Engaged, Interactive, Collaborative: Microsoft Surface, Finguistics, and Churchend School in the UK - Watch the video!

Finguistics created educational applications for Microsoft Surface. Watch how engaged the students are in this video as they work in groups, and look at the excitement on the faces of the teachers!



The teachers and students have lots of positive things to say about it. Play = Learn

I would like to have the chance to convert my single-touch prototypes to multi-touch for use on the Surface or something similar, but for now, I'm happy with the newly-installed SmartBoards at my favorite school and the two existing Promethean boards, which are used to deliver interactive, rather than passive learning activities for students with multiple special needs, including autism.

RELATED
Under the Hood with Finguistics
Educators get Microsoft Surface!
(MSDN Academic Alliance subscribers now have access to the Surface SDK Workstation Edition)

Michael Haller Discusses Multi-touch, Interactive Surfaces, and Emerging Technologies for Learning

I came across an excellent overview of interactive display technologies that hold promise for education. The link below is a research article written by Michael Haller for BECTA, formally known as the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency.

Emerging Technologies for Learning: Interactive Displays and Next Generation Interfaces(pdf)
Becta Research Report (2008) Michael Haller Volume 3 (2008)

"Multi-touch and interactive surfaces are becoming more interesting, because they allow a natural and intuitive interaction with the computer system.

These more intuitive and natural interfaces could help students to be more actively involved in working together with content and could also help improve whole-class teaching activities. As these technologies develop, the barrier of having to learn and work with traditional computer interfaces may diminish.

It is still unclear how fast these interfaces will become part of our daily life and how long it will take for them to be used in every classroom. However, we strongly believe that the more intuitive the interface is, the faster it will be accepted and used. There is a huge potential in these devices, because they allow us to use digital technologies in a more human way." -Michael Haller

Michael Haller works at the department of Digital Media of the Upper Austria University of Applied Sciences (Hagenberg, Austria), where he is the head of the Media Interaction Lab.

Michael co-organized the Interaction Tomorrow course at SIGGRAPH 2007, along with Chia Shen, of the Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL). Lecturers included Gerald Morrison, of Smart Technologies, Bruce H. Thomas, of the University oof Southern Australia, and Andy Wilson, of Microsoft Research. The course materials from Interaction Tomorrow are available on-line, and include videos, slides, and course notes.

Below is an excerpt from the discription of the Interaction Tomorrow SIGGRAPH 2007 course:

"Conventional metaphors and underlying interface infrastructure for single-user desktop systems have been traditionally geared towards single mouse and keyboard-based WIMP interface design, while people usually meet around a table, facing each other. A table/wall setting provides a large interactive visual surface for groups to interact together. It encourages collaboration, coordination, as well as simultaneous and parallel problem solving among multiple people.

In this course, we will describe particular challenges and solutions for the design of direct-touch tabletop and interactive wall environments. The participants will learn how to design a non-traditional user interface for large horizontal and vertical displays. Topics include physical setups (e.g. output displays), tracking, sensing, input devices, output displays, pen-based interfaces, direct multi-touch interactions, tangible UI, interaction techniques, application domains, current commercial systems, and future research."

It is worth taking the time to look over Haller's other publications. Here is a few that would be good to read:

M. Haller, C. Forlines, C. Koeffel, J. Leitner, and C. Shen, 2009. "Tabletop Games: Platforms, Experimental Games and Design Recommendations." Springer, 2009. in press [bibtex]

A. D. Cheok, M. Haller, O. N. N. Fernando, and J. P. Wijesena, 2009.
"Mixed Reality Entertainment and Art," International Journal of Virtual Reality, vol. X, p. X, 2009. in press [bibtex]

J. Leitner, C. Köffel, and M. Haller, 2009. "Bridging the gap between real and virtual objects for tabletop games," International Journal of Virtual Reality, vol. X, p. X, 2009. in press [bibtex]

M. Haller and M. Billinghurst, 2008.
"Interactive Tables: Requirements, Design Recommendations, and Implementation." IGI Publishing, 2008. [bibtex]

D. Leithinger and M. Haller, 2007. "Improving Menu Interaction for Cluttered Tabletop Setups with User-Drawn Path Menus," Horizontal Interactive Human-Computer Systems, 2007. TABLETOP 07. Second Annual IEEE International Workshop on, pp. 121-128, 2007. [bibtex]

J. Leitner, J. Powell, P. Brandl, T. Seifried, M. Haller, B. Dorray, and P. To, 2009."Flux: a tilting multi-touch and pen based surface," in CHI EA 09: Proceedings of the 27th international conference extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, New York, NY, USA, 2009, pp. 3211-3216. [bibtex]




P. Brandl, J. Leitner, T. Seifried, M. Haller, B. Doray, and P. To, 2009. "Occlusion-aware menu design for digital tabletops," in CHI EA 09: Proceedings of the 27th international conference extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, New York, NY, USA, 2009, pp. 3223-3228. [bibtex]


References from the BECTA paper:

Elrod, S., Bruce, R., Gold, R., Goldberg, D., Halasz, F., Janssen, W., Lee, D., Mc-Call, K., Pedersen, E., Pier, F., Tang, J., and Welch, B., Liveboard: a large interactive display supporting group meetings, presentations, and remote collaboration, CHI ’92 (New York, NY, USA), ACM Press, 1992, pp. 599–607.

