and tell, namely that as one fritters about in/on a 2nd life Island media/intel/info gets triggered for your consideration as you lope into the radius of a hotspot.

Now this is precisely what gives when one is wondering around in Augmented Reality with a whizz bang IAD Virtual Tourism PDA/GPS handset. You walk up to something, within a pre-defined user hotspot] and up pops some media/intel/info.
Now, who's emulating who? What's imitating what? and did I leave the oven on? Oscar Wilde said imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. This is more like cross pollination.

So, that'll do for now, has Babel got anything to do with Babylon?

PanculturaLear-nscope

2007-10-18T11:53:00.000+09:30

The two broad objectives of our project were:
[1] to revitalise the existent text based Aboriginal Cultural Awareness Program [ACAP] with a content rich website which is available in English, Chinese and Japanese languages. Now, in conjunction with the quality face to face ACAP delivery, the 'Pancultural-e' website augments delivery with the use of the content rich, traditionally authorised information projected onto the wall to support and expand on the speakers topics.
Norman Illes [at left] Betty Pearce [at right] and Mel Fox, next to Betty, are now in the process of 'driver' training. This takes the form of becoming familiar with the navigation/web layout of the [1 Gig] ACAP website, and enabling Mel, and Norman to project complimentary media content onto the wall during ACAP delivery that supports and informs Betty's narration. Gina Palmer and Shauna Stirling [behind Li Ting in the blue top] are also valuable, creative and productive young members of the Learnscope team. Moreover, they are also both very motivated to extend the skills they have acquired in digital audio/visual creation on to any spin-off projects of the Pancultural-e program.
[2] The second broad aim of this project was to research, explore and test a variety of emergent 'mobile technologies' able to use the photos, text, animation, audio and audio visual content we've generated in our Learnscope project. Several new potential income streams have opened up for IAD as a result.
Essentially we have tested both the transmitting and delivering of our media infotainment [will there ever be edutainment?] content onto mobile devices. The breakdown is as follows:
MP3 Players. Our team have produced several mp3 podcasts using Audacity software for Windows and Garage Band for Mac. Mel, Gina and Shauna have shown real promise working in this area.

Mobile Phones. Li Ting and I have been working with Adobe Flash to generate interactive mobile swf content for 'Next-G' capable phones. Capable of determining a users location this Next-G can act similar to GPS enabled devices and deliver location specific information to the end user.
Bluetooth. Bluetooth and Next-G technologies both allow multimedia and WWW content to to be piped on demand to the end user. Whilst Next-G is more or less limited to urban locations Bluetooth can interact freely with wireless 'base stations' making it more configurable in both urban and remote areas. The possibilities are exhausting! As a result of the Learnscope project IAD have formed an research alliance with Jane Clark of "Net Grrl" http://www.netgrrl.com.au/ to look at using Alice Springs Town Council sponsored community events in Alice Springs to demonstrate Bluetooth applications. I'd like to include a sincere plug here for Alice Town Council http://www.alicesprings.nt.gov.au/ who have been open, friendly and smart enough! to work with us on GPS mapping and potential tourism offerings.
GPS enabled PDA's. Another rich collaborative vein we've been able to mine as a result of Learnscope was our cross-sector interstate working group to extend the use of GPS enabled Personal Desktop Assistants [PDA's]. Marcus Ragus TAFE Tasmania, Daniel Darcey of New England Computer Solutions Inc. and Sam Meredith at NSW TAFE, a sincere thanks to you all guys! With their help we have been able to kit up an ASUS A636 PDA to act as a personal tourism assistant for Alice Springs Visitors. The buzzword for this type of application is 'Augmented Reality' or 'AR'. Mobiles, Bluetooth and GPS now have the capacity to provide web driven, real time, accurate and up to date infotainment or edutainment about wherever you are on this planet. Sensing a users location to within 10 meters we have programmed the ASUS to interact with the users physical location by piping additional supportive multimedia at the user as they amble around Alice Springs. As the user move around the Town podcasts, music, photos, text and video are made available to enhance ones tourist experience.
Indoors was an issue at first as the GPS signal is lost as it bounces off the roof. Sam Meridith NSW TAFE has been working with electro-technology apprentices using RFID chips embedded in hand tools [with an LCD readout pane] to pipe safety instructions, user manuals and the like to tool users. With thanks to Marcus Ragus in Tasmania for selecting the RFID capable ASUS we already have a device that can 'read' RFID tags an thus trigger media files for the tourist in areas such as Art Galleries, Museum's and the like.
None of this would have happened without three very special women: Georgina Nou, our project mentor who has patiently and persistently schooled us in the vagaries of networking and collaboration in the Web 2 landscape, Melanie Brenton manager in SITAC who has always been available for us as a sounding board for ideas and as a shaker to get things moving and our Director at IAD Janice Harris who can see through the hype and cut to the vision; a sincere thanks to you all from Li Ting Lee and Fred Richardson

