Stage lighting like other technical roles is practice based skill,
where the knowledge of how to rig and operate stage lighting
equipment is needed in order to produce creative lighting effects.
Typically these skills are developed in vocational training contexts, where
students have hands on opportunities to work with professional equipment,
and then through engaging in deliberate practice, a cycle of highly
structured activities and immediate informative feedback from experts.
The explicit goal of which is to improve performance.
Being able to support the teaching of stage lighting and the K-12
creative arts classroom could provide opportunities to engage in
STEAM a movement to embed science, technology, engineering, and
mathematics teaching within the arts.
However, while the creative arts are taught widely in K-12 schools, their
curricula typically don't include the opportunity for students to gain skills
in technical roles, mainly because of the constraints of the classroom.
We designed a toolkit centered around tangible hardware proxies to support
the development of practice based skills in stage lighting within the
constraints of a K-12 classroom.
We looked at the way professional practice is able to offer opportunities
for lighting professionals to access equipment and training.
This is typically done through the use of simulations with common
examples, such as Show Express, and Lightkey . These simulations
however are designed with the professional lighting designer in mind.
As such they assume a preexisting knowledge of basic lighting fundamentals
and equipment, and therefore are not suitable in supporting novice learners.
It was clear from work already done in tangibles that consideration of
representation is key in any design of tangible interfaces that aim
to support teaching and learning.
Price highlights four specific features that should be considered: location,
dynamics, correspondence, and modality.
As yet, this framework has only really been applied to contexts where
representations of abstract concepts have been designed and evaluated.
Examples of tangibles being used to represent real world
interactive objects is less common.
Although there are some notable examples such as Schneider et al.'s
work with tinkertable, which uses tangible interfaces to teach vocational
skills in a manageable setting.
Artifact representation is still fundamental in this context though,
as we know from previous work that this can affect learning outcomes.
We needed the toolkit to support firstly, vocational learning,
which meant finding ways to support hands-on deliberate practice
and student centered pedagogies.
Secondly, we needed to support skill development outside
of the primary context.
This required us to support students gaining understanding of the fundamental
skills needed for stage lighting.
We then needed to support learning specifically within the K-12 context
and this meant be aware of the physical constraints of the classroom as well
as time constraints of lessons as the toolkit, for example, needed
to fit on a tabletop and be able to be set up and packed away easily.
Finally and most importantly, we needed to support students transition
to real equipment, something which has proved to be a challenge in
other contexts that use tangibles to support teaching and learning.
We created a toolkit of resources based around the use
of tangible hardware proxies.
We've used the term proxies here to describe tangible representations
of stage lights within the toolkit.
These differ from solutions offered in other models, simulations, or virtual
environments for stage lighting, as they are designed specifically to:
substitute one-to-one for real pieces of equipment, without the complexities
of high-fidelity simulation; to model only certain properties of the
equipment that would enable skill based practice - so, for example,
in this case, the optical properties were modeled, but not the weight or
specific cabling for stage lights.
And finally, they were designed to be incrementally switched
out for real equipment.
Stage lighting is controlled using an industry specific one directional
protocol, usually referred to as DMX.
As a minimum, there were three aspects of this protocol
that we needed to model.
Firstly channels.
DMX protocol works in groups of 512 channels, which are referred
to collectively as a universe.
Each channel can be set to any 8-bit value.
So values between 0 and 255.
This value is used to control individual properties of stage lamps.
Some lamps take up a single channel, while other lights
work with multiple channels.
Secondly, we needed to model RGB color mixing, another real
fundamental of stage lighting.
And finally students needed to understand how to address lamps so
that when they're controlled, they behave in a way that is expected.
The toolkit we created consisted of three types of tangible proxies plus
a broker and scaffolded pedagogical activities that helped guide students
to engage in deliberate practice.
We will have a look at each element of the kit in turn.
The hardware proxies were developed to be small and usable
on a tabletop while modeling key characteristics of stage lamps.
They're all controlled wirelessly in to ensure students concentrate on
the lamps and the controller rather than ensuring the cabling is correct.
These proxies all contain a BBC Micro:bit, which
runs a python application.
Each device is battery powered and has at least one LED connected
to the IO pins of the Micro:bit.
The channel can be changed on the back of the proxy using the A and B
buttons and the current channel is displayed on the Micro:bit screen.
This is similar to the way that a stage lamp would operate
when adjusting their addresses.
We created three different types of proxies each representing
a particular stage lamp.
The first proxy was of a single channel lamp.
Our implementation has a single white 5mm LED with a
9 degree angle of projection.
The second proxy is of an RGB color wash lamp.
Our implementation has a single surface-mounted neopixel RGB LED
a lens is attached over the LED to give an unfocused pool of light.
