Augmenting learningin the Humanities

Rebecca FergusonThe Open University

Digital Pedagogy: June 2014

Augmented learning uses electronic devices

to extend learners’ interaction with and perception of

their current environment to include and bring to life different times,

places, characters and possibilities.

‘Experiencing D-Day in real time provided a new perspective on an event that has been in danger of becoming normalised […] as you are enjoying your

breakfast, George was four miles under the channel in a midget submarine hoping his oxygen would last.’

http://bit.ly/1tKBAqd

http://dday7.channel4.com/

Augmentation and presence

• Medium provokes social response – prompting response to mediated cues from the no-longer alive and the never alive

• Social richness – supporting interaction that feels sociable, warm, personal and immediate

• Social immersion – provoking, supporting and encouraging a sense of involvement

• Transportation – prompting a sense of togetherness that transcends both time and distance.

Roles of the educator

• Educational outreach, long-term interests and personal enthusiasm

• Requires expertise, plus the time and ability to act as a coordinator and a facilitator

• Needs to inspire and engage people, because no one is required to participate.

• Anyone can engage at any time, anyone can leave at any time, but a skilled facilitator can keep people engaged and actively contributing for many years.

www.pepysdiary.com/

1 entry, 43 annotations, 10 years

@samuelpepys are you ok there Sam? That's very uncharacteristic of you. I'm sure your wife thanks you, however.

@samuelpepys gwan, Sam, have a go

Advantages

‘Enjoying the Diary online has several advantages: wherever I am in the World, I can follow it – and scrutinize specific information regarding a detail in the text, without losing the passage where I have abandoned the path made by Mr. Pepys. Try doing this with a book!

‘Your in-text annotations are a genuine bliss: no more tedious leafing through pages! Also: always the London map only a mouseclick away! In-deep articles! Entries from other fans! And finally, the gentle pace of releasing one entry a day and synchronizing this with the actual calendar of 2008 – that is an absolutely brilliant idea.’

http://www.pepysdiary.com/news/2003/02/09/268/

‘In some ways what I tweet is not truly what people at the time experienced, because I include things that nobody could have known. But think of the alternative: if I only included what, say, British civilians (or even the British government) knew, there'd be almost no mention of the Holocaust for years, grossly inaccurate reports & rumours, and many things simply never mentioned because they weren't discovered until years later…’

Alwyn Collinson

@RealTimeWWII

@RealTimeWWII

@RealTimeWWII

 @RealTimeWWII: Over 900 people are dead to German bombing in Belfast, Northern Ireland– Luftwaffe pounded city from 10pm last night

@atheistpunk: @RealTimeWWII Kinda puts current events into perspective. Imagine facing this every day for years

@petersinnott: @atheistpunk: @RealTimeWWII Current events do too. 30 people died in bomb attacks in Iraq yesterday. Harsh world out there unfortunately

@RealTimeWWII

Gunpowder, Tweeting and Plot

https://twitter.com/chrisleach78/lists/gunpowdertweetingplot

Responses from participants

• Congratulations on your fantastic work, it's really brought history alive for me :)

• I learned a lot about the gunpowder plot that I didn’t know before!

• Following your tweets is captivating – got me right into the story behind the history.

• I was honoured to be a part of it and the pupils loved being a part of it too. They actually learned so much about the people and the facts behind the common facts.

Oh new fanglenesse! Ich have learned the privitees of the manye abbreviaciouns

ywrtten on the internette.Par ensaumple: OMG: “oh

mine ++DOMINUS++”. ROFL: “rolling on the floore laughing”.

IRL: “in real lyfe.” WTF: Whatte the syve.”

http://houseoffame.blogspot.co.uk/

@LeVostreGC

‘playing pretend in a context where everyone agrees that playing pretend is what you do’

‘the signal benefit of the practomime is that my students and I get to experience it for ourselves in such a way that we may be able to understand the poetry surrounding the event in a deeper way.’

Practomime

TRAVIS, R. 2010. A note on the word 'practomime' (14 Jan 2010). http://livingepic.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/note-on-word-practomime.html

See also’Living Epic’, ‘Play the Past’ and ‘Techna Virumque Cano’ blogs

Roles of the educator

• Educational outreach, long-term interests and personal enthusiasm

• Requires expertise, plus the time and ability to act as a coordinator and a facilitator

• Needs to inspire and engage people, because no one is required to participate.

• Anyone can engage at any time, anyone can leave at any time, but a skilled facilitator can keep people engaged and actively contributing for many years.

‘An individual’s world can be augmented with information that is beyond the knowledge of a single person, and indeed a single lifetime. By networking data, the environment is augmented by the experiences of multiple others.’

http://amzn.to/1nPgKEm