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

Smartphones

Many of the research approaches to smartphones actually regard them as more or less transparent points of access to other kinds of communication experiences. That is, rather than considering the smartphone as something in itself, the researchers look at how individuals use the smartphone for their communicative purposes, whether these be talking, surfing the web, using on-line data access for off-site data sources, downloading or uploading materials, or any kind of interaction with social media. They focus not so much on the smartphone itself but on the activities that people engage in with their smartphones

Music Note Learning Card Game Design

Within the past several decades, Chinese people\u27s living conditions are getting better because of the quick development in the Chinese economy. People are now paying more and more attention to children\u27s artistic accomplishments in China. Therefore, more and more parents choose to let their children start learning musical instruments when they are young. However, the first step to learn an instrument is learning how to read and understand different note values and basic rhythm patterns. For example, in China, the traditional way of teaching basic rhythmic patterns is that the teacher demonstrates the basic rhythm pattern to a group of students through the blackboard or other media. Then the students follow the teacher and practice together. Because that is group class, it is difficult for the teacher to interact with each student. Therefore, the entire class is more like a music lecture. The students only have a few chances to practice and master the basic rhythmic pattern. In this way, learning basic music theory is undoubtedly dull and challenging for many children. As a result, some children with weak foundations or younger ages cannot understand the class\u27s content. Basic music theory is the most important but also the most tedious part of music learning. So how to stimulate children\u27s interest in learning basic music theory like notes and beats is a big question. This thesis project aims to use interactive and visual design to enhance children\u27s music learning experience. In this thesis, the author demonstrates the process of designing a music notes learning card game. The design combines physical and digital tools and uses the combination of actual note cards and the mobile phone application to create this interactive learning experience for children

Presenting Musical Concepts Through Video Game Technology

Learning music can be challenging, and musical instruments are often expensive. Research suggests that by leveraging technology and video games, it may be possible to provide innovative alternatives to traditional music learning so that people can learn music concepts in an immersive and cost-effective way. During this IQP, our team explored ways to teach relative pitch informally to an audience of both musicians and nonmusicians. After developing a prototype informed by background research, we conducted interviews with professional music educators to gather feedback on our design and the viability of our application as an informal learning tool. We refined the prototype according to the feedback and surveyed another group of participants with varying music skills to gather more feedback

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

Applying Mobile Application Development to Help Dementia and Alzheimer Patients

Caregiver anecdotes attest that music and photographs play an important role for family members diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), even those with severe AD. Tablets and iPads, which are prevalent, can be utilized with dementia patients in portraying favorite music and family photographs via apps developed in close partnership with geriatric facilities. This study addresses cognitive functioning and quality of life for people diagnosed with dementia via technology. Research has shown that technology instruments such as iPods, help stimulate those with dementia. This study focuses on innovative devices such as iPads and tablets, which are mainstream and easy to use, cannot only help determine stage of dementia, but also provide stimulation to improve cognitive functioning. It is hoped that this research will analyze that specially created apps and existing assistive software can be used to decrease the symptoms and improve cognition of older adults suffering from AD or other dementia related diseases. Via service-learning courses, students developed an easy-to-use application for tablets to help older adults with disabilities more readily use the technology. This research will discuss student developed mobile applications in the scope of helping improve the quality of life of patients with AD or dementia

Examining the effects of experimental/academic electroacoustic and popular electronic musics on the evolution and development of human–computer interaction in music

This article focuses on how the development of human–computer interaction in music has been aided and influenced by both experimental/academic electroacoustic art music and popular electronic music. These two genres have impacted upon this ever-changing process of evolution in different ways, but have together been paramount to the establishment of interactivity in music as we understand it today; which is itself having wide-ranging implications upon the modern-day musical landscape as a whole—both in the way that we, as listeners and audience members, purchase and consume music as well as conceptualise and think about it