voyeurism

Yunnan Rangers hybrid AR board game at the 7th international conference of the Immersive Learning Research Network

our team has received news that we will be able to present a paper on the hybrid Augmented Reality (AR) board game that my team developed - Yunnan Rangers - during this year's international conference of the Immersive Learning Research Network (iLRN).

our paper is titled Communal Spaces As Ludic Resources Of Learning With Augmented Reality And Board Games. its abstract reads: This paper describes a learning activity using Augmented Reality (AR) which seeks to take advantage of the potential for learning about history and culture through exploration. This is represented by a garden in a university campus that affords visitors a scaffolded experience comprising a game-driven narrative in which visitors to the garden may assume the roles of different protagonists. In addition, we also sought to design a paper-based board-game for visitors who are not yet able to visit the garden in person. Both aspects of the learning activity – namely, the game-driven narratives in the actual garden as well as in the board-game equivalent – were piloted in December 2020. The study suggests that a combination of Augmented Reality, storyline and role-play could increase the probability of encounters with spontaneous elements in learners’ local environments that encourage learning.

iLRN 2021 runs from the 17th of May till the 10th of June :-)

Yunnan Rangers hybrid AR board game: shared with alumni of the Nanyang Technological University

my team and i are very grateful to the Development Office of our parent university - the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) - for so graciously deeming our recent hybrid Augmented Reality (AR) board game Yunnan Rangers as worthy of being shared with those members of the alumni of the university who are currently based in China.

the Development Office supports the university's mission by fostering meaningful relationships and strategic partnerships with philanthropists, alumni, business community partners, corporations, foundations and friends that result in goodwill and philanthropy towards education and research that underpin a shared sustainable future. Together, the Office and its partners nurture the next generation of leaders and build sustainable support in education and academia.

the Office will be sharing Yunnan Rangers in a coming Electronic Direct Mail in both English and Mandarin Chinese, to alumni. for example, the Mandarin Chinese version will be shared with NTU China, which is an industry-academia collaboration between NTU and the Chongqing Yubei District People's Government in Yubei district, Chongqing municipality.   

it's such a privilege for us, because we conceptualised, designed, and developed Yunnan Rangers during 2020 - as part of our team's response to COVID-19 - particularly with the Chinese diaspora in mind. it's tremendous that our parent university understands, appreciates, and is able to support our work in Augmented Reality and learning.

we are so grateful to the Development Office of the NTU.

:-)

first enaction of the Socially Responsible Behaviour through Embodied Thinking (SORBET) Project in the primary school curriculum

ten years' ago to the day, Japan was rocked by the Tohoku earthquake, which triggered the Fukushima nuclear disaster. 

at that time, my team and i were collaborating with a local primary school here in Singapore, and the teachers designed a series of activities to help children make sense of what had happened, within the context of the Social Studies curriculum.

it represented one of the earliest examples of enactments inspired by our Six Learnings curriculum design framework, and we remain very grateful to those teachers.

i am very excited to share that today marked the return of the Six Learnings to the primary school Social Studies curriculum, this time under the auspices of the Socially Responsible Behaviour through Embodied Thinking (SORBET) Project.

catalysed by the COVID-19 pandemic, our team has been singularly privileged to walk this journey with teachers and students from Xishan Primary School.

we have learned so much from the teachers and have also learned to see the world through the eyes of the students.

Yunnan Rangers now part of the Singapore Kaleidoscope

two days' ago, i introduced Yunnan Rangers - a mixed-reality board game that my team and i have developed.

we are very humbled to learn that Yunnan Rangers has been incorporated in what is known as the Singapore Kaleidoscope. The Singapore Kaleidoscope is a compulsory course under the enhanced Postgraduate Diploma in Education programme of the National Institute of Education, Singapore. The Singapore Kaleidoscope course was introduced in December 2016. It seeks to enlarge student teachers’ understanding of the issues confronting Singapore, while cultivating appreciative inquiry as well as self-directed and experiential learning skills. As part of the course, student teachers explore various themes, such as “Nature and Biodiversity” and “Singapore in the World”. ‘Yunnan Rangers’ is positioned within the theme of “Heritage, Society and Culture”.

we thank God for this opportunity.

Yunnan Rangers hybrid Augmented Reality board game: introduction at the Innovations in Teaching & Learning seminar 2021

two days' ago, i introduced Yunnan Rangers - a mixed-reality board game that my team and i have developed.

next month, as part of the Innovations in Teaching & Learning seminar hosted by the National Institute of Education on the 2nd of March, we will be sharing briefly our experience to fellow faculty, as part of a panel themed on 'advancing research'.