PanculturaLea-rnscope

2007-10-01T15:47:00.000+09:30

Caterpillar Dreaming
September 28 we got the go ahead to downloaded the [PDA/GPS] Virtual Guide software from New England Computer Solutions. We're looking forward to working with Marcus Ragus [M-Learning Learnscope] to test/trial this version build. It's great promoting collaborative learning and social networking tools and practice for students. It's delightful to observe socially shy students metamorphose into a digitally virtual extroverts!

Finally! Multimedia skills are increasingly being seen as valuable for situations other than employment. Alongside the Pancultural-e project I've some great Indigenous adult students completing their Cert 1 in IT. There's something a little surreal watching learners have heaps of [heuristic] fun using Google Chat to talk with each other, even though they are sat in the same room. It reminds me of a Spike Milligan sketch I say 30 years ago: a lonely bedraggled prisoner is tapping a code on a water pipe to communicate with a fellow prisoner. We're told he's been building up the relationship over many years. The camera pans out and we see his fellow prisoner, in the same cell tapping back to him. Well, at least for me, thats why I found it funny....

Anyway, to get back to social networking and collaboration software, yeah its a great empowerment option for students. Its even better when it works for me. Over the fiercely collaborative Learnscope network we scored a huge win when Georgina put us on to Marcus Ragus in Tasmania, gotta go....more later
Marcus has been a godsend. A [visionary] proponent of Mobile learning for over 3 years now, Marcus and his current project collaborators Daniel and Andrew [New England Computer Solutions] are helping to deliver us, so that we know we have arrived. Marcus has kindly set up for an opportunity for the Pancultural-e team to to assist in testing the "Virtual Guide" software application generated by Daniel and Andrew. It's early days yet but we've a team who are intimately familiar interpreting the archetypal, mythical, religious and geographic significance of traditional Aboriginal art. In something of a quantum leap we are now all learning how to create digital dreaming tracks, for others, on portable media devices, which in turn fix their position in the world from a roving band of 12 satellites in low earth orbit. Gotta go again...
Podcast Training
We have a new Learnscoper on the block! Mel Fox is a young and eager new recruit at IAD. Mel comes to us after a 5 year stint at Westpac and is comfortable and confident with matters IT. A 2 min intro to the Mac podcast software [iLife 06] and Mel was up and running [me too as I raced over to her desk to subvert any noisy incoming phone calls!]
The issue were faced with now is that we've half a dozen IAD Learnscope 'poddies'. After a little collaboration we've decided, purely as a market research tool for the Showcase :) to let them all have their 15 megabytes of fame. And just for your consideration , below, we've tacked on a Chinese audio MP3 [Introducing The Dreamtime]after Mel's Language narration. We'd appreciate any feedback from viewers who can understand Mandarin.

