It's been an exciting couple of weeks at the Mobile lab. On the evening of Thursday, June 5th, we celebrated the completion of the Locative Learning Project with our partners, Banff Community High School and Learning Through The Arts, as well as with the Grade 7 Social Studies students and their parents. A barbeque in the park seemed a fitting finale to a collaboration that took us often took us outdoors. While the food was being served and eaten, we gave students and parents the opportunity to the final version of the Banff Mobile History Tour for a spin. This version features audio/video media files created by the students that play when a tour participant walks into the area chosen by the students at an earlier phase of the project. If you missed this event or the public demos that followed, please take a look at www.banffmobilehistory.ca for all of the content and a mapping application - the next best thing to actually physically experiencing the tour!

As well, in early May, students from the Kainai Reserve in Southern Alberta traveled to Banff for a visit to the Banff Centre. As part of their activities here, the middle school students were able to take the Banff Mobile History Tour for a spin. As it was the first time in Banff for many students, the tour allowed them to walk around the townsite while about learning its history. The students enjoyed the humour in many of the projects and gained new insight into the possibilities of mobile technology.

As you can imagine, all of these events took a lot of work and help, so the LLP team would like to take a few lines to thank everyone who helped out with making this ambitious project a reality. The project would never have been more than just an idea if not for our generous funders, Inukshuk Wireless. And it couldn't have come together if not for the hard work of our partners, Learning Through The Arts and Banff Community High School. We'd also like to thank the Banff Community Foundation for their financial support of the barbeque and the Canmore student visits. Other thank-yous go out to The Whyte Museum, the faculty of BCHS, the Banff New Media Institute Staff, and everyone else who has helped over the past 10 months!

On June 10, grade six students from Canmore travelled to Banff to learn about local history and mobile technology. Despite the rainy morning the students enjoyed seeing Banff and listening to stories from the past. After the tour the ART Mobile Lab treated them to a barbecue lunch and a talk about the process of creating the tour.

Thank you to teacher Marc-Alain Savard, Lawrence Grassi Middle School and the Banff Community Foundation for making this event possible!

In early May, students from the Kainai Reserve in Southern Alberta traveled to Banff to visit the Banff Centre. As part of their activities the middle school students were able to take the first full Mobile History Tour, recently completed by Banff Community High School students.

As it was the first time in Banff for many students, the tour allowed them to walk around the townsite while about learning its history.

The students enjoyed the humour in many of the projects and gained new insight into the possibilities of mobile technology.

Friday, June 6 and Saturday, June 7

10 AM - 4 PM

Meet at Old Crag Cabin in the Bison Courtyard - 211 Bear Street

That's right, the time has come at last. The Banff Mobile History Tour (created as part of the Locative Learning Project partnership between Learning Through The Arts, Banff Community High School and the A.R.T. Mobile Lab) is ready to be unveiled!

Tour participants will be lent a cellphone, a GPS receiver and a map and sent off into the wild of Banff townsite on a mission of walking, learning and experiencing. There will be dozens of hotspots to encounter which will trigger a Grade 7 student-created audio/video file to play on the phone, teaching participants a little bit of history of their surroundings. The media files are the culmination of many months of historical researching, script writing, audio recording, photo searching, video creation and hotspot selecting - all undertaken by the students.

So if you have a spare hour and are interested in an illuminating look at Banff's history and of the media creation skills of a new generation, come on down to the Old Crag Cabin in the Bison Courtyard at 211 Bear Street on Friday, June 6 and Saturday, June 7 for a free demo of the Banff Mobile History Tour! If you're really keen, you can call us at 762 6246 or email mobilelab@banffcentre.ca to book a demo time.

See you there!

