PanculturaLe-earnscope

'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

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-

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......