PanculturaLe-earnscope

2007-09-11T16:01:00.000+09:30

'Bunging on Side' with your host....
Betty Pearce
Shes' indomitable, shes' indubitable and verily I say unto you the woman is irrepressible, she's also be a bit of a 'rum un' too.
Anyway, Betty is 70 odd years young and has been our most ardent IAD based supporter. Traversing multiple roles over the years with IAD; [board member, director, deputy director, deputy sheriff and currently head of the Language and Culture Dept.] Betty, Norman Illes and I recently had the opportunity to 'bung on side' [an Aussie term for big noting oneself] by riding around Alice in a nice flash car and podding our way from a lap-mounted Mac-book into the Learnscope project podcasts.
Betty is one of those uncommon folk with a degree in English, you don't see much of that these days eh? As a Tribal Elder for the Alice Springs area, sitting on a bewildering array boards and committees and a Natural Statesperson to boot Betty, along with Norman Illes, are our newest Learnscope participants.

Norman, born a raised in the Alice and Jack of all trades, has lived and worked in most capital cities of this, our fair continent. He danced with Redfern Dance troupe for 3 years, is a qualified hairdresser etc etc. 'Country' called him back to Alice a few years ago; and he recently joined IAD as administrative assistant for Betty in the Language and Culture Department. Norman also co-delivers the IAD cultural awareness program [ACAP] with Betty.
Did I mention Norm's quite a whizz on matters digital? As he and Betty deliver the ACAP program, Norman will navigate around the various mutli-media archives displaying pertinent content to the masses. As such, Norman is the 'navigator' for the re-invented, Web Browser based, multi-media extravaganza ACAP program and as Betty vocally delivers, Norman augments the commentry by displaying pertinent media. And... as the guy's so eloquent, we're re-working some of the podcast commentaries and voice-over vodcasts to include those dulcet tones.
And yes, okay already, there have been a few hiccups.......

Panculturale-e

2007-09-10T16:43:00.000+09:30

Thank you Mr Learnscope!
One of the really nice things about Learnscope is the access to PD it wisely promotes. At the start of the project Georgina suggested we engage a suitable person to upskill we 3; Georgina, Li Ting and myself, and that Georgina would workshop with Li Ting and I for a day or so either side of the training. Collaboratively we decided on Macromedia related tuition for Dreamweaver, Flash and Fireworks and Adobe Illustrator. Both Li Ting and Georgina knew of a woman in Alice Springs referred to as Net Grrl, AKA Jane Clark.
Jane Clarks' a bit like Superwoman, in the daytime she's an Alice Springs Alderwoman [who offers info exchange with her constituents via her avatar on 2nd Life Janey Marsala, at night she morphs into Jane Clark- Mother, and at other times runs a successful web training enterprise: http://www.netgrrl.com.au/
Serendipity and raw luck allowed us to engage a busy Jane for 2.5 days training in late August [Tue, Wed and .5 Thu] and it was great.
Prior to the training on the Monday Georgina, Li Ting and I met in the IAD library and practiced that ancient art of face to face collaboration. There are so many 'strands' to Pancultural-e project [design, content, media, culturally sanctioned information etc], that we needed as a team, to tease out the tangles and lay them out straight. In her inimitable fashion [known in the trade as FULL THROTTLE] Georgina helped us tease out the tangles and start tossing ideas around. I really enjoyed this part, mainly because everyone was so open to 'ideas' per se. Of course we all had our individual notions but nothing was set in stone and gradually it all come together into a united multilateral way forward. For me, a really beneficial aspect of this type of work is this process of collaboration, whether it be digital or F2F. Its a right brain activity.
For many years computing has been a real male-ish left brain number, linear and logical.
Social networking, online collaboration, mutual reality [like 2nd life] etc has marked what I see as a turning point. In regard to business models its a bit like the difference between right-brain QANTAS and left-brain Virgin, QUANTAS is a lock step model with Virgin more open to new feeds and practice. Whatever, the 'grid' is now weighted towards interaction and this project was hurting my right brain!
A good example of this was my notions of a lock stepped mp3 podcast and Map moving from point A to B and so on. [my model being that of the ABC's podcast tour of Melbourne] In reality, trying to model this around Alice Springs' Geography, Topography, Climate and the users mode of transport [Bicycle, walking and or driving], made for a horribly complicated conundrum that I'd been wrestling with for weeks [that is until the session when Georgina come up with the idea of ditching the ABC model and making it just a series of 'chapters' and allowing the user to choose] It was that simple, and oh what a joy.
An almost complimentary spin-ff was the fact that Marcus Ragus [Learnscope M-Learning] and Daniel Dacey, are collaborating in the production of application software "Virtual Guide" to run on an ASUS PDA with GPS. It turns out that content files stored on a PDA/GPS can be 'triggered' by moving into a specific location, perfect for what we want happening as users move around Alice taking in the sacred Sites Tour. So Georgina's idea of de-linerising Vodcast content will work beautifully with this software. Daniel and Marcus have kindly agreed to allow us in on their project to act as beta testers, thanks guys. Gotta love this right-brain, womenomics collaborative stuff eh?
So, either side of the organised 'NetGrrl' training we had working sessions that were hard work but worth the effort.
NetGrrl

