We are thrilled to announce that with our project PELARS, we are collaborating together with the world renowned Ars Electronica Festival which takes place this year from September 3rd to 7th in in Linz, Austria.
We are thrilled to announce that with our project PELARS, we are collaborating together with the world renowned Ars Electronica Festival which takes place this year from September 3rd to 7th in in Linz, Austria.
Ars Electronica is one of the world’s most important media art festivals held annually in Linz, Austria, and the program features symposia, exhibitions, performances, interventions and concerts. “POST CITY – Habitats for the 21st Century” is the theme of Ars Electronica 2015 and the festival will launch an inquiry into how cities of the future will have to be configured when there are more robots than people working in factories, everything is intelligently interlinked, autos drive autonomously and drones deliver the mail. And what does it mean for future megacities—above all, those on seacoasts—when climate change really does shift into high gear. The agenda is shaping up to look amazing!
PELARS “Learning + Making” Zone will be an experimental learning environment launched during the festival that aims to support teachers and learners understand what’s going on when they do hands-on science, technology & maths in the classroom.
We will be opening up new ways of learning physical computing for learners of all ages – without the need to solder and program. At U19 / Create Your World, a part of the festival dedicated to the Under 19’s, we will present a new Arduino kit for the first time which allows you to explore the concepts of physical computing in a playful way: by plugging simple modules you can build simple games and immediately play them! We will also premier our custom educational furniture designed by PERCH & NCAD (National College of Art & Design, Dublin) and the visualisation & feedback system developed by CIID (Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design).
This opportunity is very exciting for us as the PELARS experimental learning environment will be assembled for the first time ever for ARS Electronica 2015! The innovative learning space, especially designed for project-based learning activities, consists of several interactive workstations, each equipped with a novel physical computing kit and a visual development environment. This physical space is linked to a learning analytics system, which can track how and what learners are doing and presents feedback about ongoing learning activities to both the learners and teachers in real time – e.g helping learners program and build, or recommending applicable games. additionally, different visualizations of data gathered from the learning process can be view and explored by teachers and learners. We want to better understand and help you discover how people learn about science, technology & maths when they use their hands as well as their heads!
We are working hard to finalise our space and programme so check back for more information but if attending the festival you can already expect daily workshops for students & teachers, frequent talks, open space for experimentation & interaction for all!
Finally – if you are a Living Lab interested in the topics of PELARS – human computer interaction, electronics, future classroom, STEM education, learning analytics etc. we are very interested in hearing from you as we have opportunities to collaborate running tests with students and teachers in Living Labs across Europe. To know more please contact us at [email protected]