Fort Vancouver Mobile

Mobile phones have become ubiquitous yet remain untapped as a storytelling medium. They offer the power of media, text, audio, video, animation, in a fully personalized format. Through GPS technology these devices even can locate a user and share, on the precise spot, data tailored just for that user's particular interest. Users then can add written responses, video or sound about a site or event. The implications for such authoring precision, audience awareness and interactivity pose exciting challenges to the team creating the Fort Vancouver Mobile project, a storytelling environment accessible via smart phones that tells the history of the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site. Phase I, just completed, comprises apps for the iPhone and Android and a story module focusing on Hawaiians who lived and worked at the site in the mid 1800s. Phase II, the focus on this proposal, seeks $50,000 to create modules focusing on gender issues at the site that have, heretofore, gone unexamined

Children Mobile eBook Creator

Mobile phone contains many features and tools such as mobile camera for taking pictures and a microphone to record sounds. These tools can be innovatively utilized to enhance children creativity by building stories from their collections of pictures and audio. Furthermore, children should be able to store, manage, retrieve and index their mobile contents collections. These properties should exist in mobile system package that can also be a source of education. The aim of this study is to develop a mobile eBook application called Mobile eBook Creator. This application should help children create their own electronic story books (eStoryBooks), that can also search, retrieve, merge and index pictures, audio, video and text in mobile platform. In addition, the study also records data on how ten children ages between 7 and 11 used the functionality provided in the application. The recorded data were learning time to use the application (LT), number of question asked (No Q) and number of help required when completing tasks (No H). Furthermore, the number of tasks completed (No TC) was also noted. Generally it can be concluded that the mobile creator can be utilized without much problem by children of aged 8 years and above

Visual Communications on the Road in Arkansas: Analysis of Secondary Students Videos

In the summer of 2010, the Visual Communications on the Road in Arkansas: Creative Photo and Video Projects to Promote Agriculture program was initiated. The program consisted of a two-week agricultural communications curriculum that would be taught by agricultural science teachers in Arkansas. The curriculum was composed of lessons about photography, writing, and videography, and the program introduced students to digital photography and videography equipment and the proper uses of equipment. Once the curriculum was taught in secondary schools, a mobile classroom unit—consisting of a travel trailer, photography and videography equipment, and laptop computers equipped with editing software—would visit the school to assist students with the creation of short promotional videos about agriculture. The student-created videos were used as a hands-on extension of the curriculum learned in the classroom. Completed videos were posted to YouTube and then analyzed to assess student application of competencies taught in the curriculum. The researchers created a coding sheet to systematically assess all posted videos and inter- and intrarater reliability was maintained. An analysis of data gathered from the video assessment showed that secondary students were able to effectively apply many of the techniques taught in the curriculum through the agricultural videos created. Additional findings and recommendations for application and future research are presented

Viewing the Future? Virtual Reality In Journalism

Journalism underwent a flurry of virtual reality content creation, production and distribution starting in the final months of 2015. The New York Times distributed more than 1 million cardboard virtual reality viewers and released an app showing a spherical video short about displaced refugees. The Los Angeles Times landed people next to a crater on Mars. USA TODAY took visitors on a ride-along in the "Back to the Future" car on the Universal Studios lot and on a spin through Old Havana in a bright pink '57 Ford. ABC News went to North Korea for a spherical view of a military parade and to Syria to see artifacts threatened by war. The Emblematic Group, a company that creates virtual reality content, followed a woman navigating a gauntlet of anti- abortion demonstrators at a family planning clinic and allowed people to witness a murder-suicide stemming from domestic violence.In short, the period from October 2015 through February 2016 was one of significant experimentation with virtual reality (VR) storytelling. These efforts are part of an initial foray into determining whether VR is a feasible way to present news. The year 2016 is shaping up as a period of further testing and careful monitoring of potential growth in the use of virtual reality among consumers

