Videos from Yorta Yorta Country

Yorta Yorta videos

Geokult

In this post, I would like to feature some of the great videos about Yorta Yorta culture online.

This video titled From Dhungala with love by Sharon Atkinson and filmed by Rochelle Patten is featured on the ABC Open website.

Here is a link to the digital stories on the Yorta Yorta Nation Aboriginal Corporation’s website: http://www.yynac.com.au/digital-stories.php. A number of these were developed when Parks Victoria engaged ACMI in Melbourne (Fed Square) to run digital story workshops allowing staff and partners to tell their stories. Here are three  produced with YYNAC.

Neil Morris – Daydreaming

 

Bernice Joachim – My learning of Country

 

Tracey O’Keeffe – Back to the country

 

Gurtji Narruk – This is a camp held in conjunction with YYNAC, Shepparton High School, Multi Cultural Arts Victoria and Parks Victoria. The DVD went on to win a Department of Education, Permission to Shine Award in December 2012…

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Kaiela Dreaming at Cumeragunja

Kaiela Dreaming at Cumeragunja

Geokult

In this post I would like to encourage people to support a very worthy project being organised by Sharon Aktinson and the Torch Project. The project is titled Kaiela Dreaming multimedia art installation and is scheduled for early Spring (September).

The project will be presented at the old school building in Cumeragunja. The school is the oldest building at Cummera (affectionately known).

The pozible campaign comments that:

Help us with the technical costs of transforming the old schoolhouse into a temporary multimedia exhibition site. For a weekend in Spring we will bring the schoolhouse back to life with projections, sound, light and short video and light up this tiny rural community. An evening community event will mark the occasion and supporters are invited to join in.

When we visited Cumera, Sharon discussed her vision for the project, which would involved sound and vision being strategically used to evoke…

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Week 3 (and a bit) round up – Jawun

Jawun – week three

Geokult

It is hard to believe that we are already more than half way through the secondment.  Time seems to be flying by.

This week I would like to start by acknowledging Sorry Day, which is also, by coincidence, my wedding anniversary – 26 May. Sorry Day has been commemorated since 1998, a year after the release of a report titled ‘Bringing them home’, which addressed the systemic removal of Indigenous children from their parents. This government policy was a designed as a means to attempt to assimilate the younger generations into white society. This is my potted summary – there is a lot more information located in this article on the SBS website  – What is Sorry Day. This is an excerpt from the article:

The first Sorry Day was held in 1998, one year after the report ‘Bringing them Home’ was first tabled in parliament.

The report, which…

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Pozible campaign for Finding Balance: Mura Gadi

Pozible campaign for Mura Gadi

Geokult

I have created a pozible campaign to help fund my forthcoming exhibition at Belconnen Arts Centre. If you have a few spare $$ to donate it would be fantastic. Check it out at http://pozible.com/muragadi

Over the coming weeks I will let you know how the project is coming along 🙂

Wish me luck!

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Jawun Secondment: Week 2 Round-up

Geokult

The past week has been a week of learning and sharing. I am not sure where to start with this post as so much has happened. Although I only spent two days in the office, I think I am starting to make some progress with my projects, as I have produced some draft documents for comment, a social media strategy and a scoping paper for my project brief.

On Tuesday we were invited to go to Cumeragunja to participate in the weekly ladies craft get together. We met quite a few women from the community and made some cards and pages for photo albums. Cumeragunja (might be a familiar name for people who have seen the Sapphires) is nestled close to the river Murray, just over the border in NSW. It is a place with a very interesting history as the people walked off Cumeragunja in 1939. Although it is not formally recognised…

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MOOC: Massive Open Online Courses

This morning I have learnt a new acronym: ‘MOOC’ – Massvie Open Online Courses. In previous blogs I have explored some of the free educational offerings online, particularly from the US. I found this article by Andrew McGettigan in The Guardian exploring this growing phenomenon. The article, titled Q. Will ‘Moocs’ be the scourge or saviour or higher education?, which underlines both the opportunities and the challenges of this growing educational format.

Another article by Claire Shaw focuses on the United Kingdom’s increasing investment in Moocs. FutureLearn is UK’s chance to ‘fight back’, says OU vice-chancellor

Nancy Groves provides a detailed discussion about online education in Online learning: pedagogy, technology and opening up higher education She rightly asserts that online education is not a new concept and states that:

Of course, the provision of off-campus higher education is not a recent development. The Open University has championed open and distance learning since 1969 – from its original correspondence courses and late-night TV broadcasts to the latest research and development conducted by its Institute of Educational Technology.

Returning to Gettigan’s article, a number of questions are put forward regarding the returns of investment for universities:

With no clear business models in place – and a reliance at this stage on volunteer labour – it is not clear how the returns on investment will materialise. Will Moocs be a new form of social media? Marketing tasters for established, paying courses? An alternative form of continuing education or outreach? An alternative to textbooks or course materials?

I must admit I wonder how universities can make money out of MOOCs. As a consumer I think it is great that I can study online for free, even getting a piece of paper for my efforts. As a long standing sessional (casual) academic I am concerned. Over the years, I have seen less and less opportunities for employment, particularly to transition to more permanent arrangements. I have also witnessed an erosion of working conditions for tenured and causal academic staff, which was a key motivator for me to jump from academia into government.

It is worth monitoring where MOOCs will go in the next few years and the impact on tertiary institutions. If people can access quality education for cheap or free then that is fantastic. If academics are working even longer for less remuneration then there is good reason to be concerned.