Project: Interact "Invent, Design, Change" - A 10 week after-school program teaches high schoolers how to use design to change their communities

Below is a brief description of Project Interaction, a program developed by Katie Koch and Carmen Dukes to teach high school students to use design thinking to change their communities, and also to inspire students to think about interaction design as a possible future career.

Support Project: Interaction on Kickstarter! from Project: Interaction on Vimeo.

RESOURCES

Project: Interaction Vimeo Site, includes video interviews of people who work in the field of interaction design.

Gamestorming: A playbook for innovators, rule-breakers, and changemakers: How to apply game thinking to your business challenges (Dave Gray, Sunni Brown, James Macanufo)


How would this play out at a rural high school?


I'd like to try something like this at my high school. It is located in rural N.C., in between two small towns, not too far from a larger "small" town.  Charlotte, N.C. is the "Big City", but it is is about a 75-100 minute drive, depending on the traffic.  The challenges the students face in a rural/small town area might not be the same as those of teens living in the middle of densely populated NYC,  but that is OK.   It is important to remember that design thinking and interaction design can address a wide range of problems that beg for new solutions, even in the countryside.


It would be awesome if I had the time to implement this at the school. I wonder if any interaction designers in the Charlotte area would be interested in taking a trip out to the country to help get something like this off the ground!

SORT OF RELATED - RURAL EDUCATION AND TECHNOLOGY
It occurred to me that I hadn't read much about "rural" education lately, although I pass horses and cows and cornfields every day to and from work. With access to cell phones and the Internet, and cable/satellite TV, young people who live on the outskirts have more access to urban trends than in the past, yet it is difficult for school districts in rural and small-town communities to attract and retain highly qualified teachers, especially math, science, and special education teachers at the high school level.
"Boon, Not Boondock:  With enrollment in rural schools on the rise, will education in small-town America finally get the attention it deserves?" Elaine McArdle, Harvard Graduate School of Education Ed. Magazine, 2008
In my own state, North Carolina:
NC State Works to Turnaround Rural Schools Through Leadership
National Research Center on Rural Education Support (UNC-Chapel Hill)
Two of the four research programs of the NRCRES:
Distance Education Program, which examines the role that distance education can play in rural schools, especially for enrichment andadvanced level courses. Rural High School Aspirations Study, which examines rural high school students’ aspirations and preparatory planning for postsecondary education, career training, and adult life."

Distance Education Publications, NRCRES
de la Varre, C., Keane, J., Irvin, M. J., & Hannum, W. (2009). Social support for online learning in rural high schools. In Whitworth, B. & de Moor, A.(Eds). Handbook of Research on Socio-Technical Design and Social Networking Systems (pp. 575-588).
Hannum, W., Irvin, M. J., & de la Varre, C. (in press). Extending educational opportunities in rural areas: Application of distance education in rural schools. In S. Mukerji & P. Tripathi (Eds.). Cases on technological adaptability and transnational learning: Issues and challenges.
Hannum, W. H., Irvin, M. J., Lei, P.-W., & Farmer, T. W. (2008). Effectiveness of using learner-centered principles on student retention in distance education courses in rural schools. Distance Education, 29, 211-229. 
Irvin, M. J., Hannum, W. H., de la Varre, C., & Farmer, T. W. (2009). Barriers to Distance Education in Rural Schools. Manuscript submitted for publication.
Irvin, M. J., Hannum, W. H., Farmer, T. W., de la Varre, C., & Keane, J. (2009). Supporting online learning for Advanced Placement students in small rural schools: Conceptual foundations and intervention components of the Facilitator Preparation Program. The Rural Educator, 31(1), 29-36
Keane, J., de la Varre, C., Irvin, M. J., & Hannum, W. (2008). Learner-centered social support: Enhancing online distance education for underserved rural high school students in the United States. In Whitton, N., & McPherson, M. (Eds). Rethinking the digital divide (pp. 39-48). Research Proceedings of the 15th Association for Learning Technology Conference (ALT-C 20


Rural Education SIG of the American Educational Research Association
REL-Midwest:  Online Learning Opportunities for Rural Schools: Framing the Conversation:  Enhancing the Educational Outcomes of Children Through Distance Learning and Technology
Clopton, K.L, & Knesting, K. Rural School Psychology:  Re-Opening the Discussion.  Journal of Research in Rural Education, 2006, 21(5) http://www.jrre.psu.edu/articles/21-5.pdf

Michael Ogawa, Data Visualization Researcher, VIDI (UC Davis)

I followed a link today to Michael Ogawa's website and blog. He's a Ph.D. student in the Computer Science department at the University of California at Davis, where he participates in research with the VIDI (Visualization and Interface Design Innovation) group.