Training was conducted in the IAD board room, close to the executive Tim Tam biscuit barrel and Jane hit the ground running, dragging us screaming into maw of Macromedia. The schedule was heavy duty, hard work and rewarding. We covered all sorts of digital magic from 'tweening' in Flash to 'rollovers' in Dreamweaver.
Of real value to IAD is the way that our web presence is metamorphosing, guided by the deft hands of Li Ting Lee, our erstwhile and versatile IT administrator . As well as a major overhaul regarding the graphics, the site is now steadily gearing up to be able to add value in a wonderful variety of ways; online education, multilingual capacity, pay-per-view commerce, an IAD Press who are now seriously looking into their own capacity to digitally delight and deftly distribute. The list goes on. There is real value in that old TAFE exercise of sending folk back to 'industry' to get back in the swim of things. Albeit we had 'Industry' come to us, but it was reassuring to know that Jane had her finger on the pulse. Also, being an Alderwoman, Jane was well placed to offer quality advice on our product. A real Gem suggestion for instance was that we should take our proof of concept product to the NT Tourism Commission and sound them out on a variety of issues; funding, visibility, assistance etc. So, its nice to have some take off points at the end of this years gratefully received funding and support from Melanie's [SITAC] crew and Learnscope.
And Finally, the "Work Song" Jane had us chant mantra style as we engaged our tuition. Its really hard to sing and multi task collabourataenously.....

Pancultural-

2007-09-10T15:15:00.002+09:30

Babel revisited with a corporate software lock-in twist. Learnscoping for August

This is the third time I've posted with no avail, and as yet I've 'only' lost my entire blog text twice. Wow, it DID NOT like 'quicktime' movies....Doh!
Anyway I now need to rant and vent, though not necessarily in that order. I'm grateful I can work with the intellectual property of Bill gates and Steve Jobs respectively, but I get sooo frustrated trying to get them to talk with each other. It's like trying to mix oil and water or get Itchy and Scratchy to lay down their arms [without using chainsaws].
Jhonno and Jason,[above] a couple of likely lads if ever there was two, and Raylene and I [centre and right below] set up a couple of "Audacity" Learnscope workshops to delve into the mystics of Audio manipulation. To my genuine surprise they took to it like frozen chooks in a cannon.
Some of our multimedia workshops have been difficult for the Learnscopers to grasp and have thus met with limited success. Even PowerPoint can get tricky. On the other hand it was very much easier for the students to conceptalise a mixed audio scenario and then just drill down and start producing. [Noise pollution can be beneficial after all] After 40 mins of Audacity tuition the 'brief' went something like: "read/record this paragraph using this mike and Audacity, then lay a background track on it using this selection of mp3 music files. So, with a $10 mike each and some freeware we managed a couple of great workshops.
One of the most rewarding things about teaching is when one hears students Oh and Ah-ing as they flex newly created muscle. [note; find out who's the patron saint of student engagement and proffer a prayer].