By the way, for anyone who won't be in the Banff area anytime soon, check out the mobile history tour website and take a look at the map. the students have uploaded their video files and positioned the links at their hotspot locations, so you can take a virtual tour from afar!

www.banffmobilehistory.ca

This week in Banff, the unexpectedly warm and springlike weather seems to have come to an abrupt halt, just in time for the change of the season. But one member of our team, Rupinder the lead engineer, has spent the week basking in late summer warmth on the other side of the globe.

He has been attending a get-together of engineering types Geekosphere in Wellington, New Zealand. Their main goal is recycling old bits of gadgets left behind in today's mad-dash for newer, smaller, faster technologies and turn them into fully-functional devices. We'll be sure to get all the details posted as soon as Rupinder returns to the northern hemisphere and recovers from his jet lag.

Hi everyone. We are in the process of a serious overhaul on this long-neglected website, so keep checking back over the next month to see what's hip and happening here at the Mobile Lab in beautiful Banff!

Public Evaluation Research Program, Aug-Sept 2007

The ART Mobile Lab is pleased to announce that we will be conducting a major program of public mobile media demonstrations and audience evaluation research in Banff National Park this summer on behalf of Parks Canada.

In 2006/07, the ART Mobile Lab developed Tracklines, a prototype location-based guided walking tour of Banff’s popular and scenic Hoodoo Trail. The natural history content for this walking tour was co-authored by public educational staff from Banff National Park, who hoped to investigate the potential of handheld mobile technologies for use in delivering multimedia interpretative content to the public in outdoor locations at National Parks and Cultural Heritage sites.

Building upon the success of this initial collaboration, the ART Mobile Lab is now working closely with Banff National Park and The New Media Strategies and Investment Unit of Parks Canada in a research program that uses public demonstrations of the Tracklines prototype as a starting point to evaluate the impact and effectiveness of location-based content and devices in wilderness trail settings, and to determine target audience and user preferences for this type of media in Banff National Park.

The ART Mobile Lab’s Public Evaluation Research Program will consist of two parts, both to be conducted from August 1 through September 30, 2007:

* First, we will be intercepting 3-400 members of the general trail-using public (both Park visitors and locals) on the Hoodoo Trail and at popular locations around downtown Banff, and conducting a short User Receptivity Survey with them in order to assess general public attitudes toward mobile technology use in wilderness trail settings.
* Second, we will conduct a Public Field Trial Evaluation program, consisting of a series of public trail demonstrations of the Tracklines prototype, followed by in-depth surveys designed to profile the target audience for handheld locative media in Banff National Park, and gather feedback from them on locative media impacts, learning, and user preferences.

If you would be interested in taking part in one of these self-guided tour demonstrations on the Banff Hoodoo Trail, please visit the Tracklines Tour Information Page.

Do you like to hike?
Are you curious about the latest in outdoor technologies?

Then perhaps you would be interested in trying out a 2 hour self-guided tour of Banff's scenic Hoodoo Trail using the latest in GPS mobile technology, and then telling us about your experience.

Live trail demonstrations of Tracklines will be offered from August 1 to September 30 by researcher's from the ART Mobile Lab on behalf of Parks Canada, as part of our Summer 2007 audience research program.

We are seeking Banff residents and visitors of all ages (families welcome!) to "test drive" the guided natural history tour and complete a short questionnaire telling us what they think of it.

Not only is this tour absolutely free, but all participants who join us for a hike and fill out a short questionnaire afterward will recieve a discount coupon for the Banff Upper Hot Springs, and will also be entered into a draw to win a Garmin eTrex GPS hiking device.

So, if you would like to join us for about 2 hours on a 3 km hike along the Hoodoo Trail (easy to moderate difficulty level), please contact the ART Mobile Lab for more information and to schedule a morning or afternoon hiking appointment:

Telephone: (403) 762-6246

Email: mobilelab@banffcentre.ca

IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR PARTICIPANTS:

If you would like more information about what's involved with these guided tours - or if you have already scheduled a trail appointment with us, but need further information about how to get to the trail, what to bring with you, etc. - please visit the Tour Information Page.