Here is a description of Michael's research, quoted from his site:

"My research focus is in software visualization. I am interested in bringing to light the efforts of software developers: How they work together on projects effectively to create some of the largest and most complex systems in the world. Complementary to that goal, I am also interested in designing visually appealing applications that capture an emotional aspect not seen in charts and graphs." -Michael Ogawa
I haven't fully explored Owaga's website, but it looks interesting.  Here is a video I found on his site of T.S. Elliot reading the "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock".  The visualization of the poem is interpreted by Open Wordle, an open source library for Processing, available at  http://code.google.com/p/openwordle/



RELATED
Owaga is known for his work on the Code_Swarm project, "an experiment in organic software visualization". Below is a visualization of the commit history of the Eclipse IDE project:

code_swarm - Eclipse (short ver.) from Michael Ogawa on Vimeo.
(Music: "Orange" by Etherfysh)
Open source code for Codeswarm: http://code.google.com/p/codeswarm
Kwan-Lui Ma, iMichael Ogawa's advisor

News and Publication Links from the VIDI website:

• VIDi paper "An Exploratory Technique for Coherent Visualization of Time-Varying Volume Data" has been accepted to EuroVis 2010
• Wei-Hsien Hsu, Jianqiang Mei, Carlos Correa, and Kwan-Liu Ma received a best paper award at ArtsIT 2009.
• VIDI papers accepted to this year's IEEE Vis, InfoVis and VAST conferences.

Interview of Gillian Hayes: Interactive Visual Supports for Children with Autism

Gillian Hayes is an Assistant Professor in Informatics in the School of Information and Computer Science and the School of Education at UC Irvine.  Some of her research has focused on the use of interactive technologies with children who have autism. She recently was interviewed about a feature article she co-authored that was published in Personal and Ubiquitous Computing:  Interactive Visual Supports for Children with Autism.

The interview can be found on the following Facebook Notes page:

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=439770255457&id=179582945448&ref=mf

Gillian is the editor of an upcoming  special issue of Personal and Ubiquitous Computing on the topic in of technologies for autism.


RELATED 
Some links from the interview:

Gillian's paper in PUC 
(Personal and Ubiquitous Computing)
PUC theme issue on Technologies for Autism
Gillian Hayes
STAR
Gillian talks about autism and technology

Reactable Mobile - Music Creation and DJ-ing On-the-Go : This is why I need an iPad!

A couple of weeks ago I posted about the Reactible Mobile,  a fun "DJ" electronic music generator for the iPod and iPad, created by Reactable Systems, makers of the Reactable.  The Reactable is a multi-touch, multi-user system for music creation, sharing, and DJ-ing, but it comes in the form of a table. Even though one version of the Reactable, the Reactable Live! is portable, it is still pretty big.

In our increasingly mobile world, it's nice to know that now we can have something similar to take everywhere we go, with the Reactable Mobile that runs on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and the iPad. You can download and buy the Reactable Mobile app for the iPhone and iPad from the iTunes Store:  http://itunes.apple.com/app/reactable-mobile/id381127666?mt=8

The following videos provide a quick overview of how the Reactable app runs on mobile devices. The first video is a demonstration of "Verde", Le Freak Selector. The second video demonstrates the Reactable app on the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.





Reactable Mobile (Reactable Systems SL) Description  (Taken from the iTunes website)

"Improvise and create music playfully with the Reactable mobile. Based on the award winning Reactable as used by Björk on her Volta Tour, this application brings the full creative power of the famous interactive instrument onto your mobile device."

"It uses concepts of modular synthesis, sampling, digital audio effects, DJing, and combines them with modern human computer interaction and multi-touch technology.Based on the very same audio and graphics engine as the Reactable, the mobile version brings a complete range of objects to multi-touch devices:"
A set of generator objects:
- loop players, with possibility to upload your own loops,
- synthesizers, with a large range of instruments to select from,
- oscillators, to synthesise pure and complex tones,
- input, to get audio directly from the device's microphone.
A set of effects to modify generated sounds:
- wave shapers: distortion, compression, and resampling,
- delays: reverb, feedback, and ping-pong,
- modulators: ring modulation, chorus, and flanger,
- filters: low pass, high pass, and band pass.
A set of controller objects to modify other objects parameters:
- sequencers, with step-by-step, matrix, or random modes,
- low frequency oscillators (LFO), with different waveforms,
- accelerometer, to fetch data from the movement of the device.
A set of global objects to modify the settings of the entire table:
- tempo, to change the speed of the table,
- volume, to lower or increase the loudness,
- tonalizer, to change the harmony of the melody.
"IMPORTANT NOTE: A graphic resolution issue with iPod Touch 4G prevents using the version 1.0.3 on this device. An update is on its way.  Note: as this application uses both graphic and audio resources extensively, recent devices will provide the best user experience."