Overriding this rewarding engagement however is the Babel revisited scenario. First it was Linguistic nuances across Warlpiri, Chinese and English, and now, as were getting ever closer to product, its what will play on what.
One of our Learnscope Project 'deliverables' is audio/visual content playing on MP4 players, 3G phones and hand-held PDA's. I can feel a vent-rant coming on, got the taste for it, just can't waste for it...
PDA's runing Mobile 5 Windows OS wont play mpg4, Flash video .flv or Shockwave .swf files, On the other hand however, PSP's and MP4 players will do mp3 and mp4 but not WMV's.
iTunes spits out audio in an esoteric file suffixed .m4p that won't play on anything but Itunes, 3g phones are decidedly undecided and definately maybe about moving pictures, and my veritable Blogger interface keels over if I try to load quicktime movies.
Sometimes I think we should have a Learnscope competition to see who can design the Ultimate Learnscope Medicine toolkit, Bach rescue remedies shelved with Prozac and St Johns Wort etc.

There again some times I like to daydream....
A long time ago
In a river bed far far away......

Pancultural

2007-07-05T15:47:00.000+09:30

What shall we do for a Classrom then Raylene?
Jason Bell, one of our learnscope team members, left last week after contributing significantly to our project. Up to the plate steps Raylene Ferguson our new staff member in Student Services. Raylene was born and raised in Central Australia and comes with a wealth of local knowledge,. So, I'd organised a one-on-one 3 hr slot to 'induct' Ray into the learnscope hall of fame. But, after an hour attempting to dictate/record Audio Podcast Bush Tucker segments we were getting nowhere fast. People wanting her attention in Student Services, phones ringing in my demountable, unwanted light aircraft and truck noises ruining recordings on the campus lawn. I used to think Alice was a quiet sorta location for a city... We just couldn't settle, me wanting to throttle people and things and ray fluffing her lines.
Anyway I was whinging to Ray about the noise and she suggests we go to the back of the house where she grew up, I was ready to try anything. Apparently Ray and her 2 sisters used to horse ride into school and leave the horses parked at the causeway. Anyway,about 5 Km out of town on the Ross River Highway we ease round the back of a tumble-down shack [an old Commonwealth Linesmans House]and into/onto the Todd River.
Well then, things just got a whole lot simpler. Ray lit a small fire as I set up the laptop and mikes and things just kinda flowed very straightforwards and simply. Ray parking herself on a convenient log [as I burnt my fingers on the billy] Ray's off and running. No more stutters or flutters, no more misreading, and a Natural voice.
And so it was that I was privileged enough to 'hang about in the creek' with a local on a blissfully cold Alice Springs winter morning, get a shitload of work done, and drum up some passable billy tea. I wouldn't swap it for quids.

Pancultura

2007-06-07T15:47:00.000+09:30

End Users As Moving Targets
As a kid I wondered why on earth God spent time devising elaborate schemes to teach his minions lessons. 'God said to Abraham kill me your son', Lotte morphed into a pillar of salt, Job got the pimples big time, the list goes on. In our case God got really cranky about some dudes building the Tower of Babel and in an off moment decreed we'd all be speaking in tongue's of a different flap rate. I still struggle to find the lesson...don't skyscrape on my patch?
An eon or two later IAD are plumbing the murky depths of this lingual legacy. We're in the process of modulating text suitable for inclusion into a cultural awareness program. Target audience; Public Service inductees, interested local individuals and the odd resourceful tourist. Our man Gavan [the Gandolph] Brean is on the job. Gavan's a metallurgist-turned-linguist and he's massaging the text supplied by our team members into a quality end product for ACAP delivery. Audio Podcast syntax requires a different set of rules. Shorter sentences, a more flowing prose leading the listener effortlessly on to new sensate vistas of endless delight. Okay, so we're playing with this particular construction now; our end users are anything from European 'larger louts' to middle American 'blue-rinse' retiree's. We had to start somewhere! so the team had a look at the schematic at right and came up with the following list of audio 'fills' segments. This has helped focus the team onto manageable/achievable audio segments. Jason's Aunty has been nominated [in absentia] as being perfect for the bush tucker scripts and her inaugural journey into e-learning production begins tomorrow! We wish her well! The team are more at ease and focused now, they know what we need and they're off tomorrow with camcorders, mp3 mikes and a bunch of ideas. Bring it on.

