The boundaries of education: using mobile devices for connecting people to places

Abstract

This discussion paper explores pedagogy beyond the boundaries of tertiary institutional classrooms through a sociocultural lens that examines the history of a small-town community. In doing so, this paper discusses the principles informing the study and exploratory stages, and is not intended as an empirical research paper. Rather it outlines the use of mobile technologies to enhance the documentation of the sociocultural story of a community and as such presents a potentially transferable framework for utilising mobile mixed reality (MMR) to create authentic informal learning environments. This paper utilises (mobile) mixed media to document the historical, industrial and community growth and demise of a small town called Patea in Taranaki, New Zealand. Using practice-led methodology through a heuristic inquiry approach, the aim of the study is to demonstrate how MMR technology can be used to document the historical events and workers' narratives of the town and then be gifted back to the town as artistic educational material for future generations. As an example of a 'new genre of public art', this paper reflects on the collection of multiple forms of media capturing recorded interviews and the communication of the spoken word, mobile phone filming, drone footage, 360-degree photography/ film, site recordings and the memories of what a place could be to create a new form of educational augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR) audio visual portraiture. The author argues that the use of MMR to form a collection of AR/VR short film poems creates powerful portraits of the people who worked in the now abandoned cool stores and freezing works at Patea.

Developing a DBR Model for Designing Authentic Healthcare Solutions: Mobile and Wearable Technologies

“…The project also builds upon prior research on the redesign of the visual design curriculum facilitating authentic student learning experiences through XR technologies (Sinfield, 2018;Sinfield & Cochrane, 2018).…”

Riddles on YouTube: Investigating the potential to engage viewers in reflective thinking

“…Whilst there are doubts about the effectiveness of lecture recordings in supporting learning, lecture recordings provide easy access, connectivity and community through shared experiences of the opportunity for visiting earlier lectures (Yeung, Raju, and Sharma 2016). Sinfield (2018), in discussing mobile mixed technologies, argues that 'learning is a lifelong experience … pedagogy is applied to communities and not just institutions; thus, … part of this pedagogy becomes greater than the education system within tertiary institutions'. Linear video in its various forms constitute part of the pedagogy of learning in the lifelong learning endeavour, beyond the institution (Knox and Bayne 2013).…”

Mobile Video Production

“…This workshop is designed to provide participants with a cross-platform toolkit for implementing BYOD user-generated mobile video content in higher education contexts (Cochrane & Sinfield, 2019). Grounded on the concepts of learner-generated contexts, heutagogy or self-determined learning (Blaschke & Hase, 2019), and authentic learning (Burden & Kearney, 2016), the workshop facilitators will outline a framework for user-generated mobile video production (Sinfield, 2018). The workshop will illustrate the framework by examples of BYOD student projects, and will introduce participants to a hands-on exploration of an ecology of resources for mobile collaborative video production and sharing via digital social media platforms.…”