Interactive computer games still very common in our public schools, the day-time habitat for most young human primates. Non-human primates at several zoos now have access to "ubiquitous" touch-screen computer games, embedded within their habitats, as part of a research program spearheaded by Atlanta's Center for Behavioral Neuroscience.
The games were developed with assistance from IBM volunteers to help assess reasoning, learning, and memory. For related information and links, see the TechPsych blog entry.
I would love to use (and develop) interactive multimedia computer games, delivered on touch-screens, to help me with my assessment duties as a school psychologist!
If you or someone you know is doing research on this subject in the schools or with school-aged populations, please let me know.
This semester I'm taking a class in Human Computer Interaction and another class called "Ubiquitous Computing". I'm working on two projects that involve the use of interactive touch-screen displays. One is for travel-planning, and the other is for games that are located in social gathering places.
I've come across lots of interesting applications during the course of my research that I'd like to share on this blog. (Check back for more information!)
Right now, my dream is to get my hands on an interactive touch table that has multi-touch capability. The table needs to be wi-fi enabled, with an adjustable surface so that it can function horizantally, vertically, or in any position in between, like a drafting table.
Here is the "Multi-Touch Interaction Experiments" video demo of Jeff Han's work with a multi-touch interactive table/screen. I know this was included in an earlier post, but if you haven't seen it, you have to take a look!
Stefano Baraldi's blog, "onthetabletop" is a good resource for people interested in interactive tables. He has a link to the recent Classroom of the Future conference, which focuses on collaborative learning spaces.
Here is one of Stefano Baraldi's demo videos:
Concept Matching
Working with photographs:
Here are more links about the use of interactive tables:
SIDES: A Cooperative Tabletop Computer Game for Social Skills Development
SIDES is a game that was designed for use on a MERL DiamondTouch tabletop. The researchers studied the use of social skills games for middle school students who have Asperger Syndrome.
The interactive table used in this video demonstration is Diamond Touch, from MERL. In this application, navigation through Google Earth is controled through speech.
The Imagini.net website is a form of social networking that relies on pictures to develop each user's "visual DNA". It has an innovative method of using pictures to develop personality profiles. Each user's response is stored into a database is used to further develop the "visual dna" tool. This website is geared for networking and entertainment, not education, but it is has many features that could be used in other kinds of applications.
This interactive website from Park Studio in Russia allows you to create various land forms. It has a easy-to use interface and might work well on an interactive whiteboard. It looks like it was created for teaching geography or earth science, but it is fun to play with!
Watch this video about a "super touch screen" for Google Earth from Perceptive Pixel! More information about this can be found on the TechPsych blog, and from the Google Earth Blog. I think this application would be great for visual learners.
Applications like this are immersive and engaging. If you are an educator, think about the ways you could use this application in your classroom!