Each color in the Neo pixel is controlled by an individual
channel with channel 1 controlling red, 2 green and 3 blue.
This allows for complete control over color mixing in the same
way you would with a real lamp.
The third and final proxy is of an RGB multicolor wash lamp.
Our implementation uses a neopixel strip of eight RGB LEDs with each LED
able to be controlled individually.
When students use the control desk, these proxies mirror exactly the
behavior of a real stage lamp so that students can experiment with
lighting designs and control functions.
Alongside the proxies we created a broker that is the linchpin of the
toolkit and supports student transition from proxies to real stage lamps.
The broker is a portable unit that is mains powered and acts as a bridge
between existing industry stage lighting protocols on the proxies.
It is this unit that allows the flexibility of swapping in and out
the proxy lamps and the real lamps.
The broker contains a raspberry PI running Open Lighting Architecture
software, a wifi access point allows for control devices to connect to
the broker over sACN, OSC or ArtNet protocols, all industry standard.
Two Enttec DMX Pro devices are attached to the PI to allow
for DMX input and output.
This is where real stage lamps are connected as outputs, and
will also allow physical lighting desks to be connected as inputs.
The python script running on the raspberry PI receives updates from
the open lighting architecture API, and emits them via USB serial to a
BBC Micro:bit connected to the PI.
A second python script on the Micro:bit broadcasts this information via it's
radio functionality to any microbits in range that are acting as proxies.
This effectively creates a low power and wireless DMX universe, which can
then be controlled by any software or hardware DMX lighting controller.
Using this broker means that real lamps proxies as well as physical and digital
lighting desks can be connected to the broker in many different configurations.
For example, students can use a software controller such as Lightkey to control
proxy lamps connected to the broker.
In the same way, a hardware controller, a physical lighting desk
similar to the ones in venues can be connected to control proxies.
Proxies can also be swapped out for real lights to facilitate the
transition from proxy to real lamp.
Here, we can see a software controller being used to control
several proxies and a single real lamp, allowing students to create
mental models of the behavior of real lamps in relation to the proxies.
Finally there are a suggested set of tasks for use with
the toolkit that scaffold the learning of various fundamental
concepts within stage lighting.
These tasks are designed to encourage students to engage in
deliberate practice with goals and clear opportunities for feedback.
Our prototype was used in two public high schools in the UK
and in each school, a small group of students were tasked with
designing, planning, programming, and operating the venue lighting rig
for a live event at their school.
These students were given the toolkit and worked mainly independently using
this to firstly practice their skills and later to design plan and program
the lighting for the event before transferring their skills to the real
lighting rig on the day of the event.
Following these deployments, we found that:
These proxies can be used to support the teaching of practice-based
skills, through risk reduction.
Our findings indicated that the use of tangible proxies to scaffold the
learning process reduces both the real and perceived risk for teaching staff.
The size of the proxies meant that teachers were able to move the
teaching of these skills back into the more controlled environment in
the classroom, putting the teacher back in control and allowing them to
focus on supporting student learning rather than worrying about logistic
or health and safety concerns.
The relative inexpensiveness of the proxies meant that students have an
opportunity to prove their skills and ultimately lead to a greater
trust between student and teacher, which encouraged the teacher to allow
students to use the real equipment autonomously in the final event.
The proxies supported flexible reconfiguration, which allowed
development of conceptual learning, so as students progress through the
higher level design tasks provided by the toolkit, the broker acted as the
anchor, which allowed for a graduated transition between the controllers
prototype lamps, and real lamps.
The use of these tangible proxy supported independent learning, as
well as allowing them to engage in rapid experimentation, which would not
ordinarily be possible with real lamps.
This experimentation, and the rapid iteration meant that students were able
to develop the requisite mental models of the way the equipment operates, and
therefore they can understand both the technical limitations as well as the
creative possibilities they afford.
Finally, the broker acted as a route to new pedagogies.
Without the broker, tangible proxies are essentially just low fidelity
models of stage lighting equipment.
The broker is ultimately what provided the bridge between industry
standard software inputs and hardware proxies and is what enabled the
development of stage lighting skills.
Designing hardware proxies to support practice in these scenarios involves
identifying specific skills that need to be supported in deliberate
practice, mapping the properties of real equipment that need to be represented
in models and the constraints of using the real equipment in the
classroom; and finally identifying which control or representation
protocols, the broker needs to support the practice of these skills.
We saw that the broker opens up new possibilities for developing innovative
pedagogies within the classroom, as it allowed for multiple students to
interact with a single representation of a venue, something not possible
with the real equipment, this then offers the possibility of using
the proxies to support co- located collaborative environments in which
to learn practice based skills.