Academia

Reading Group Summary: Alan Walks Wales

Gracie Fields2 Comments

Readings:

Agenda:

  • Brief revisit of reading group and introductions of anyone new
    • Our time this week overlapped with faculty meetings
    • Core ideas for TotT; see previous week
    • Attendance: 7 people(1 professor, 4 graduate students, 2 undergraduate students, including 2 new faces)
  • Summarize papers
  • Discuss papers

Discussion:

We started with an overall discussion of the Alan Walks Wales project from miscellaneous outside readings by a few of the reading group members. This week, our two papers were very recent, so we only touched briefly on whether new tools or techniques (most specifically to dealing with open, large data sets) existed since the time of the paper’s publishing.PubsofBlacksburg-Poster-Maroon

Following the suggested definition of a wonky map from Alan Dix’s paper, we put forth as our own example the PubsOf poster shown here of our own local bars drawn by Brian McKelvey. It is “wonky”, as it doesn’t faithfully represent the town of Blacksburg but includes distortions that highlight key destination points (i.e., pubs).

With this example and the paper in mind, we talked about the definition of a “map.” One person suggested that a map depicted places that are roughly co-located with an emphasis on directionality, and another suggested a map was a graphical representation of physical places.

From the discussion of maps, a few interesting threads of conversation arose. We debated, especially for the purposes of travel or hiking, whether a map based on time-to-travel rather than physical distance might be possible. Traveling the distance up a mountainside takes far longer than traveling the same distance on flat ground. We also talked about examples like subway maps which commonly shrink the map of rails into more of a conceptual understanding of intersections, especially to fit on smaller pieces of paper or near the ceiling of a subway car.

We also discussed what it’s like to describe directions using landmarks to someone unfamiliar with the area, especially in the context of back routes or walking through alleys and grassy areas; sometimes we just say “follow me” to lead a stranger through campus instead of trying to describe such a thing. We also talked about on-the-ground assistance people give each other that traditional maps can’t provide, such as a trailhead marker that has a slider for its condition.

We talked about what it would be like if trail maps were read the same way as street maps, or if they were described solely in terms of landmarks. One of us suggested there are three ways to navigate by landmarks: solely on landmarks, landmarks plus direction, and purely on a sense of distance between landmarks. We also hit on the significance of general map literacy, going again back to A Walk in the Woods in which the author went into the experience with fairly robust map-reading skills, such as when he found a logging road to get around an impassable mountain in a storm.

We connected the two readings when talking about what maps could be generated from information collected on the ground. A map of the difficulty of the terrain could be generated based on the people actually traversing it. We talked about how user-generated maps might also capture those back routes that traditional maps miss that would normally spread by word of mouth only, or other issues like seasonal closures.

When discussing open data in classrooms, we hit upon the pros and cons of giving students entirely unexplored sets of data as open-ended puzzles to figure out. We talked about the need, also stressed in the paper, to clean the data beforehand. We felt a big issue could be the student not knowing how or where to get started with such an open problem. The data feeling irrelevant to the student could also be an issue. We talked about whether working with the data of hundreds of people in the set might make it more interesting to work with. However, that still might not make the data feel relevant to the student, and more isn’t always better. What the student cares about might not be something numerical data can capture.

We talked about two ways to approach data: either look for insights in an open-ended manner, or try to verify a hypothesis. The two are not always mutually exclusive. We talked about how readers of a blog might feel more connected to the story if they had access to tools to analyze and gain insights about the data contained in it, and specifically whether that would make readers feel more connected to the Alan Walks Wales story when they might not have before.

We talked about the potential of tying personal data sets, such as one generated by Fitbit, into publicly accessible data sets, such as meteorological data. Enriching data after the fact with additional public data would be an interesting area of study. However, we talked about the downside of highly localized data; going back to the meteorological data, weather can be very different in one area than it is only half a mile away, such as in a valley and on top of a foothill, and it’s less likely that publicly available data sets would match your exact experiences. Aggregating the data of many people with similar private data might crowdsource some of that specificity in an interesting way.

Reading Group Summary: Rogers’ big picture of theory and practice

Gracie Fields1 Comment

Readings:

This week focuses on two easy-to-read papers that set the stage for this topic. We’ll spend this session talking about the goals for the reading group, and how the papers help identify issues, concerns, opportunities, and solutions regarding technology on the trail.

Agenda:

  • First meeting logistics
    • Goals for the group: explore core ideas for TotT and build a foundation for papers, research, proposals, etc.
    • Introductions
  • Attendance: 5 people (1 professor, 3 graduate students, 1 undergraduate student)
  • Summarize papers
  • Discuss papers

Discussion:

One of our papers was from 2011 and one was from 2005, so the changing context of digital technologies was a theme that came up in our discussion. Kids these days touch technology more frequently than before, such as personal iPads or kid-oriented games like Pokemon Go. People also use smartphones far more often and there are apps for almost any aspect of the outdoors, e.g. stargazing or identifying plants, but we talked about the effect of putting a piece of technology between the user and nature. Our ability to use search engines on the go to answer many questions or solve logistical problems also changes the landscape of TotT.

We discussed aspects of the Ambient Wood project in depth. Although it occurred “in the wild” and not in a lab, the environment of the project was still very intentionally structured which we found to be an interesting dynamic. It’s still not an experience that would happen spontaneously in any woods. There’s a tension between giving children information in various forms, which is the point of the learning activity, and distracting them from the natural experience itself, which is the point of being outdoors while doing it. We talked about this from the angle of a person passively receiving information versus actively exploring to find that information. One suggestion was that having a more passive attitude left the mind more open for unexpected information, and another was that individuals would have a difference preference and both ends of the spectrum could be included.

Ambient Wood felt preferable when we compared it to traditional forms of field trips we’ve experienced, such as being given a list of 8 questions on paper to answer while freely walking in the woods. We talked about the limits of still having a defined set of tools and interactions for the learning activity, such as lacking spontaneity or motivational force.

We also tied in a few points from the novel A Walk in the Woods which two of us had read, such as how the detailed maps of northern trails gave the author a far greater appreciation for the context of the places he was hiking through. So how does knowing the context of a natural interaction or process affect the children as they’re looking at it in the woods? One of us noted that children are remarkably good at making connections between classroom knowledge and outdoors experiences (even if they’re not always correct).

We agreed that the second paper about theory “in the wild” seemed to draw influence from, though not specifically talk about, experiments such as Ambient Wood. We agreed that we wanted to read more about the wild theory approach since our paper of choice was rather short. One of us described a disconnect between the papers from designing “for” a natural environment versus designing “in” a natural environment, which goes back to our initial conversation about how Ambient Wood felt very structured despite being outside.

We also discussed the apparent gap between the paper’s themes of moving from this x to that y. One member suggested the paper seemed a bit strong on invalidating lab experiments and controlled environments. We ended the talk with the idea of research switching from influencing people to trying to understand them in context.