CAL 2009: Saint or sinner

Captured live at #cal09, posted late.

Saint or sinner: Engineering creative disruptions with ambivalent technologies
Tom J. Hamilton, Diane M. Brewster; University of Sussex

Telling a story of how technology is being used. Idea is to take people out of their normal "headspace". What is meant by disruption? Technology can disrupt learning - for example, students can get distracted by the technology rather than subject. Taking about the InQbate space. They have 16 projectors that project images all round the room. {Just realised this is the same idea as the first session I saw about Brighton's Creativity space - different university, same project.}

Look at two tools - immersion and contradiction. For immersion look at product design and teaching. Using contradiction in Drama and Engineering. In product design, lecturer wanted students to see how colours and images affect people's perceptions.

Contradiction. For example, in Engineering, students worked with creative writing students to create poetry (a video podcast) based on fluid dynamics equation.

Were the students engaged with the technology or the content? There were some problems - buggy software and unrealistic expectations. However, some students saw the positive benefits for particular uses. The engineers looking at fluid dynamics equations seems to have been very positive.