V12 Design is a company with offices in Italy and Australia. It is developing the second-generation version of Canova . Since the product will not be on the market for at least 16 months, no pictures of the newest version were available. The first version is depicted in the photos below:
Canova Generation 1#
(Photo via Gizmodo; depicts the first version of the dual LCD laptop.)
According to information from LaptopMag, Conova was..The first-generation model....was envisioned to transform from a sketch pad, to a writing pad with an electronic pen, to a newspaper." From the Gizmodo AU website:
"An interview with Valerio Cometti, the founder and managing director of V12 Design, confirmed that the upcoming version would support multitouch input and that a microphone would be built into the design for voice commands."
With multi-touch and audio input, this device would be a godsend for young people with learning difficulties and others who require assistive technology. It would also be very useful for people in various fields of work. I assume that the Canova will come with speakers, a DVD player, a video camera, Blue-tooth and Wi-Fi capabilities.
I was excited about the new dual-touch screen laptops in development for the One Laptop Per Child project. I'm even more excited about the Canova. Hopefully, the company is devoting attention to usability studies with a wide range of people, using a variety of interactive demo applications.
I wonder if I can get my hands on a second-generation prototype of Canova to test out my touch-screen application "experiments". I'm bursting with ideas to try out, including gaming applications.
I want one now!
The second version will be developed by a US manufacturer. If anyone knows more about this leave a comment!
One of my favorite blogs is Gavin McLean's Global Mantra: "Using Media in education, Fostering Media Literacy, Music Technology, Games in Education, Arts Technology & Music".
In his June 9th post, Gavin discusses his experience using Stimulated Recall in his research. To explain the concept of stimulated recall, Gavin quotes Dr. John Edwards:
"The way we get this data is by using a technique called stimulated recall (Marland: 1984, O'Brien: 1993). A video camera placed at the back of the room follows the teacher wherever the teacher goes. A second camera at the front of the room is focused on the children we are studying, and a microphone is placed so that the talk of both students and teacher is recorded. The two images are put through a video mixer so that both appear on the same screen. At the end of the lesson we make rapid copies of that split screen tape and use it to interview individual children about what they were thinking during the lesson."
Basically, from the student's perspective, traditional teachers are teaching from the "sea of blah". We all have experienced it. "Blah, blah blah, blahhhh, blah BLAHH". This brings to mind the voice of the teacher in the Charlie Brown specials- "wanhhwawwhwanhhwaahhhwah.." What really is going on in the minds of "learners" when the teacher is speaking?
Gavin takes the concept of stimulated recall to the next level, to perform a social-cultural analysis of teens playing a multi-player game, as part of his research. While doing so, Gavin applied principles developed by James Gee, outlined in his book, "What Video Games have to teach us about Learning and Literacy" , to the interactions and transactions of the players.
Gavin's initial findings are fascinating, and make sense, if you are a gamer, or if you have spent a significant amount of time seriously observing a child or teen play a challenging game.
For more about Gavin's research in this area, take the time to read his June 9th post - You might need to scroll down the page to find it. While you are there, take a look at more of his blog!
I came across a link to a few videos uploaded to Vimeo by Nicolas Leoillot, of Lm3Lab, in Japan. Lm3Lab is responsible for a variety of new interactive multimedia technologies. At first glance, the applications appear to be geared for the commercial market. Upon deeper inspection, the applications have many characteristics that would translate nicely to the world of education. Take a look!
"UbiqWindow is a touchless optical technology which lets users experience a unique interactivyt with digital content through natural gestures...Ubiqwindow is open to any type of software applications, legacy website, or brand new applications. Ubiq window can even be applied to real objects."
Catchyoo iTable at Teikoku Data Bank, in Japan: http://www.tdb-muse.jp/:
In response to the comment I received about my last post, I did some hunting and posted about QSI's InfiniTouch products on the Technology Supported Human-World Interaction blog. The post contains a couple of videoclips about InfiniTouch, as well as links about the various uses of the application/system.
If you are interested in touch interaction, it is worth exploring!
