Running with virtual scissors DFI session 6

‘Writing about music is like dancing about architecture’ is a quote often attributed to musician Frank Zappa - although I suspect he’d heard it somewhere else, liked it and used it as a bullet for his critics. Better than that irritating saying ‘it’s like comparing apples to oranges’ if far more specific. Irritating because apples and oranges are actually way more similar if you were to compare them: both are spherical, acidic fruit of a similar size. If I was having a conversation with you while eating an orange and quickly swapped it for an apple when you glanced away, it’s debatable whether you’d even notice. And if you did, you wouldn’t be surprised. You’d be similarly aggrieved if I threw either fruit at you. Instead, compare apples with something completely dissimilar say, post impressionist French painter Vincent van Gogh. Now there’s a mid conversation swap I couldn’t pull off. Anyway, I was going to try for a quote shadow - something like ‘blogging about DFI is like painting about mathematics. Then I googled ‘painting about mathematics’ and it’s an actual thing. In fact there was even this time magazine story about algorithms and post impressionist painter Vincent Van Gogh that I wouldn’t be able to swap for an apple. So on with my blog then.

I rolled in slightly late as Robbie was sharing about what had worked for him in the past week and was super impressed when he casually dropped the word ‘ameliorate’ into his spiel. Pretty good Robbie.

Dave Winter is the change outreach manager for Manaiakalani; I don’t really understand what that means but think sounds like some kind of pentecostal mission - a preacher delivering the digital gospel in some kind of tent in the town square. Anyway Dave-composed, impressive, statuesque-delivered the kind of rousing charismatic call to the masses that you’d expect from someone with the job title ‘change outreach manager’. I should also quickly describe the workspace at Tonui Collab where we were for DFI today. Immense glass windows let light stream into large spacious rooms, with a view over the inner harbour. Beautiful spring day, boats at rest in the harbour with others coming in or going out and the Tatapouri fishing club just across from where we sat. Terrible workspace: despite Dave’s obvious mastery of his subject (and large pauses as he faffed around on his phone) I couldn’t help but look out and think of what I was missing out on. Wouldn’t it be great to be out on the flat ocean, sun on my face with a line in the water? I worked a little further down the wharf for a time: unloading fishing boats for Moana Pacific Fishery. I prefer what I’m doing now though. Anyway - back to Dave who I wouldn’t be surprised to see throwing a ring into a volcano. Or following Snow White around with a cherubic grin on his little bearded face. Call him 'techie'. He was up to slide 15. And you can see the green, forested hills in the distance from those windows. Dave’s theme for his presentation was visibility. He mentioned Manaiakalani teachers having their inquiry in their blog so I’ll shovel mine in here somewhere. Just for kicks. But those windows, I’m used to the DFI in a much cooler environment, without that glorious view. Or dank, sweaty classrooms, where there’s little to see out the windows.

Shannon from Tonui Collab gave a presentation on the future of technology, showing a video about people with prosthetic robot arms that looked badass. Will Smith starred in a movie called irobot - an adaption of an Isaac Asimov story- and a major twist of the plot was when he revealed that he had a robot arm that looked much like the ones in the video. The theme of the movie was the conflict between A.I. technology and people. Relevant perhaps. Shannon’s insight was that this was part of the future of technology. I wanted to see one of the robot arms crush something. Or maybe a MMA fighter with a robot arm? Another pop-culture reference: Black Mirror. Created by Charlie Brooker, this show explores the uneasy transaction between human nature and technology. I could imagine that the MMA fighter with a robot prosthetic might make a great subject for an episode…

We rolled into a Kahoot about programming and I was only on the leaderboard briefly, getting absolutely destroyed by just about everyone. I wasn’t even staring out the window either, I had a good try at it. Robbie was doing pretty well, beating Dave Winter, the bespectacled Manaiakalani guru, for quite some time before succumbing at the end. Cheryl came in second and Perky third. No prizes for last place unfortunately.

We explored programming IRL by writing a programme to get a blindfolded robot across the floor to a set point, ensuring we avoided the dinosaurs on the floor. When I was eight I thought that dinosaurs were about the coolest thing that there was, they were even cooler than bulldozers which I thought were also pretty neat. We did ok. I was the robot for a start, Robbie wrote the programme and Tim did the steering. I didn't break anything.

 The next computational thinking activity was called lightbot, a game where you have to programme the bot to make its way to coloured squares. I was just getting the hang of it when we switched activities.

We watched a video on VR headsets and the fire department and then we tried some headsets also. Mine seemed to show some kind of weird nightclub that had a dancing donkey. Don’t get me wrong, a dancing donkey in a nightclub would be awesome - kind of like the apocryphal story about Johnny Cash painting his motel room black and having a donkey in there for who knows what. I was underwhelmed with the graphics after seeing this video on the unreal engine - I was hoping that we’d be in for this. You’ve got to start somewhere though. Crippled people are, apparently, put in movable suits and have headsets on and this experience helps heal them.

Co-spaces was the final activity. Emily took us through this. We looked at making a narrative in a 3D world. Because Tim had sloped off early to perform a fire dance at Eden Park as a curtain raiser for the rugby, we took his work complaint from a colleague as inspiration for a video we created using programming in the virtual world. The two characters were 'fancy boy' and a witch. Matt showed us some augmented reality. Reminiscent of that scene from David Fincher's Fight Club (one of my favourite movies) it was putting the characters that he'd created on the carpet by Emily's feet. In Fight Club, Edward Norton's blank-eyed character takes a walk around his apartment, narrating in monotone while advertisements from an Ikea catalogue pop up. Also relevant. It was a lot to take in and feels like we are just scratching the surface with this stuff. Here's our 3d video:

A few more thoughts...

E-sports was the cover story of the July issue of Interface magazine. If you’re not familiar with Interface, it’s an ICT magazine. Several pages (20-27) explain why e-sports is the coming thing.  Well, it’s actually here but not at the school I’m teaching at. E-sports - skill, strategy, competition- is a popular indoor activity that doesn’t require physical contact or running around. Neither do chess, darts, snooker, motor sport or golf the article is quick to point out. Of course, I mentioned competitive darts in an earlier blog post and that was not complimentary. And none of these ‘sports’ are interesting to watch. Students compete in various scenarios which all seem to involve violently exterminating the opposition. MOBA games (multiplayer online battle arena) FPS (first person shooter) RTS (real time strategy) are part of the deal and there are mini-articles from Paul, the teacher in charge of e-sports at Waiheke High School and Tom the e-sport TIC at Ashburton. They describe practice times at school and the multiple benefits of e-sports. There were five lines about the health concerns. Basically a short blurb about how everything should be in moderation. In seven pages of fairly dense text I might just add as a point of comparison.

‘Gamification’ is the new educational buzzword to describe how on-line or digital learning has morphed into something akin to an online game. However, dig a little deeper: what this means is that the learning has become a slot machine in a digital Vegas casino. Fancy beeping noises, a leaderboard, abstract points, colourful lights that our young digital addicts crave. ‘Gamification’ is the term often used to describe concepts behind the popularity of Facebook, Snapchat, instagram… Beeping alerts let you know that you have a new comment, a ‘like’. You can see how many ‘likes’ your post has, or your selfie or whatever. It’s great, obviously, to have content that students find engaging but I wonder if the title ‘gamification’ is a euphemism. Maybe ‘addictification’ would be accurate if less PR friendly. We started discussing this with Emily, after the bell had rung for hometime and she had some interesting anecdotes to share about home-schoolers with little access to devices having better concentration spans and imaginations.