Reviews

Europe In the Round CD‐ROM, Guildford, Vocational Technologies, 1994

Technology, Pedagogy and Digital Production: A Case Study of Children Learning New Media Skills

This article presents an analysis of data from a project which investigated children and young people's learning of digital cultures in informal settings in Britain. The project aimed to build links between young peoples' leisure and learning experiences, by engaging with the content and styles of learning connected with digital cultures in homes and community centres. The focus of this article is on a computer games making course for young people age 9 – 13. The article looks specifically at issues around technology and pedagogy. Questions are raised about types of software used with this age range, and the article includes a discussion of the models of learning which describe young people?s interactions with digital cultures

Exploring perceptions and attitudes towards teaching and learning manual technical drawing in a digital age

This paper examines the place of manual technical drawing in the 21st century by discussing the perceived value and relevance of teaching school students how to draw using traditional instruments, in a world of computer aided drafting (CAD). Views were obtained through an e-survey, questionnaires and structured interviews. The sample groups represent professional CAD users (e.g. engineers, architects); university lecturers; Technology Education teachers and student teachers; and school students taking Scottish Qualification Authority (SQA) Graphic Communication courses. An analysis of these personal views and attitudes indicates some common values between the various groups canvassed of what instruction in traditional manual technical drafting contributes towards learning. Themes emerge such as problem solving, visualisation, accuracy, co-ordination, use of standard conventions, personal discipline and artistry. In contrast to the assumptions of Prensky's thesis (2001a&b) of digital natives, the study reported in this paper indicate that the school students apparently appreciate the experience of traditional drafting. In conclusion, the paper illustrates the perceived value of such learning in terms of transferable skills, personal achievement and enjoyment

An Immersive Telepresence System using RGB-D Sensors and Head Mounted Display

We present a tele-immersive system that enables people to interact with each other in a virtual world using body gestures in addition to verbal communication. Beyond the obvious applications, including general online conversations and gaming, we hypothesize that our proposed system would be particularly beneficial to education by offering rich visual contents and interactivity. One distinct feature is the integration of egocentric pose recognition that allows participants to use their gestures to demonstrate and manipulate virtual objects simultaneously. This functionality enables the instructor to ef- fectively and efficiently explain and illustrate complex concepts or sophisticated problems in an intuitive manner. The highly interactive and flexible environment can capture and sustain more student attention than the traditional classroom setting and, thus, delivers a compelling experience to the students. Our main focus here is to investigate possible solutions for the system design and implementation and devise strategies for fast, efficient computation suitable for visual data processing and network transmission. We describe the technique and experiments in details and provide quantitative performance results, demonstrating our system can be run comfortably and reliably for different application scenarios. Our preliminary results are promising and demonstrate the potential for more compelling directions in cyberlearning.Comment: IEEE International Symposium on Multimedia 201

Reviews

Successful Instructional Diagrams by Ric Lowe, London, Kogan Page, 1993. ISBN: 0–7494–0711–5

Reviews

Judith Jeffcoate, Multimedia in Practice ‐Technology and Applications, BCS Practitioner Series, Prentice‐Hall International, 1995. ISBN: 0–13–123324–6. £24.95

Interactive Software to Accompany Yookoso: Has it all Been Worthwhile?

In this paper, we describe the development of interactive software to accompany Yookoso (Tohsaku 1999), the textbook in use in the first two years of the Japanese language course at Queensland University of Technology. We begin with a discussion of what is meant by interactivity; we then examine the advantages of using the software in association with the textbook package, as opposed to using the textbook package alone. We also discuss the importance of integrating multimedia materials into the curriculum and the role of the teacher in this model of ‘blended learning’. It is hoped the paper will prove useful to those who are considering implementing or have already implemented a CALL component in their Japanese language program

Reviews

500 Computing Tips for Teachers and Lecturers by Phil Race and Steve McDowell, London: Kogan Page, 1996. ISBN: 0–7494–1931–8. 135 pages, paperback. £15.99