Introducing Yunnan Rangers: a hybrid on-site / off-site game themed on history, culture and ecology

Yunnan Rangers is a hybrid on-site / off-site game based on the Yunnan Garden situated at the campus of the Nanyang Technological University. The garden was built in the 1950s and spans nine hectares. It was re-opened in 2020 after a renovation lasting about three years. The renovated garden features clusters of floral species along the water course of a rain-garden – the latter is a bioretention facility designed to treat polluted stormwater run-off, by using plants and differentiated layers of soil to increase infiltration of water which would otherwise pond on the surface. As for the clusters of floral species, they are accompanied by text-based signboards which describe the significance of the various species to the heritage of the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia, in cultural terms such as medicinal use, use in textiles, and so on.

This board game was designed as a companion to an augmented reality (AR) game which is designed to be played on-site at the garden; this version can be played by visitors who are unable to visit the garden in person. The layout of the board game is based on that of the actual garden, and Augmented Reality is used to complement game-play by providing the player(s) with supplemental information as they advance through the game. 

Please feel free to download the game documents for yourself :-)

My team worked alongside Wong Yuk Yi from April till December 2020 to develop this game.

Disciplinary Intuitions / the SORBET Project: welcoming college students to NTU's Undergraduate Research Experience on Campus (URECA) AY 2020 / 2021

further to my post four months’ ago, my team and i are really happy and privileged to welcome four college students to our projects offered under NTU’s Undergraduate Research Experience on Campus (URECA) programme for the Academic Year 2020 / 2021.

two of our students are from the National Institute of Education, another is from the School of Computer Science and Engineering, and another from the School of Social Sciences.

the opportunity to participate in URECA is extended through invitation only to select second- and third-year undergraduates, who will subsequently be conferred as NTU President Research Scholars.

the projects we have offered are:

NIE20243 - Knowledge mobilisation of the Six Learnings curriculum design framework and its associated theory of Disciplinary Intuitions

NIE20244 - Exploring how the Socially Responsible Behaviour through Embodied Thinking (SORBET) Project might be applied to Geography curricula

NIE20273 - Exploring how the Socially Responsible Behaviour through Embodied Thinking (SORBET) Project might be applied to citizenship education curricula

NIE20274 - Adapting the Socially Responsible Behaviour through Embodied Thinking (SORBET) Project to the mobile platform

Disciplinary Intuitions / Maker Motes: welcoming a Masters student to our grant on Geographical Investigations (GI) with the Internet of Things (IoT)

further to my post from six and half months' ago, my team and i are really happy and privileged to welcome a Masters student to our project associated with the grant we were awarded on Designing for greater authenticity in Geographical Investigations (GI) through local microclimate studies with the Internet of Things (IoT) and open-source environmental sensors.

our student is from the Humanities & Social Studies Education Academic Group of the National Institute of Education.

she is doing an MA (Research) in Field Geography Pedagogy.

the Abyss Observatory at Farwell in Second Life: visit during the Coastal Ecosystem and Management webinar 2020

my friend Hajime Nishimura (Second Life: Yan Lauria) and i have been curating the Abyss Observatory at Farwell for about seven years now.

on the 24th of this month, a webinar on Coastal Ecosystem and Management will be held, and Hajime and i will be sharing a visit to Farwell, together with our friend Linda Morris Kelley (Second Life: Delia Lake).

here's the abstract of our sharing, and the video from the session is shared after the abstract:

The scientific research about coastal ecosystems and their importance to humanity is both solidly founded and ongoing. Scientists share the facts widely. Yet human activity is destroying these coastal ecologies and marine habitats, and officials with authority to protect these environments significantly undervalue them by law and policy. Knowing the facts and information is seldomly sufficient to move people to responsible action.

People say they care about coasts and oceans but their actions belie that. Though protection and livelihoods of millions of people around the world depend on coastal ecosystems resources, people treat these resources carelessly. Shorelines are awash with plastic trash. Untreated sewage and agricultural fertilizer runoff encourage algal blooms with seasonal eutrophication damaging ecosystems adjacent to highly populated coastal areas worldwide. Trawling and overfishing destroy coastal ecosystems, sometimes beyond recovery. Climate change is adding to the already present stresses these ecosystems suffer. How can we change this?

Unfortunately, most people have never had an opportunity to experience and enjoy any of these amazing socio-ecological spaces. While we cannot show them all the world’s physical coastal ecosystems, we can do that in immersive 3D virtual geospaces.

Our virtual tour of eight simulated coastal ecosystems at The Abyss Observatory, an educational resource on the 3D interactive platform of Second Life® gives people a sense of “being there” and produces lasting memories of real, meaningful feelings of engagement. Caring is built on memories of experiences that touch people. People protect things they care about.

The featured builds are two Tropical habitats – a mangrove forest and a coral reef, four Temperate habitats – an oak and holly forest, a Temperate rainforest, ocean banks, and a kelp forest, and two Arctic and Subarctic habitats – coastal tundra and cold-water coral reef, all key ecosystems for global sustainability.

the Raymaker Field Studies Centre at Bowness - the new cypress swamp

i am very grateful to Delia Lake for so graciously and skilfully having nurtured a cypress swamp ecosystem at the Raymaker Field Studies Centre at Bowness.

thank you, Delia!