I’m typing on Sunday morning, although I might not get it finished today. It is a cloudy drizzly day. The temperature is climbing, the first buds of spring are beginning to appear at the ends of branches, little bits of greenery poking up through the soil.
It has been a busy weekend, the AAAL (American Association of Applied Linguistics) Conference is in town and there are talks and presentations on all manner of fascinating subjects. Although I’m not attending the bulk of the conference I am enjoying some of the fringe events, some online, and a few get-togethers in person. I’ve had an event every evening since my return from Austin, hopping from one thing to the next. It is tiring but it’s been good, meeting up with colleagues, talking, and catching people I haven’t bumped into for a while.
We booked the tickets as a family for a trip home to the UK, we’ll be heading back around June and staying until mid-July. We are pleased that we were able to do that, especially as prices seem to be fluctuating wildly as a result of high fuel prices. We haven’t been home since the pandemic, so we’re looking forward to seeing friends and staying with family. Let me know, if you’re in the UK and we’re not far away then we might be able to get together for a pint.
Here’s what I have for you this week.
Spaces to Connect
The highlight of my trip to Austin last week was a morning spent at the Texas Immersive Institute run by Erin Reilly whose energy and effort have produced a center that is leading in terms of building an understanding of immersive technologies and the possibilities for design, creativity, and innovation in this relatively new field. I enjoyed meeting the team, who are working on new projects for a host of clients, both within the university and externally. I was very pleased to see where our centers overlap, especially in terms of encouraging the use of VR for tackling social justice issues. Where the Institute is way ahead is in their outreach, with a bustling events calendar including workshops, meet-ups, and open house events. There is real momentum here, the possibilities are rich and it is great to have such a progressive and engaged group leading the way.
Another aim shared by ourselves and the team at the Texas Immersive Institute is providing people with the opportunity to play. You have to spend a little bit of time with this technology, it is personal, often wearable and experiences are intimate and often encourage reflection. We’ve had great success sending students and visitors away with headset kits so that they can take a deeper dive than is often afforded during a visit or open event. So far we’re provided almost 75 kits to students, and we’ve only lost a couple. We know that we’re incredibly privileged to be able to do this, and we are working with suppliers to see if they can help us or sponsor us so that we can get more kits, even take them with us on our school visits.
Teaching & Learning
This week, as I mentioned, we ran a pre-conference workshop for delegates attending the AAAL conference which has been taking place in Pittsburgh this weekend. We made sure that there was time to play, trying out different headsets, playing with augmented reality apps and tools; before splitting into groups to tackle the creation of new projects in three strands, research, teaching, and design. For this last strand, we invited colleagues from the Entertainment Technology Center to assist in the creation of new experiences. It was a successful day, we welcomed around thirty people to the room, including esteemed colleagues from Harvard, Northern Arizona, and Portland all working in this space, exploring the possibilities of this technology for language learning.
Again, it’s always the elements outside the technology that excited the most, for instance thinking more widely about immersion than just headsets, to what could be achieved with projectors and aspects of performance. Many of the delegates were unfamiliar with a design-thinking process, so again this was a new thing to consider, a way of creating and working with students on a number of projects. The aim is always active learning, and occasions where ideas are exchanged and pedagogies discussed in these terms are important and productive. We’re sending out a short survey to our delegates to gather some feedback on the event and we hope to be able to run it at other conferences, so let me know if you might be interested.
Lost and Found
There are a few articles and posts that caught my eye this week.
Thinking that I’m now on 110 issues of this newsletter, it was interesting to read Jason Kottke’s reflections on his blog, which is now twenty-four years old. A pillar of the internet and still somewhere that you go to find fascinating things. Jason’s interests haven’t changed much over the years, there’s still quite a bit of design and film, but more political and social commentary now than there was before. He’s pretty hard on himself about his earlier posts, he shouldn’t be. I’m still learning and writing every week so that I get better at writing, it is a long process for some of us.
If you’re a university professor or student, then Gizmodo (of all places) is asking for your opinion to help think about the future of education. The survey just takes a few minutes.
A thoughtful article about American workplaces and the return to the office after Covid. I find the culture here quite intense, there still doesn’t seem to the understanding that happy workers make productive workers, so many people work second and even third jobs to increase their pay and there are the fewest days off and national holidays than anywhere I’ve visited, and as for mandated childcare and sick pay…
I’m listening to Ukrainecast from the BBC, a daily update with interviews and reports from people suffering and surviving. I would recommend it, more than any other news source on the War and invasion by Russia, listening to people talk about what they have to endure, I have no words for the horror of what is happening and hope that there will be peace. I walked past this demonstration on Sunday evening and took a few minutes to stand with people.
Thank you
Let’s leave it there, I’m just having a catch-up day today, wading through my emails, and won’t start to get ready for upcoming events until later in the week. I badly need a reset, a few minutes to tidy my desk, and take the coffee cups back to the kitchen.
I haven’t sketched or drawn anything for a few days, just a doodle while waiting at the airport, so I need to find some time, even just a minute or so.
Also, hoping that the weather gets better and I can head out on the trails, I hear them calling me.
Take care, see you soon.