Morrison, G., ‘A Camera-Based Input Device for Large Interactive Displays’, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, vol. 25, no. 4, pp. 52-57, Jul/Aug, 2005.

Albert, A. E. The effect of graphic input devices on performance in a cursor positioning task. Proceedings ofthe Human Factors Society 26th Annual Meeting, Santa Monica, CA: Human Factors Society, 1982, pp. 54-58.

Dietz, P.H., Leigh, D.L., DiamondTouch: A Multi-User Touch Technology, ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST), ISBN: 1-58113-438-X, pp. 219-226, November 2001.

Rekimoto, J., SmartSkin: An Infrastructure for Freehand Manipulation on Interactive Surfaces,
CHI 2002, 2002.

Kakehi, Y., Iida, M., Naemura, T., Shirai, Y., Matsushita, M.,Ohguro, T., ‘Lumisight Table: Interactive View-Dependent Tabletop Display Surrounded by Multiple Users’, In IEEE Computer
Graphics and Applications, vol. 25, no.1, pp 48 – 53, 2005.

Streitz, N., Prante, P., Röcker, C., van Alphen, D., Magerkurth, C.,Stenzel, R., ‘Ambient Displays and Mobile Devices for the Creation of Social Architectural Spaces: Supporting informal communication and social awareness in organizations’ in Public and Situated Displays: Social and Interactional Aspects of Shared Display Technologies, Kluwer Publishers, 2003. pp. 387-409.

Morrison, G., A Camera-Based Input Device for Large Interactive Displays, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, vol. 25, no. 4, pp. 52-57, Jul/Aug, 2005.

Ishii, H., Underkoffler, J., Chak, D., Piper, B., Ben-Joseph, E., Yeung, L. and Zahra, K., Augmented Urban Planning Workbench: Overlaying Drawings, Physical Models and Digital Simulation. IEEE and ACM International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality ACM Press, Darmstadt, Germany.

Han, Y., Low-cost multi-touch sensing through frustrated total internal reflection, UIST ’05 (New York), ACM Press, 2005, pp. 115–118.

Hull., J., Erol, B., Graham, J., Ke, Q., Kishi, H., Moraleda, J., Olst, D., Paper-Based Augmented Reality. In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Artificial Reality and Telexistence (Esbjerg, Denmark,November 28-30, 2007). ICAT ’07. IEEE, 205-209.

Haller, M., Leithinger, D., Leitner, J., Seifried, T., Brandl, P., Zauner, J., Billinghurst, M., The shared design space. In SIGGRAPH ’06: ACM SIGGRAPH 2006 Emerging technologies, page 29, New York, NY,USA, 2006. ACM Press.

Research email: emtech@becta.org.uk
Main email: becta@becta.org.uk
URL: www.becta.org.uk

(This was also posted on the TechPsych blog.)

Interactive Physics: Algodoo, the educational version of Phun, optimized for the Classmate PC

Via Kenneth, Emil, and Fredrik, of Alogryx:

Algoryx, a software company, has announced an educational version of Phun Physics, called "Algodoo". It is on display Classmate PC at BETT 2009 in London this week (January 14-17).

"Algodoo is a 2D-simulation environment for creating interactive scenes in a playful, cartoony manner, making use of the physics that we use to explain our real world. Algodoo is designed to encourage young people’s own creativity, ability and motivation to construct knowledge. The synergy of science and art makes Algodoo as educational as it is entertaining. Algodoo applies a constructionistic learning paradigm - learning by designing, constructing and exploring physical systems."

"Algodoo has been optimized for the Intel-powered convertible classmate PC and makes innovative use of many of its features including the webcam for creating physical models from live photos, the touch screen and digital pen input for drawing objects, and the accelerometer for virtual experiments and very direct interaction with the physical simulation. We are quite amazed by the performance, features and look and feel of this little notebook. Learn more about it here: http://www.classmatepc.com/"

Intel's Classmate PC

The origional version, Phun, continues to be available for free, for non-commercial use. It can be downloaded from the Phunland wiki.

Phun Videoclip: Theo Jansen Mechanism

Microsoft Surface's Hotel Concierge Application: Let's see an affordable Surface, deployed in classrooms and libraries!

Microsoft Surface at the Sheraton Hotel:



Think how this could play out in classrooms, libraries, information centers, and other public spaces.

Need I say more?

