Abstract
This report reflects on an exploratory STEAM workshop at the University of Newcastle, School of Creative Industries, Conservatorium of Music, Australia. Twenty-six middle school-aged students attended the two-day workshop. On the final day, students presented an immersive concert for parents and friends, showcasing creativity, innovation and teamwork. Interestingly, Lego robots were employed as a physical tool through which music-making students interacted with each other and built attributes of creative engagement. These attributes were measured via the Six C’s established by Bers comprising: (1) Collaboration; (2) Community Building; (3) Communication; (4) Content Creation; (5) Creativity; and (6) Choices of Conduct. This report suggests the integration of robots can also enrich the musicianship of students, building upon their traditional music training.
DOI
10.5642/steam.20200402.12
Streaming Media
Additional Streaming Media
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Manning, Adam; Bessenyei, Amelia; and English, Helen
(2020)
"The Future in their Imaginations: Music and Robotics School Holidays Program for School-Aged Children,"
The STEAM Journal:
Vol. 4:
Iss.
2, Article 12.
DOI: 10.5642/steam.20200402.12
Available at:
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/steam/vol4/iss2/12
Included in
Music Education Commons, Music Pedagogy Commons, Music Performance Commons, Music Theory Commons
Author/Artist Bio
Manning's research focusses on combining the arts with STEM both from an educational and consumer perspective. Manning’s educational research suggests when one’s creative passion is combined with STEM, in a playful environment, one can experience a deep sense of flow, particularly when using temporality and narrative techniques. More broadly, Manning’s end-user research examines one’s artistic/digital consumption preferences, which are designed to inform industry. However, all research projects of Manning’s, have a focus of producing a social outcome, either through social media, digital distribution platforms and or published research journals. This includes creating Newcastle’s first VR music concert, producing Newcastle’s first 360 live stream performance, facilitating and documenting Australia’s first music and robotics workshop for school-aged students, conducting end-user research based on 360 black screen and VR consumption preferences, producing a series of social collaboration works with prominent Australian artists, publishing several practitioner-based performance examples for social media, and presenting on Indigenous narrative yarning techniques and their transfer to artistic collaboration. In conclusion, Manning’s research aims to create meaningful artistic relationships with technology based on future workforce demands.