PanculturaLear-nscope

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

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.