(MOOC by the way is an academic term for the web, massively open courses online )
Futurelearn has been warmly welcomed by UK government. The Minister for Universities and Science responsible for higher education in England, David Willetts, said: "The UK must be at the forefront of developments in education technology. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCS) present an opportunity for us to widen access to, and meet the global demand for, higher education. This is growing rapidly in emerging economies like Brazil, India and China.
“Futurelearn has the potential to put the UK at the heart of the technology for learning agenda by revolutionising conventional models of formal education. New online delivery tools will also create incredible opportunities for UK entrepreneurs to reach world markets by harnessing technology and innovation in the field of education."
Last time at BETT Michael Gove announced an end to the ICT curriculum as something centrally defined. I thought this could be quite interesting but it seems to mean that technology is not very important compared to the subjects that still are defined. What is this "revolution in conventional models of formal education" ? There could be more about this.
This post is some background on topics I am relating to over the next few months. The #mosocoop project has agreed to arrange a meeting about Design Science and Sustainability on March 14th. There will be online conversation around this starting in January. Some of the issues will also come up in #mtw3, a conference on Management Theory at Work. Design science relates to teaching but I think the #mosocoop event will concentrate on sustainability. Also at this time of year there is usually a Winterlude, a period of reflection over which technology shifts in time for BETT. #mosocoop is not really about technology but publishing is mostly online.
More about design science in previous posts on this blog and on these websites-
This is a start on trying to outline a timescale for technology. There will be a better version around the time of BETT. Not that Adobe will be at BETT I think but they have been previously and it is always an occasion to check things out.
At Learning Technologies there is another floor for Learning and Skills where a less digital world continues. There is still interest in print and InDesign for example. Upstairs the Adobe approach continues Macromedia emphasis on Flash. So it suggested some evidence for a future archaeologist concluding this was on some sort of sequence.
Recently Adobe has turned to analytics and marketing. I am still not sure what this is about. It seems to be structured from some other place. It is not clear how it fits with existing connections with Adobe. There was very little about this at Cross Media Live for example.
I also think there is another layer of mud for virtual worlds but the timing for this is muddled. I vaguely remember Adobe Atmosphere and looked it up on Wikipedia.
Atmosphere existed between 2001 and 2004. It was software to create worlds. Maybe a business model selling land would have worked better. Maybe it was too hard to produce a stable version at that time.
I don't know in any detail what is happening with Twinity. Linden Labs are launching new products for mobile. Some sort of 3D world is emerging.
When we looked at the design envelope I was probably at the disruptive end of one axis, close to the ceiling. JD and Chris are closer to the sediment on the floor, they keep to the idea of a radio show in real time. Of course this will continue.
But clips on YouTube or Soundcloud or somewhere makes sense also. This week I will be in London on Thursday but plan A is for prerecording to cover the first half hour. Interview with Scatman with added tracks. I happened to meet him earlier today and have been invited to his show on Saturday. So I will have to leave Spacex fairly quick after the talk. Should be ok but I think talk about galleries will not have much space on the Wild Show till next year. Apart from keeping up with Scatman we have the Phonic benefit party to promote.
Assume most things subject to delay but follow up for later.
There will be a talk on Saturday in Exeter, probably similar to the video on Vimeo
It will be interesting to compare this with NeoReplicants. Could a "readymade" or "found object" be discovered in a Sketchup warehouse? What is this rubber like material? Could it be used to construct several layers?
Sometimes the comments are not that visible so I am reposting this one
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Will,
Thanks for this post... appreciated.
Do you know the work of the UK licensee of The Natural Step - Forum for the Future - and their work on Sustainable Business Models?
In terms of a definition of design science. A few things.
- Design science can be said to originate in Herbert Simon's classic1969 work "sciences of the artificial". Clearly computer design (user interface etc.) is a good example of design, but in fact as people like Russel Ackoff have observed there is a close connection between all problem solving and design. Late 19th C pragmatic philosophers like Charles Sanders Pierce considered design to be a different type of thinking - abduction - cf. deduction and induction. People like Ackoff was particularly looking a system thinking and design.
- check out my ever expanding bibliography of works related to design science and sustainability.
- Finally in terms of design and sustainability and organizations I've got a draft article (which I'm currently shopping around)... entitled "Design Science to the Rescue? Knowledge Production for the Sustainable Organization". I'll email that to you.