Medicine	Toys	Food-bush tucker	Music
Insects	Animals	Body Decoration	Birds
Trees	Plants	Weather/Seasons	Games
Children’s stories	Spirits	Indig Sport slots
Children of the future audio and audio/visual segments; kids at school, sport etc

Evolving Babel
Meanwhile, Li Ting, our Asian ambassador informs us we really need a different sort of text that readily translates across into our proof of concept Asian translations: Japanese and Chinese. And this is where God got really tricky with the Babel stunt, 'world-views' deflect say Chinese folk away from comprehending the cultural richness of Aboriginal terms wrapped inside Aboriginal world-views.
If anyones got Huey's email I need it pronto.
It's delicious really, now we're about to get Shin and Eunice in, our Japanese and Chinese translators, to look at ways of educating our team so we may moderate/manipulate text suitable for Asian tourism ingestion.
I'm impressed with the Firefox add-on "FoxLingo" and would like to recommend it. It's performed well under unusual conditions, like it can't find a Kanji character for 'Western Arrernte', I mean what was Confucius thinking, really.

Pancultur

2007-05-22T17:16:00.000+09:30

BabelAsia and AUSLAN
As part of our multicultural project we will be translating a sample selection of our mp3 audio podcasts into Chinese and Japanese. This will demonstrate the process of promoting Cultural Awareness information into the Asian region. Li Ting has made real progress into preparing a customized website that we will use as the 'vehicle' to deliver our IAD Cultural Awareness program, ACAP. As such the site has to be capable of multilingual text and audio display, mp3, mp4, Flash and photos. We've decided on using a website rather than a PowerPoint presentation to deliver the F2F component of our Cultural Awareness program. This will give us greater flexibility to include a broader range of multimedia, and also to apply more effects to in-site media.
Not only but also....
Onto this broad canvas walks our very own AUSLAN professional Carmel Batson. I'm helping Carmel with the IT/multimedia construction of her keynote address in Spain, July 07 at the Bi-annual CODA meet[Children of Deaf Adults]. Carmel complained, and rightly so, that we are utter cads for not including sign language translations in our Learnscope project.
So after a quick phone call from Betty Pearce [our director] to the Imparja Television studios Carmel, Li Ting, Gina and I are in front of a blue screen capturing 'signed' [if thats the right word] descriptions of sacred caterpillars gouging out hills and valleys across the Central Australian dreamscape. The studio technicians were calling this technique 'chromo' something or other. We just know at this stage we'll have to shoot the video this way to peel it off at a later stage and stick it against some suitable panoramic back-drop.
Our new Business apprentice Gina, pictured in the blue top, narrated the piece. We got it right on the 3rd pass and contrary to rumors Carmel did not dislocate her wrists trying to keep up with Gina!
On Monday 28th May 07 we are set to nominate the 15 or so particular sites around Alice Springs that we'll be using to construct our MP3 and MP4 podcasts. I put up another post shortly after. All I can say at this stage is that the project seems to be almost driving itself now, like a caterpillar on a mission!

