Judit Klein, Auckland University of Technology Part of CW12

In an age defined by mobility of people and knowledge, mobile technologies offer us new ways of interacting with each other and with content to enable more collaborative and dynamic ways of learning. To be peripatetic is to learn across contexts, a notion originating from Aristotelian philosophy which can be reframed to describe how mobile technologies have bought about a new way of thinking about education.

Many institutions around have embraced the use of iPads as the ‘magical’ tool that will reinvent education. There is of course criticism and scepticism around whether the iPad is just another tool that is forced upon teachers as just another way to do the same thing that will soon become obsolete.

This presentation looked at going beyond the simple ‘logistical’ value of the iPad. Apple Distinguished Educator Dr. William Rankin identified the three key affordances of the iPhone are that it brings together rich media, connectivity and access to the internet, all in a mobile platform.

There are some apps that begin to tap into the intersection of these affordances but current applications of the iPad in tertiary education are only just scratching the surface. Informed by iOS development (creating apps for iPhone and iPad), see the behind the glass screen to the underutilised features of the underlying platform and the implications of a programmed pedagogy. The talk is aimed at both staff and students to explore ways to harness the new ways of working with emerging technologies and practices.

Grant Baxter, University of Otago Part of CW12

This presentation will focus on how design ideation, visualisation, prototyping, and production tools and techniques can be used to produce better iOS applications. Description below:

With the growing adoption and importance of iPhones and iPads, multiple opportunities exist for these devices to enhance people’s experiences in New Zealand’s national parks. While there are a reasonable number of existing applications that could be considered useful to national park visitors, many are poorly conceived or executed and many fail to take advantage of modern iOS device capabilities.

This presentation will describe a series of studies that applied various ideation, prototyping, and production techniques to create a wide range of outcomes. These outcomes included a large number of iPhone application concepts, rapid prototypes, semi-developed iPhone applications, and fully functional iOS applications. All of these outputs were informed by wide ranging IDEO ideation, design, and production techniques, including: Activity analysis, Character Profiles, Extreme User Interviews, Fly on the wall, Paper Prototyping, Quick and Dirty prototyping, Scenarios, Try it yourself, and multiple site visits.

The presentation will then describe the development of four applications, and will go on to give a live demonstration of the applications. The four applications are:
(1)NZ Birds – an advanced prototype application with a corresponding web application visualisation tool
and (3) Arthur’s Pass Which Activity and Bird Identifier Game – two iPad applications used in Arthur’s Pass National Park over the 2011/2012 holiday period
(4) The Denniston application – an application co-designed with the Department of Conservation and available for download from the iTunes application store.

The presentation will end with a discussion of the co-design process used to develop the Denniston application with/for the Department of Conservation and how this process can result in better designed iOS applications.

  67.5 MB