Cheers
Antony
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I have found a website for Forum for the Future and a link to a course they offer
Earlier today I got an update from Antony Upward on his work on a Strongly Sustainable Business Model. I am interested in this both in relation to a Model of a Sustainable Organisation - MoSO - an update on Deming ands also #mtw3 , a conference on applied management theory.
Antony Upward includes Design Science as part of his approach
The Management Theory at Work - #mtw3 - online phase has found Design Science as part of John Burgoyne's take on whatever follows the end of leadership, and in Diana Laurillard's recent book on designing teaching. So I am looking for more on Design Science to connect this as a flow.
The impression I get is that interest in Design Science has come through work on computer interfaces and websites. I can't find many references on this though, except on YouTube so this link is worth repeating
At the Futures Conference at the LCC I heard several speakers discuss user experience as part of design for websites, mobile and games. Probably a lot the method could be described through terms developed by Deming but it is worth exploring how the new terms are used. There are various descriptions of a learning loop and it may be easier to accept the words people start with.
By the way, slightly off topic. Last week discussing the problems of web access in villages near Exeter ( Devon, UK ) I came across a new phrase - "unsustainable communities" . It seems not to be official but I have found it on sites complaining about bad bandwidth. Apparently a "sustainable community" is the sort of place that should have broadband. But by implication there are "unsustainable communities" as well. Presumably these are places where there is no obligation for broadband to be available. Not sure I have got this right. But definitions of "sustainable" vary so if there really is an official policy on "unsustainable communities" it would be interesting to know what this means.
Still not sure where Twinity is going. It may have stopped developing for a while. Bringing back the streets may not just depend on affording the map data. I guess hosting the data has a cost also. So I am trying to think of other ways of relating to real space.
Meanwhile I keep getting info through this kind of link. Can't follow it all but what I find is making sense.
Over the weekend I edited an mp3 from the Wild Show last week into clips for YouTube.
found on "neorepliucants" though lots of Bladerunner also. Should get better search on NeoReplicants as more stuff turns up.
This set also helps raise questions around copyright and social media. Video for Rougemont Global Broadcasting and other channels is usually limited to mostly music as clearance is more likely. Graphics from art venues is much more protected. The conversation on the Wild Show includes why we can select bits of sound for a show but normally cannot link to graphics of video on Facebook. Maybe this is changing, the blog form is intended to test this.
I have started to check out blogs relating to previous topics. I tried some collage on the bouncy Stonehenge, shifting it to Totnes and Sidmouth. Recent post about Jeremy Deller quotes his support for play in art, in particular the Bristol project for a playful city. Turns out there is a £30,000 budget but the deadline is this week. So my thinking so far is around moving bits of city to another one. I realise many other people already knew that it is possible to import a 3D object into a virtual world. But for me this is recent, as something I can do. Video is possible in Twinity but I am just doing 3D photos, sometimes with elements pasted in from an actaul photo.
Exeter seems to be just big enough as a city to have the essentials to complement the web - minimum of a cafe and a tech shop. I have also recently visited Lancaster and Taunton. Both work pretty well. A model virtual version works best for a city that can be walked across as far as the central bit is concerned. Bristol is now on far too many sites as I remember it. There is the waterside area around where the docks used to be. There are shops near the motorway exits way to the north. I know there is a shopping area closer to the centre but have not been there recently.
A quick search on Google Maps tells me there is a Castle Park but I can't see much of a castle. Scan somewhere else and move it in, maybe as a projection or through some form of goggles. There are several ways to add something to a screen based on recognising a barcode or image. As explained above, stills and video can be produced through compositing.
In Exeter we could check out which aspects of a university campus could be moved back to the centre. The Phoenix and the area near the museum were once a base for Exeter University. The Arts School moved out beyond Barrack Road and then to Plymouth. Recently the new Forum project happened to eliminate a bookshop from the university resources. It may turn out that this is very sensible if mobile devices replace the functions of a printed book. But it raises a question about other aspects of the site such as the library and the lecture spaces. Could video conferencing have a role? Bristol still has a university in the city so this is a useful comparison.
More later, still a couple of days.
I think most of the budget should be used for scans, both objects and buildings.
