So the class got really interesting as we were connected over to LCCS via an Owl 360 broadcast system. This was a very interesting piece of technology, that adjusted the scene to focus on who was currently speaking. It worked quite well most of the time. It seemed the children were a bit all over the place but there were interesting stories to be heard and I did like the novelty in how the classrooms were interconnected.

Simultaneously, we were being introduced to Rumii Virtual Reality classroom system. This piece of technology, was quite intriguing on its own, as I see some potential in such teaching being conducted. To think about it, I never liked just watching video tutorials or doing learning in an non-engaging and here is a system, which in a relatively low-fidelity way can interconnect people across the world, teachers, students, a technology I figured tech drivers at Microsoft would have introduced with their avatars on Xbox and others from Sony with their own virtual worlds or Second Life as it was mentioned during the class. Still, none of those went as far as to get that all rolling in a virtual reality world it would seem (and as far as I know), which has plenty of potential. Especially, if you can import your own 3D models and assets in Unity and throw them in. It’s a very interesting world we’re stepping into now.

For the third part of the class, we have created (from what I recall) sort of a system’s design in which we were to showcase the connections of the story in a cognitive dissonance form, where I suspect part of the loop gets broken. For that, a story of Rick and Morty, a popular animation-based TV Show featuring two main characters were involved in a spin-off of an episode in which Rick is involved with the president of the United States. I decided to re-drive the story-line in the context of plastic, where it comes from and throwing in rickandmortish dialogue lines and contexts that I assumed would be suitable to featured in (the show itself). I used screenshots of the show based on the web and traced them in Illustrator to achieve this particular cartoonish style of the storyboard.

Rick and Morty Storyboards:

This week, we tested a few tools for virtual classrooms; Rumii and Owl. Although Owl was very cool in that it has so many cameras and is able to record 360 degrees and nature sound, we ran into some technical difficulties. It took some time to connect to LCCS in New Jersey and due to the way their classroom was structured, there were many conflicting voices that made it difficult to understand the speaker. Some of the middle schoolers at LCCS did not get a full understanding of a hero’s journey and therefore did not create relevant stories. However, there were some interesting stories that we could develop from. One thing I would like is to be able to make it comfortable for the shy kids to share their ideas. In New York, we formed groups and also created storyboards. My partner and I created a hero’s journey for a fish who made friends with a pearl/oyster that is able to destroy all the plastic in the ocean and goes on mission to restore the ocean. It was a fun process and I hope it will inspire projects for the Earth Day event. Rumii was fun to explore and I look forward to more characters and objects to interact with.

We did a lot in class today, we connected to LCCS via meeting OWL and Rumii. Each student from LCCS talked about their hero’s journeys and showed us storyboards that they created. Although it was a bit hard to understand them at the beginning, we will find “gems” through their stories later. We discussed “Thinking in Systems – The Basics” reading written by Donella Meadows, we learned that everything exists in systems and we need to further our understanding of the system. We started to identify each part of our storyboards and think about how do they affect each other. In the end, we presented our synthesized hero’s journey stories in groups.

Interesting! Very interesting!

Having a conversation through the Owl was something I had never experienced. Seeing the kids get together and engaged on presenting their stories was definitely something that filled everyone’s heart with joy. The fact that the connection wasn’t the best and also that digital barrier between us made it feel unnatural, but something kept it being… interesting. Lots of pros and cons. But an enjoyable, memorable experience nonetheless.

It was very cool to experience the Rumi environment in VR as well. Can’t wait to get to see more.

 

When time came to understand the system of our stories things got really entrancing. Looking at my classmate’s story I realized how many questions arise, and mostly made me question intentions and reason, making me bring up examples that went from economist Adam Smith to the movie Mulholland Drive by David Lynch.

 

 

‘Owl’ Presentations

Hearing the different stories the students presented to us this week was a very interesting experience. We were testing the Meeting Owl 360 this time and the storyboard presentations happened virtually through it.

Firstly, the Meeting Owl is an interesting piece of technology. It did definitely allow us to have a virtual presentation session and it did feel like genuine, authentic experience. The only downside was that sometimes the children were out of view or their storyboards were too small for us to see on the screen. But these problems also exist in the real world when a child presents their work to a group. A unique side effect of using the Meeting Owl I thought was that it forced us to gather around the owl. The children were gathered around the owl (so that we could see them through the camera) and we were kind of also leaning towards the owl in our chairs so that we can all appear on the screen. The fact that we were gathering around an object called an ‘owl’ and it resembled an owl gave the experience a warm feeling in my opinion. This, coupled with my fascination with technology in general, counter-balanced any of the more practical issues I brought up before.

In terms of the ideas conveyed through the storyboards I felt that the students all took ownership of their stories/ideas when they started their presentation and that was really nice to see. But a few of them also seemed to lose their enthusiasm halfway the presentation possibly in reaction to the reaction they were receiving from us. When I felt a bit confused about their story, it was almost like they could sense that they were confusing us, which made them lose their initial enthusiasm. But I think this is when the audience-teachers could encourage them a little bit and nudge them towards an interesting point that they raised previously for example. I feel that if they can get over this small hurdle, they would really be unstoppable.

 

Stories as Systems

The storyboard/systems thinking exercise we did in class was also very interesting. When I prepared my storyboard for homework, I decided on the “what should my story teach children about?” first and then tried to come up with a story. The story revolved around species extinction and how humans can upset the ecosystem without even realising it. Not many people know that Passenger Pigeons, which used to be endemic to North America, are now extinct, or that they even existed. But an organisation named Revive & Restore is investing heavily into genetic research to bring back the birds. Their genetic engineering method involves introducing Passenger Pigeon genes to the birds’ closest living genetic neighbour – the Band-Tailed Pigeon – slowly over several successive generations to finally arrive at a very close genetic proximation to Passenger Pigeons.

Below is a storyboard that attempts to convey these different elements. I do think that the storyboard could be further adapted to a more traditional folk-style storytelling using imagery that also has folk aesthetic, with a touch of magic/science.

The class exercise we did involved analysing the system suggested by the storyboard yielding many interesting connections as to who sets the fire (see the storyboard above), who is/sends the visitor bird, and what’s in it for Revive & Restore if Passenger Pigeons were brought back? We separated the different elements of the story into different realms:

the real reality (a forest fire takes place, a visitor arrives, etc.),

the intermediary – used to describe how different events are connected to one another,

conspiracy realm where hidden connections may exist between events and characters that we may not be aware of (such as the visitor bird herself being a passenger pigeon spirit who wants to be revived and thus visiting the band-tailed pigeon at a moment of despair when the forest fire had just destroyed his home; or the Revive & Restore organisation setting the fire and sending the visitor bird as part of their master plan to bring back extinct species to make lots of money like how they do in Jurassic Park; and so on).

It was interesting to dissect the original story in this way and learn about the different layers as well add interesting layers to it. I’m looking forward to going through the LCCS students’ storyboards to see if there is a synergy between the story we developed in class.