(Cross posted on TechPsych and Technology-Supported Human-World Interaction blogs)

Highlight: Gavin McLean's Blog;

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- "wanhh wawwh wanhh waahhh wah.." 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!

Cross Post: One Laptop Per Child's Redesign- Dual Touchscreens, Flexibile Use

Photo from One Laptop per Child via MIT Technology Review

"Hundred-dollar laptop, revisited: The next-generation version of the One Laptop per Child machine will dispense with keypads. It can be folded flat to make one larger screen (left); here, two children could play a game, each using the touch-screen capability. Or it can be held on its side and used as an electronic book (right)."

I'm impressed with the new design of the OLPC, the dual touch screen, the support of collaboration and sharing between children, and the flexibility it will provide educators and students. It can even be used as an e-Book! This laptop would be welcomed in UDL classrooms.

For detailed information about the new OLPC laptop, which has not yet been released, read David Talbot's article in the MIT Technology Review.

I want one.

Via Tech Psych: Accessible Learning through Entertainment and Recreation - Resources for free or low cost games and applications

The people at Simply Entertainment/ 7-128 Software, make "mainstream, family-friendly, computer games that are designed from the ground up to be accessible to gamers with a variety of special needs, including: blindness, low vision, color blindness, deafness, and motion impairment".

They recently added a free on-line service for people searching for free or low-cost accessible computer games suitable for learning or rehabilitative environments.

According to the website, the Accessible Learning through Entertainment and Recreation service provides the following useful information:

• Where to get those games, at low cost, or for free
• What to look for in selecting those games, quickly and with fewer costly mistakes
• How to apply those games to your learning objectives, without a lot of mystery
• Who to go to for free help

"This information will be updated over the course of 2008, especially the growing series of How To articles."

Another resource on the Simply Entertainment/1-129 Software website is a section dedicated to links to 25 highest-rated websites that focus on games that are accessible for people who are blind. Many of the linked websites offer free on-line games.

Thanks to John Bannick and his colleagues at 7-128!

Google Earth on a touch screen table - video demo

The interactive table used in this video demonstration is Diamond Touch, from MERL. In this application, navigation through Google Earth is controled through speech.

Here is a picture of how the table works:

Click here to visit John Kirriemuir's blog about games and learning.

Take the time to visit John Kirriemuir's blog, SilverSprite. He is a self-employed researcher and consultant who specializes in the use of technologies to support education and learning. His blog provides good resources for educators who are interested in using games and learning, especially through "Commercial Off the Shelf" games that can be easily adapted to the curriculum.

Here is a description of Kirriemuir's blog:

"Examples of COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) games being used for curriculum-based learning. These games are designed purely for entertainment, and not for learning or teaching. By compiling these examples, we show that such games are being used in schools and colleges by teachers and other educators, as part of curriculum-based learning."

Link video clip of Ray Kurzweil about the future of technology and learning.

From the eSchool News Video Resource Center:

'Explosive growth'

Speaking at the NSBA's Technology + Learning Conference Nov. 8, author and inventor Ray Kurzweil reveals what he believes technology will look like in the next decade--and he explains what the "explosive growth" in these technology developments will mean for students.

Credits: eSN TV
Runtime: 4 Minutes 4 Seconds

Note: The eSchool News Online video resource center has a variety of videoclips that highlight different aspects of technology and education. This is a great resource if you need content for presentations about technology and education! Also check out the Edutopia website!

Brain Wave Games 4 Learning

Paras Kaul, a "neural multimedia artist, researcher, and music composer" wrote an interesting article about the use of a brainwave interface and related technology for gaming, music, art, and learning.

Take a look at this article!

Here are links to information about RippleEffects and Dimenxian, interactive multimedia applications for kids and teens.

For those of you gearing up for the new school year, read my posts on the TechPsych blog about the following applications:
Link to post on the TechPsych blog about Dimenxian, an engaging interactive 3D game for algebra. Link to post on the TechPsych blog about RippleEffects for Teens and RippleEffects for Kids, social learning and behavioral intervention software.

NECC: Video Games as Constructivist Learning Environments

For those of you interested in games and learning:

This is a link to a post by Josh Thomas (Topics Education) about Mark Wagner's presentation at NECC on the topic of video games and constructivist learning environments. More information about Mark Wagner can be found at EdTechLife.

Bill Mackenty's Ed. Tech. "How-to" and Games and Education Links, Edutopia, and FunBrain

Bill Mackenty is an educational technologist and teacher. His Games and Education site/blog provides good links, resources, and ideas, for those of you interested in this topic. Bill also has great "how-two" educational technology links. Share them with your colleagues!

Another resource is the FunBrain website. This site is a repository of learning games for students in grades K-8. The teacher resources page includes links to curriculum guides and McREL standards. There is also a parent resource page.

Keep up with news about engaged learning by subscribing to the newsletters from Edutopia. An article and short video about high school students studying animation with the support of professional animators through video-conferencing was recently added to the site.