Volume 2 Number 15 - Sept 27, 2004
Hi Folks,
Kim's Drama Blog
Well, here we are again. Finally a brief
respite from my hectic existence of late! Although I do have 2 conference
engagements in the next 10 days - one of those is going to be a little
experiment in trying to attend a session at the Drama Australia national
conference in Canberra (details below) - Kylie Readman and Jo Wise have
kindly agreed to try a virtual hook-up with their Discussion Pit on
Drama and Technology. Hopefully it will be a chance to learn something
about engaging in real time interactions - maybe even specific to Drama.
The other conference I'm doing is a roundtable
discussion at the Educational Computing Association of WA - where I'll be
raising some issues related to Drama and Education in a digital context. I
presented a session at the WA Dept of Education and Training Connected
Learning conference on Thursday Sept 23... about Digital Pretext
and Process Drama... needless to say there was only one person in the room
besides myself who really knew what I was talking about... but an interesting
development came about when a respected Computing teacher colleague spoke to me
afterwards about a project he is running online to teach computer programming -
he said to me that he "realised how much more powerful his project would
be if he took more time at the outset to engage in Drama and develop roles"
- chalk one up for Drama Education!
World Mental Health Day
Mental Health Week is looming... the theme
relates to the Mind-Body connection as it relates to mental health... this is an
area to which Drama education can make significant contributions... check out
the international WMH Day site at
http://www.wmhday.net/ - check also your local Mental Health
authorities. If we need any reminders of the importance of these programmes - we have had some unfortunate events this term... Mental Health Week is coming along... I know many students and staff feel uncomfortable talking openly about their experience and feelings...
I was talking with a former student recently who reported having experiences of other students challenging suicide - taunted with
"Why don't you just kill yourself"... and there still seems to be a heavy stigma attached to anything "psychological"...
I have experienced clinical (suicidal) depression in the past and survived it... we need to bring this stuff out of the closet and deal with it head on...
I'm sure there are plenty of plans to make Mental Health Week an exciting, informative and fun week to explore the issues of the theme of the Mind-Body connection...
Term Break ahead...
Only one week until our school has a term
break... I am looking forward to the change of routine and already have tickets
to 3 theatre shows - including the visiting Japanese Noh Theatre, new Australian
play "Yandy" by Black Swan
Theatre and a local production called "Hamlet Hoopla"...
a pleasant thought to be getting out... I recently purchased nearly 50 tickets
for my students to see a production of "Snark"... somewhere in
the confusion I missed out on seeing it!
POSITION WANTED
I'm
genuinely looking for a new context in 2005, so if anyone
knows of any Drama positions - anywhere in the world really! -
I'm willing to consider anything from classroom
teacher to Arts leadership... Prefer something
able to accommodate University lecturing - please let me
know. (My CV is available online)
LESSON/ACTIVITY IDEA
- Your lesson or activity
could be here - send it to me for inclusion.
RECOMMENDED WEBSITES
Façade
is an artificial intelligence-based art/research experiment in electronic
narrative – an attempt to move beyond traditional branching or hyper-linked
narrative to create a fully-realized, one-act interactive drama. Integrating
an interdisciplinary set of artistic practices and artificial intelligence
technologies, we are completing a three year collaboration to engineer a novel
architecture for supporting emotional, interactive character behaviour and
drama-managed plot. Within this architecture we are building a dramatically
interesting, real-time 3D virtual world inhabited by computer-controlled
characters, in which the user (hereafter referred to as the player)
experiences a story from a first-person perspective. Façade will be
publicly released as a free download / cd-rom in early-to-mid 2004.
-
iDrama
- the Interactive Drama mailing list
The mailing list has archives.
We've had amazingly high signal to noise there, read through 'em and get a
good perspective at everyone's opinions.
iDrama is a discussion list for concepts in
Interactive Drama. We're a group of people who want to take computer games
beyond the current trends towards hack and slash or "choose your own
adventure" branching movies, and explore ways to improve storytelling
and drama using the computer as a medium.
- Drama
and Technology Reading Suggestions
It seems that this field is growing everyday -
but there are very few books specific to Drama Education. This list is
an attempt to provide an overview of relevant reading material. (Part of
http://sig7.org)
PROFESSIONAL NEWS
PLEASE ADVISE OF ANY UPCOMING
PROFESSIONAL EVENTS AND ACTIVITIES AND I WILL LIST THEM HERE
An invitation to participate in the first international conference on
educational research to be held in Singapore, 2005
Theme: Redesigning Pedagogy: Research, Policy, Practice
Dates: 30 May to 1 June 2005
Venue: National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University,
Singapore.
Organizer: Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice, National Institute of Education, Singapore
Strands :
Affective Education
Language & Literacy Education
Mathematics Education
Multiliteracies & Multimodalities
Science Education
IT in Education
Humanities & Social Studies
School Change & Leadership
Innovation in Curriculum Development and Classroom Practice
Student Performance and Assessment
Some Confirmed Speakers
Marilyn Cochran-Smith, Boston College
Katheryn H. Au, College of Education, University of Hawaii
Courtney Cazden, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Allan Luke, National Institute of Education,Singapore
Gunther Kress, University of London
Joel Spring, City University of New York
Peter Freebody, National Institute of Education,Singapore
Yong Zhao, Michigan State University
Angel Lin, City University of Hong Kong
Conference Programme
Paper Presentations (3 presenters per session, half an hour for each presentation including Q & A)
Symposia (team of 3 to 4 presenters on a theme, each session lasting 1.5
hour including Q & A)
Workshops (skill-based, hands-on sessions lasting 3 hours each)
Registration
Early Bird Registration: S$450 (Before 15 March 2005)
Regular Registration: S$500 (After 15 March 2005)
Group Registration:S$430 (For groups of 10 or more)
Deadline for Submission of Abstracts: 31 December 2004
Abstracts can be submitted on line or through email to our Conference
Secretariat at
educon@nie.edu.sg
Closing Date for Registration: 10 May 2005
For further information please contact our Conference Secretariat at
Tel: 6790-3307
Fax:6896-9845
email:educon@nie.edu.sg
DRAMA AUSTRALIA CONFERENCE
"Heart of the Nation"
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Drama Australia Conference
Hosted by ACTDA
Canberra, ACT
1-3 October 2004
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Diversity, validation,
celebration and strong teaching practice maintain our heART
beat. Drama education is at the heART of
the Nation.
Conference Details
From 6.00pm Thursday 30
September - 4.00pm Sunday 3 October 2004
The School of Music
National Institute of the Arts
Australian National University
(Note: this is a public holiday weekend in the ACT. Floriade is also
in full swing)
RECOMMENDED RESOURCES
Kim Flintoff
Copyright © September, 2004
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