Pancultu

2007-05-09T13:39:00.000+09:30

Drilling Down.
The project is running along nicely now. Learners are busy researching their chosen topics and the ITC training is producing positive results. The Moodle/Elluminate sessions have been well received and having 'show and tell' sessions with Georgina in Adelaide has added a rich overlay onto the learning experience. Learners are more comfortable and confident manipulating media objects into PowerPoint [it's amazing how this has gone so quickly from cool to passe.]
The emerging educational issue now relates to the team condensing blocks of information into 'bite sized' chunks. Google is great but it gives one so much!. Getting learners to condense their information overloads into coherent chunks is an interesting and demanding exercise for me. As the data is Indigenously oriented I haven't the cred to make the call. But I must admit it's great to see students collaborating and debating what is important to the overall flow of the message.
Regarding Information Overload: we're starting to amass a small but growing pool of raw multimedia objects. [mp3, avi, mp4, gif, swf etc] What I could really use right now is a purpose built data base housing multimedia objects. I've a feeling that down the line as we move from our PowerPoint 'source-pool' into pod and vod-cast construction, we might have to use something like SQL to call these objects up. As, ultimately , we also want to have these multimedia objects 'on-call' as scorm compliant online learning 'chunks' the need for a database is growing. Anyone out there know of any applications that does this?

Pancult

2007-04-25T00:10:00.000+09:30

Podcast Blues
I can download my uploaded mp3 files from the wiki space, and I had to, as a test, to see if they were up there. But the buggers won't play.
Went to
http://www.wikispaces.com/wikitext+media
and was convinced I had to embed my audio into the wiki after uploading it to a suitable blog site. Followed a link to Odeo and after wiki whacking around it transpires new users [and apparently old users who don't know how to upload] can upload as Odeo won't let ya. Straight forward enough eh?
Followed another link to google calendars and buggered if I could find a way to upload audio into here.
Went back to NTLS wiki clicked on my second mp3 and darn it the file played.
Is this a syntax connundrum.... the playable mp3 is called Fred Richardson Story 2.MP3
The curly one was called It lead me to IT.mp3 but on trying to play it, it morphs into a file named It+lead+me+to+IT.mp3 and plays just 3 seconds or so of my dulcet tones.
Well dash my buttons! Its 12.36am, time to punch some zzzzzz
I shall return

Pancul

2007-04-20T11:58:00.000+09:30

Latency
Had a fun and valuable intro today. Surprisingly Pat was quite relaxed working within the elluminate space. The only concept that was hard to convey was the notion of latency among and between users during an online elluminate session.
So, throwing caution to the wind, Li Ting hooked up not one but two PC's in the elluminate session, the steam powered training server rose to the occasion.[ We're so looking forward to getting our new 'Internode' service] Georgina was able to allow simultaneous moderator privileges for Adelaide and Alice Springs and our second laptop had normal student/learner permissions. [it's good to see elluminate consistently enhancing their product] So with this set up we were able to demonstrate, in real and latent time, what happens when moderators and learners use the tools in the session room. As it turned out it was an engaging and valuable learning experience for old and new learners alike. You gotta love whoever invented serendipity eh?
Research Topics.
Pat led by example and brought in a selection of archival footage stored on VHS tapes. We worked out how to use the on-screen counter and Pat has started mapping out the segments she wants to include.

The Ara Irititja Demo was also a success and garnered a lot of keen interest. It also helped demonstrate how multimedia can be packaged to become easy to navigate and control whilst at the same time being multiculturally user friendly. Definitely one of my longer sentences there, apologies!
So now we are on the road to farming the data we have and the truth thats out there somewhere Mulder. Here's a screen shot from the Ara Irititja Demo put ou by the South Australian Government I think. I was given the demo by some of the researchers involved in the project when I was working with them and the Anmattjerre mob in Ti Tree about 5 years ago.

Thats all I got for now, be happy! Fred for the NTLS07 team.