RELATED
There is a Reactable in an exhibit at the Discovery Science Center in Charlotte, N.C.  I had a chance to play with it during my last visit, and it was... awesome.   For more information, including pictures and video,  take a look at this post:
Reactable Live! at Sonar Barcelona 2010 (You can play with one at Discovery Place in Charlotte, NC.)

Here is a very short video-clip of the Reactable at Discovery Place. (Because of the noise in the background, it is a bit difficult to hear what I was trying to play.)


If you are interested in tangible user interfaces, including the Reactable and other similar systems, take a look my previous posts on the topic:
Tangible User Interfaces Part 11: More Examples, Resources, and Use for TUI's in Education
Tangiblie User Interfaces, Part I: Siftables

Light Space: Interaction with digital content across all sorts of surfaces! (Demo video: Hrvoje Benko and Andy Wilson, Microsoft Research)

Hrvoje Benko and Andy Wilson from Microsoft Research demonstrate a system that uses 3D depth support tracking and interpreting the interaction between people,  It also allows for manipulating digital content across a variety of surfaces.

Information Visualization Meets Augmented Reality?

Watch the video to find out:

Child-Computer Interaction: A Featured Community at the Upcoming CHI 2011 Conference!

Last year, I attended CHI 2010 and participated in a workshop about the next generation of HCI and education.  It was a wonderful opportunity to share ideas with people from all over the world who are interested in emerging technologies, kids, and education.  I plan to attend CHI 2011 in Vancouver, Canada next May 7-11, and even though the conference is months away, I can barely wait.  The good news it that the Child-Computer Interaction community will have an important presence at the 2011 ACM CHI conference.  I wanted to share a little bit about this development on this blog. 

During CHI 2010, I signed up for the  "Designing for the iChild" course.  In one afternoon, I learned more than I had expected, especially the technique called "Layered Elaboration", a collaborative design strategy that involves inter-generational teams of children and adults.  

One of the leaders of this course was Allison Druin, Associate Professor and director of the Human-Computer Interaction Lab at the University of Maryland.  Dr. Druin's focus is in the area of child-computer interaction and how children can be meaningfully involved as partners in the design process.  

The quote below, found on the HCIL Children as Design Partners website, explains why this is so important:

"We have a chance to change technology, but more importantly we have a chance to change the life of a child. Every time a new technology enables a child to do something they never dreamed of, there are new possibilities for the future."  -Allison Druin

In my work as a school psychologist, I use technology with students quite often, especially when I'm at Wolfe, a program for students who have more complex disabilities, including severe autism.  I have been fortunate to have a new SMARTBoard at my fingertips, and access to the school's SMARTtable.  I learn from my students every day.

I believe that we are only at the "tip of the iceberg" with this sort of technology- and related applications such as the iPad and similar devices.   In my experience, well designed technologies and applications can open up a meaningful window to the world for children, teens, and others with disabilities.

Most of the information below was taking from the CHI 2011 conference website:

About the Child-Computer Interaction (CCI) community:

"At CHI, the CCI community will want to attract papers and contributions that represent real advances in the understanding of, or development and refinement of methods for, child computer interaction. It will also seek to unearth groundbreaking innovations addressing the needs, capabilities and preferences of children that have the potential to become reference works for developments in this field."

"By its very nature, The CCI community will have to be divergent in its thinking at CHI; it must also be about two of the mainstream CHI communities – engineering and design, but will potentially also be concerned with many of the communities of technologies (Smart devices, surfaces, mobile), of experiences (Play, Learning, Communication) and of methods (participatory design, evaluation)." ....

"Child Computer Interaction is a new community for CHI. It is a place for contributions where a method or a design is proposed that is especially suited to children and that could not sensibly be easily adapted for adults.  

We are keen to have contributions to all the usual CHI tracks but are also offering four special tracks for our own extra special community. These are:

• Child Partnership Projects (CPP): A design competition for teams that include children.

• Participatory Papers: Scholarly publications that are disseminated for children readers. (i.e. written in a different way)

• Lessons from the Trenches: Targeting industrial cases and experiences. A lively venue where experiences can be exchanged, and researchers can be exposed to the realities of industrial practice in this domain.

• Theatre pieces: High quality video contributions, available in a library after the conference, of methods that can be re used and learned from."

Child-Computer Interaction Chairs:
Janet C. Read
University of Central Lancashire
Panos Markopoulos
Eindhoven University of Techology
Allison Druin
University of Maryland
childcomputerinteraction@chi2010

RELATED
Walsh, G., Druin, A., Guha, ML, Foss, B., Golub, E., Hatley, L (2009)  [PDF] Layered Elaboration: A New Technique for Co-Design with Children.  ACM CHI 2009