Bi zhu wan shang Panda Reserve Virtual Reality (On Green Bamboo Hills, 碧竹塆上)

This project is built on an intercultural, interdisciplinary, and transnational collaboration between language scientists in the United States and forestry scientists in China. Through our shared concern for ecological crises and co-learning of our perspectives and expertise–Chinese forestry colleagues’ harmonious views on nature and humans and my expertise of embodied cognition and languaging theories–we forestry and language scientists got together and built the first phase of the VR Panda Reserve, which we named Bizhuwangshang. In Phase I, we laid out the philosophical foundations of the virtual reserve and programmed the virtual village which was meant to give learners the opportunity to explore the effects that humans have on their ecosystem while also discovering how mindful stewardship could be implemented. We also developed multimodal curriculum materials for players to read, to find solutions from, and to round their solutions. The VR space allows users to embody the world predicament both emotionally and relationally and then receive feedback by traveling into the future to see the impact of their choices (based upon forestry science impact models and projections). In the process of finding solutions to their environmental challenges, users will collaborate and coordinate not only with members of their team but also with real-world artifacts and readings from their majors, such as articles from National Geographic, physics, biology, and environmental sciences—all of which will provide ample and relevant opportunity for participants to help solve the world’s predicaments.

Dr. Sun Yat-Sen and Chinatown: Multilingual-Mulitcultural Becoming(Mobile App)

This project is in collaboration with Dr. Aitao Lu, Associate Professor of the School of Psychology, South China Normal University, is recognized by and is receiving seed funding from the National Natural Sciences Foundation of China (NNSF, #31571141 and #31628010). This projectfurther investigates elements of the learning process, such as negotiation and coordination, taking place within sociocultural places. The learner’s experience in place is augmented by GPS enabled digital texts in the form of written texts, videos and visuals, which provide added value that is not immediately available on a typical physical city site. Imagine a museum with historical information about Dr. Sun Yat-Sen that is mobile and meaningfully connected with historical sites, or a modern city space where Dr. Sun used to gather revolutionaries which can be experienced in the present through mobile technology.

 

Guardians of the Mo‘o(Mo‘o 1.0) (Mobile App)

Mo‘o 1.0 is a mobile app created in ARIS (Augmented Reality Integrated Storytelling).Mo‘o 1.0 can be found at App Store > ARIS (under iPhone Apps Public) > Guardians of the Mo‘o (offsite).  Mo‘o 1.0 is an augmented reality mobile game, created for players to explore both virtual and physical space through a situated and meaningful storyline. It is a place-taking, rather than place-based game by design.  Players develop their skilled linguistic action in the embodied narratives correlated with place they are experiencing with. https://youtu.be/P1fmZz6d4Qg

 

Second Life Chinese School in Second Life Virtual World (3D Virtual Space)

This virtual school consisted of carefully designed 3D cultural artifacts that form an island of community. A series of activities are embedded in the community for learners to “play” and create and solve problems, through which language is used and remixed with other modalities for learners to achieve results. https://youtu.be/psnB8pe1Geo (in Chinese) 

https://www.veoh.com/videos/v16167590rmWNg2n6 (in English)

 

China World in Atlantis Remixed (3D Virtual Space)

This world is designed with the concept of a sandbox open-ended learning environment. Language learners are given designer rights with which they can manipulate objects and make changes based on negotiated decision
s. Negotiations are usually among linguistically and culturally diverse learners who creatively use semiotic resources to make manipulations and take epistemic actions.