I wonder if Volkhardt Mueller would contribute? His work on Any High Street seemed to me to be more about Any City. When he was on the Wild Show I think he was genuinely interested in an app or some way of distributing images through a digital system. Not sure what the business model would be. The Bristol funding assumes creative commons but this might be combined with something else later.
Sorry, forgot to credit the original of the photo in previous post about moving sculpture from the Work Foundation to near the Chartered Quality Institute.
Photo by Ewan Munro on Creative Commons basis so I think adding something in is ok.
original title
Blue Anchor, Holborn, EC4
The actual CQI is round the corner.
By the way, as memory serves the office block that the Blue Anchor moved into was once a mainframe bureau and the basement included a pool table, a modem and at least one personal computer, regarded as slightly off topic for the rest of the building.
Next week there is an actual meeting of the Deming SIG at the CQI in London. Details on request. It is likely to be a planning meeting for next year so not putting you off but there may be something more interesting later for a wider audience.
I don't know how issues around Deming will be part of a face-to-face #mtw3 but this may become more clear in the new year. Meanwhile I am moving the sculpture outside the Work Foundation to other locations. Twinity continues as a base for conversation and social media. "Beach For You" has potential as a sculpture park but there is no scan yet or permission for such.
The Wild Show is going well for my interests. The mp3 from yesterday on the current NeoReplicants show is ok but will take a while to edit. Meanwhile I am thinking again about a previous discussion turning the studio into a 3D space with the four walls used for sensibility and analysis, part of or apart from nature. The floor for sediment, ceiling for disruption. Not sure I have remebered this exactly. the book is out next year.
I am finding out more about 3D worlds such as Twinity and objects through scans and Sketchup. I think it should be possible to have a 3D model of a radio studio. So it has about 4 or 5 chairs, various sound inputs and a mixing desk. The walls, floor and cieling each have textures or images to indicate something. Avatars can be described on three scales depending on where they are. The chairs need some sort of feature that adjusts the height.
More detail may emerge during next year. Prototypes welcome.
No video on the performance that I can find but this is from Sidmouth
from the CUP info-
The first part of the book discusses how widespread cultures of singing at work were in pre-industrial manual occupations. The second and third parts of the book show how musical silence reigned with industrialisation, until the carefully controlled introduction of Music While You Work in the 1940s. Continuing the analysis to the present day, Rhythms of Labour explains how workers have clung to and reclaimed popular music on the radio in desperate and creative ways.
Here is a video on Music While You Work
During next year the Wild Show on Phonic FM may look at this sort of thing. Anyone can phone in or email with a request. 10- 12 on a Thursday morning. I usually do the first half hour but Chris is often open to suggestions on content. Links will turn up on this blog, some of the previous stuff is on YouTube.
so lots more video / television content could be coming online or through search. Something like #EX1to4 could define a locality.
The only tweet search tag I know of is SE1. any other examples?
The Consumer Electronics Show will probably have more about this. The Winterlude has definitely started as I am sampling mince pies trying to work out which brand I prefer. Expect quite short posts with a full analysis sometime in mid Jan.
but wait, I thought Twinity was now part of Exit Reality.
And if Linden Labs is headed to mobile devices maybe things will change sometime soon?
I'm quite happy in Twinity but bring back the maps and the streets please. Otherwise people will wander and mix with something else.
Exit Reality has a service for local authorities to build a world around a map. Surely some economic development outfit can get the map data needed by Twinity or find a sponsor or something?
Exeter and Lancaster are probably not on the list of tech hotspots but the city centres are quite small so something like a Twinity model could be possible within a budget.
I'm not sure how this will work out in the situations I am relating to. So far conferences and meetings have not made as much use of online as they might.
When I think about virtual worlds I often realise there is something repeated. Maybe this is not unusual, but the evidence accumulates.
The Work Foundation is still the venue for #mtw3 , even if Twinity Berlin is used as a location for online stills. So the walk from around the time of Deming Secrets could still work.
Very general,
Assume a space with an HR Building and a QA Building, both some way apart. Groups form and talk at each and closer to one or the other.
Previously
#mosocoop
deming secrets
london walk
So during December I will try some more Photoshop and story boarding. There may be aqctual video to refer to, but the avatars can represent something with some sort of basis.
Probably I will be back to Exeter on a coach from Victoria so the "HR Building" will turn out to be the Wetherspoons on the other side of the station.