To learn more about this and other NT Learnscope 2007 projects please visit http://ntlearnscope2007.wikispaces.com/IAD

Pancu

2007-04-19T16:42:00.000+09:30

Preparation for the inaugural NTLS07 workshop. Our IAD network connection is way too slow to have our team all logged in merrily interacting with Georgina tomorrow. So what Li Ting and I have decided is to have just one connected laptop projected onto the wall so we can at least get the flavour of the platform. And Li Ting has sent off the request for a faster connection through Internode, that'll be up in about 10 days so we'll be humming from there. And in time for the next scheduled workshop.
I've just burnt several CD's for the team to take away tomorrow from the workshop.
I'm calling them 'kits', "NTLS07 kit 1" has rolled off the press and we'll see how it goes.
[1] 'ABC'; mp3 and pdf files to demo how mp3 'podtours' are done by Aunty.
[2] ACAP; I've OCR'd the ACAP handout into text and dumped it into a website, members can thus quickly move about in it as they start building up their chosen ACAP research topics.
[3] Ara_Irititja; Great Flash driven Indigenous resource. Google it for more info.
[4] ARED: Great easy to use tool to build up scorm compliant Flash files. Will run an intro on it at workshop #2.
[5]Audio Visual; Eye, ear and text candy; gif, mp4, mp3, pdf etc
[6] Irfanview; Image editor team tool of choice, freeware [even for edu orgs], small, clean and mean. Ripper program.
[7] PPT; Demo on how to use 'pack and go'; so team members can bring back research material embedded into their presentations that plays once it's away from their personal computers.
note; If you use Irfanview over your student network; Run each install once to alter an image and set it to output .jpg files, then lock the network down. Otherwise the default settings spit out bitmaps by default, forever, frustrating when you're working mainly with jpg's, and mind numbing if you aint got the permissions to change it!
To learn more about this and other NT Learnscope 2007 projects please visit http://ntlearnscope2007.wikispaces.com/IAD

Panc

2007-04-17T18:04:00.000+09:30

Pancultural-e diary of events.

Arrived back in Alice tired and inspired last week [8/4]. Great to visit Darwin in 'the wet' again and feel the rain! and meet the other Learnscope Staff and Team members. Also it was a great open atmosphere to air views, like that pun?, ask questions and generally make connections

Okay, so now the work begins. The line's been running hot between Georgina, Li Ting and Moi as we pull the threads together from Darwin, float ideas and get re-acquainted with the software platforms we'll be collaborating on/with; Moodle, elluminate, Blogspots, Wiki's, Instant Messaging a nifty 'ARED' tool and etc, etc.

Sat in at IAD for an Aboriginal Cultural Awareness Program [ACAP] last week [12/4]delivered by Pat Dodds. A great session with a stimulating audience mix: Indigenous Australians, Muslim and Europeans. It was good to attend to:
[1] get re-acquainted with the source material we'll be using to help construct the projects.
[2] enjoy the delivery and the banter that Pat always draws from participants
[3] get some mp4 video, photos and mp3 audio files for file. We'll be using these as test material when we start running the Pancultural-e workshops for the staff at IAD Fri 20/4.
Met with IAD Board Fri 13/4 and am pleased to say we have their full support. And given their 'demographic' [thanks Surya Silva] it's great that they understand the Pancultural-e concept and it's potential.

Short meet with all the team members this week and we are ready for our first online session with Georgina this Friday 20/4. We'll have a round table talk before going online just to get the neurons firing, foster input generally and to float the idea of breaking the ACAP program into manageable chunks. This will be less daunting when we can each go off and do our individual research.

The ACAP program has about 12 separate sections so on our first meeting we'll get team members to select an area they're interested [e.g. Family, Kinship, Language etc]. From there we treat it as a research topic and members populate powerpoint presentations with material they are able to find. The idea is to use this as source as we commence construction of the mp3 and mp4 podcasts and look at how we may use it towards online delivery of ACAP.

We've also scheduled in a brainstorming session aimed at adding a bit of spice to Pat's delivery. So we'll be looking for ACAP related activities, puzzles, quizzes and the like that Pat can use during delivery to engage participants. Delivery is f2f and includes a bus tour of selected Indigenous sites around Alice.
To learn more about this and other NT Learnscope 2007 projects please visit http://ntlearnscope2007.wikispaces.com/IAD