Me: In your own words what is location based education?
Leslie: Location based education is another way of saying place based education. place based education takes in the community and goes well beyond what can be found in a text books. It frees students from the confines of a four walled classroom and rigid textbooks by placing them in the context of community because we are not isolated from each other.
M: How long have you been working in the field?
L: I have been working with locative media for about 5 years, but have been working with different forms of story telling for over 20 years.
M: What got you interested in the field?
L: Well it was a bit of a fluke. I went to a conference at MIT were i was inspired by two speakers, Paula Levine with her "Shadows of Another Place: San Francisco <-> Baghdad," and Jeremy Hight and his piece "Narrative Archeology." Shortly after Hewlett Packard came to KQED with a new software they developed and asked if we would work with them and put on a lab using their product.
M: What would you like place based education to do for schools?
L: On a grand scheme I'd like to see it change the educational experience as a whole. I'd like to see it change the way in which school happens. I'd love to see scientists and artist come together and find knew ways of educating. And I'm not talking about people being assigned to develop this, but individual who really want to make change and believe in what they are doing. To not just see this as linear thinking and story telling but to develop create and new ways to use the technologies. I want teachers to understand the importance of getting out of the classroom.
M: What are some of the limiting factors facing place based education and how can they be overcome?
L: Lack of standardization in mobile devices. We also need to develop a standard operating system. Another problem is in the development of curriculum. as I said before it is important to get people together and try to come up with new and interesting ways of presenting information. Yet another problem facing us is that we are forced to build these systems upon the lowest common denominator. right now we are building to be used with cell phones because they are cheap and everyone has one.
M: What devices and technologies are best suited for immediate implementation of location based education?
L: At the moment cell phones. Mainly, as I said earlier, because everyone has them. There is not as large of a disparity between kids with money and those with out. Plus cell phones are becoming smaller with better computing power and are replacing desktop computers for many features we traditionally used them for such as email and data management.
M: Do you see location/place based education replacing the current system we have in place?
L: Yes
M: What do you think it will take to get teachers and the public on board?
L: As Arnie Duncan said, "If you're not in you're out." There are no gradual steps to take. to achieve this we have to build from the ground up. Sure we can do a case by case study in class rooms but then it is only trial runs. It is going to take sweeping changes to break away from the status quo.
M: Do you feel location is useful outside of the school system?
L: Absolutely, in two ways. One, seeing the community as a living text. And two, for people interested in life long learning. There is so much information out there that you are not required to obtain it in a class room.
What are your thoughts on augmented reality and its importance to place based education?
L: Augmented reality is just another term for content in place, used by a different subset of people. Persnoally i don't care for it all that much because it elevates technology over content. This are just my personal feelings. Who knows what will happen with it. I would always rather look at the real world then an overlay of it.
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