Icanlearn: A Mobile Application For Creating Flashcards And Social Stories\u3csup\u3etm\u3c/sup\u3e For Children With Autistm

The number of children being diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is on the rise, presenting new challenges for their parents and teachers to overcome. At the same time, mobile computing has been seeping its way into every aspect of our lives in the form of smartphones and tablet computers. It seems only natural to harness the unique medium these devices provide and use it in treatment and intervention for children with autism. This thesis discusses and evaluates iCanLearn, an iOS flashcard app with enough versatility to construct Social StoriesTM. iCanLearn provides an engaging, individualized learning experience to children with autism on a single device, but the most powerful way to use iCanLearn is by connecting two or more devices together in a teacher-learner relationship. The evaluation results are presented at the end of the thesis

Knight News Challenge: Casting the Net Wide for Innovation

Reviews the evolution of the Knight News Challenge contest for experimental projects in digital delivery of news and information to local communities, profiles winning projects and explores the grants' impact, and considers issues of sustainability

Cognitive and affective perspectives on immersive technology in education

This research explains the rationale behind the utilization of mobile learning technologies. It involves a qualitative study among children to better understand their opinions and perceptions toward the use of educational applications (apps) that are available on their mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets. The researchers organized semi-structured, face-to-face interview sessions with primary school students who were using mobile technologies at their primary school. The students reported that their engagement with the educational apps has improved their competencies. They acquired relational and communicative skills as they collaborated in teams. On the other hand, there were a few students who were not perceiving the usefulness and the ease of use of the educational apps on their mobile device. This study indicates that the research participants had different skillsets as they exhibited different learning abilities. In conclusion, this contribution opens-up avenues for future research in this promising field of study.peer-reviewe

Dialectical Polyptych: an interactive movie installation

Most of the known video games developed by important software companies usually establish an approach to the cinematic language in an attempt to create a perfect combination of narrative, visual technique and interaction. Unlike most video games, interactive film narratives normally involve an interruption in time whenever the spectator has to make choices. “Dialectical Polyptych” is an interactive movie included in a project called “Characters looking for a spectactor”, which aims to give the spectator on-the-fly control over film editing, thus exploiting the role of the spectator as an active subject in the presented narrative. This paper presents an installation based on a mobile device, which allows seamless real-time interactivity with the movie. Different finger touches in the screen allow the spectator to alternate between two parallel narratives, both producing a complementary narrative, and change the angle or shot within each narrative.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

'Breaking the glass': preserving social history in virtual environments

New media technologies play an important role in the evolution of our society. Traditional museums and heritage sites have evolved from the ‘cabinets of curiosity’ that focused mainly on the authority of the voice organising content, to the places that offer interactivity as a means to experience historical and cultural events of the past. They attempt to break down the division between visitors and historical artefacts, employing modern technologies that allow the audience to perceive a range of perspectives of the historical event. In this paper, we discuss virtual reconstruction and interactive storytelling techniques as a research methodology and educational and presentation practices for cultural heritage sites. We present the Narrating the Past project as a case study, in order to illustrate recent changes in the preservation of social history and guided tourist trails that aim to make the visitor’s experience more than just an architectural walk through

Playing with the dead:transmedia narratives and the Walking Dead games

This chapter discusses the theory and practice of transmedia narratives within the storyworld created by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore and Charlie Adlard’s comics series The Walking Dead. It examines key aspects from the comics series and AMC’s adaptive television franchise to consider how both have been utilized and adapted for games. Particular focus will be paid to Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead, Gamagio’s The Walking Dead Assault and Terminal Reality’s The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct. The chapter explains the core concepts of transmedia narratives as they relate to The Walking Dead, places the games in the context of both the comics and television franchise, examines the significance of commercial and grassroot extensions and considers the role gaming and interactive narratives have within rich storyworlds. In examining The Walking Dead as a transmedia property, the authors demonstrate how vast narratives are adopted, modified and transformed in contemporary popular culture