Digital Songlines

Mobile location-based learning experiences

The Aboriginal people of Australia have an ancient traditional practice called the songline. A songline is a path across the land that is recorded in traditional songs, stories, dance and painting. One of the ways songlines are still used today is in teaching the younger generation the history and stories of their people. The songs and stories are repeated to them as they walk through their land and in experiencing the stories in connection with place. In doing this the connection with both land and story is preserved. In a very real sense, the songline keeps both the land and history alive.

Work has been done exploring and articulating a number of Aboriginal pedagogies (Yunkaporta, 2009). A resultant framework has been developed that allows teachers to include Aboriginal perspectives in learning experiences for both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students. My approach focuses in on one of the framework’s eight pedagogies, Land Links, which connects learning to land and place. Additionally, I draw on work done in outlining how mobile devices, story telling and learning can intersect (Diermyer & Blakesley, 2009).

To demonstrate how mobile devices can be used to both develop and experience a place-based learning experience, I have used an innovative service called Actionbound to create a reflective learning experience around the grounds of the ANZAC War Memorial in Hyde Park, Sydney.

Actionbound allows you to create an experience that consists of a combination of media-rich information and activities that can be tied into locations. The learning experience I have developed to showcase this approach asks you to walk to a certain place in the memorial grounds. Once you reach that place, the gps on your mobile device releases the next step in the sequence. For example, when you reach the eastern side of the memorial, content is released that invites you to listen to a Wilfred Owen poem, Dulce et decorum est, while reflecting on the brass bas-relief depicting the events on the Western Front. Both the bas-relief and poem depict the horror of a gas attack on the soldiers. Later on in the learning experience you are asked to write a reflective piece centred around connecting with how the World War One veterans would have experienced this place. You are also asked to post a photo that depicts how you have been impacted by another part of the memorial grounds.

By embedding sounds, song and images into content that is released only once the student is physically in a location and then giving creative opportunities for students to interact with both content and place, you can create modern-day songlines in your community that leverages well documented Aboriginal pedagogies to embed learning techniques that are more culturally appropriate for your Aboriginal students as well as giving your non-aboriginal students a fresh learning experience.

• Diermyer, C., & Blakesley, C. (2009). Story-Based Teaching and Learning: Practices and Technologies.
• Yunkaporta, T. (2009). Aboriginal Pedagogies at the Cultural Interface. Retrieved August 29, 2016, from 8 Aboriginal Ways of Learning
• Category: Illustration

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Mass Casualty Serious Game

Simulation training is a key part of a healthcare professional’s education. Standardised patients and partial task trainers such as intubation heads have been used for decades. Advances in technology have seen a growing number of high-fidelity mannequins, virtual reality and computer-based simulations expand the scenarios that can be simulated.

This unique simulation training App features real-world immersive scenarios and authentic casualty data sourced from the Victim Base database (www.victimbase.org).

My favourite scenario is the Avon Valley train derailment. Set in my home state of Western Australia, you have been called to a Mass Incident train derailment with over 100 casualties. It features an emergency call developed by members of the St John’s Ambulance Service as well as the actual topography and Satellite imagery of the region.

There are eight scenarios available and you can choose one of three triage methods – Triage Sieve and Sort, SALT or START.

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Paramedics Virtual World Prototype

For the new Paramedics Masters set at a local University, I was asked to develop a prototype scenario to teach the students how to triage in a Mass Casualty Incident.

I worked a Paramedics Officer in developing a small scenario that asks the student to triage casualties in a train wreck using the actual triage card they use on the field.

The prototype was developed in the Unity3D game development engine. I was able to customise the Unity3D web player so that the scenario is SCORM compliant – this means that we can plug it into a Learning Management System (we used Blackboard), and track the students progress through the scenario.

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Invited Keynote: Griffith University - Learning Futures

Virtual Reality, Simulations and Serious Games: What is out there and where should we go?

Join our PVC (Academic) Debra Henley for the Celebrating Teaching Week kick-off event Designing Disruption: Emerging Technologies in Higher Education. We will spend the day pushing the boundaries of emergent technologies and their use across Higher Ed right now, including: machine learning, 360-degree resources, VR (Virtual Reality), drone footage and much more. With these and others we have more technology to support teaching and learning than ever before, but what are the models and methods that define how we use them?

This session will showcase how others have designed disruption with some of these emerging technologies - Virtual Reality, Artificial Intelligence, 360 Degree Footage - so you can see the effect these disruptions can have on higher education.

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Invited presentations: University of Western Australia - mLearning Month

Virtual Worlds, Simulations and Serious Games: Unity3D, SCORM and Blackboard Learn & Adapting to win: making learning technologies work for you.

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Conference Presentations

Blackboard's ANZ Teaching and Leanring Conference and the Apple University Consortium's CreateWorld

• Blackboard's Bootcamp Invited Webinar
• Blackboard's Teaching & Learning Conference ANZ, Sydney 2016
• Apple University Consortium's Createworld Conference ANZ, Brisbane 2012

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