294 research outputs found

    PASS: Picture Augmentative Synsemic System : A new system for AAC habilitative practices, theoretical background

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    In this paper we discuss the theoretical linguistic and graphic preconditions of the design of PASS, a glyph system which we designed for use in Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) habilitative practices that has been released under open source licence. We highlight the relevance of graphic design supporting sustainable practices for people with Autism Spectrum Di- sorders (ASD), in a context in which the o er of public healthcare services for rehabilitation is insufficient. We present the context in which the AAC is adopted and how a glyph system can be used by people with ASD to learn a language. is particular group of users can access a language by using the glyph system as an interlanguage or as an alternative language. We analyse the most common glyph systems (ARASAAC, PCS, WLS, Blissymbolics), highlighting their strengths and weaknesses from a graphic and linguistic point of view. We present the theoretical background of the design process for the PASS glyph system

    Dataremix: Aesthetic Experiences of Big Data and Data Abstraction

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    This PhD by published work expands on the contribution to knowledge in two recent large-scale transdisciplinary artistic research projects: ATLAS in silico and INSTRUMENT | One Antarctic Night and their exhibited and published outputs. The thesis reflects upon this practice-based artistic research that interrogates data abstraction: the digitization, datafication and abstraction of culture and nature, as vast and abstract digital data. The research is situated in digital arts practices that engage a combination of big (scientific) data as artistic material, embodied interaction in virtual environments, and poetic recombination. A transdisciplinary and collaborative artistic practice, x-resonance, provides a framework for the hybrid processes, outcomes, and contributions to knowledge from the research. These are purposefully and productively situated at the objective | subjective interface, have potential to convey multiple meanings simultaneously to a variety of audiences and resist disciplinary definition. In the course of the research, a novel methodology emerges, dataremix, which is employed and iteratively evolved through artistic practice to address the research questions: 1) How can a visceral and poetic experience of data abstraction be created? and 2) How would one go about generating an artistically-informed (scientific) discovery? Several interconnected contributions to knowledge arise through the first research question: creation of representational elements for artistic visualization of big (scientific) data that includes four new forms (genomic calligraphy, algorithmic objects as natural specimens, scalable auditory data signatures, and signal objects); an aesthetic of slowness that contributes an extension to the operative forces in Jevbratt’s inverted sublime of looking down and in to also include looking fast and slow; an extension of Corby’s objective and subjective image consisting of “informational and aesthetic components” to novel virtual environments created from big 3 (scientific) data that extend Davies’ poetic virtual spatiality to poetic objective | subjective generative virtual spaces; and an extension of Seaman’s embodied interactive recombinant poetics through embodied interaction in virtual environments as a recapitulation of scientific (objective) and algorithmic processes through aesthetic (subjective) physical gestures. These contributions holistically combine in the artworks ATLAS in silico and INSTRUMENT | One Antarctic Night to create visceral poetic experiences of big data abstraction. Contributions to knowledge from the first research question develop artworks that are visceral and poetic experiences of data abstraction, and which manifest the objective | subjective through art. Contributions to knowledge from the second research question occur through the process of the artworks functioning as experimental systems in which experiments using analytical tools from the scientific domain are enacted within the process of creation of the artwork. The results are “returned” into the artwork. These contributions are: elucidating differences in DNA helix bending and curvature along regions of gene sequences specified as either introns or exons, revealing nuanced differences in BLAST results in relation to genomics sequence metadata, and cross-correlation of astronomical data to identify putative variable signals from astronomical objects for further scientific evaluation

    Expanded Everyday

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    [Expanded Everyday] Is a framework for augmentation of place that uses appropriation and digital interventions of unnoticed everyday objects, events, and memories collected through physical and conceptual explorations of urban space. My practice-based research departs with observations and explorations throughout urban space searching for an interventionist opportunity of unnoticed, unimportant, and forgotten everyday urban assets that belong to an everyday public dimension of the city. An always-present network of assets emerged from the visual language spoken by the city. These found assets are dismantled and re-purposed through visual experiments, and transmuted into parodistic digital appropriations, where their tangible nature blends into the digital realm through processes of hijacking and reconfiguration of their original function and purpose. I explore the confrontation of my work and the observers, the instant when they recognize the quotidian object in the artwork, and the one when later, makes them recognize the artwork in their quotidian experience. It is during that aftermemory where the political possibilities of my work are triggered in the observer's inner narrative. An interest in the city, a concern with its inhabitants, and an awareness of its potential as a site of transformative change began in 1999 as I fostered my artistic practice through experimentation in graphic design while developing an investigation about visual representation of popular culture in Bogotan society. I am setting a navigation point in the period where graphic design, art, digital media, the city, and the objects that live in its public space began to interact in a system of relations that have been evolving as important influences in my artistic practice since then and that are now formally developed in the context of this Master’s thesis project. The second chapter will revise the idea of the everyday as a subject of investigation, guided by the theoretical discussions developed in France during the fifties and sixties by authors such as Henri Lefebvre, Michel De Certeau, Guy Debord, and Georges Perec. I will revise the Situationist strategy of Derive and explore how the interruptions created in my work can open a political space for critical thinking and production of new meaning in contemporary urban life. The revision of the studio components of this thesis will begin with a brief analysis of two digital works inspired by the activist project Little Mountain Project (2012). In this analysis, I will review how a design commission for the project encouraged the production of a generative art piece inspired by the concept of disappearance, while at the same time opened a space for revising the tensions and crossings of the relation of art and design in my work, as well as the separation that I have imposed in my practice from graphic activism. Subsequently, this theoretical and historical material will be revised through the main body of work of my thesis project: Pedestrians Obey Your Signals, which operates alongside my definition of the everyday, and my understanding of the artwork as an interrupter in the quotidian perception of urban space. I will set in place the theories and ideas above exposed and revise in detail four animated works that compose this series.UrbanVideo ar

    Learning Chinese Characters and German Words Using Multimedia

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    This study applies cognitive theory of multimedia learning and cognitive load theory to foreign language learning and examines in what conditions English-speakers benefit most from multimedia instruction. Sixty-four English-speaking college students learned either German words or Chinese characters. The reason for comparing these two languages is to assess the differences between low-knowledge and high-knowledge learners. We assume English-speakers have a better linguistic knowledge for learning German words than Chinese characters, because of the closer relationship between English and German languages than between English and Chinese languages. There were four cue conditions in which participants received either no cue, a verbal cue, a visual cue, or both cues on the screen accompanied with the target foreign word. Consistent with previous studies, the findings show that participants recalled more foreign vocabulary when they were given both verbal and visual cues other than only having one type of cue. When compared with students who learn German words, students who learn Chinese characters benefit more from this multimedia environment. No significant relationship was found between the words recalled in different cue conditions and verbal and spatial ability test scores in this study. This study supports that multimedia boosts foreign vocabulary learning performance and our findings provide an additional implication that multimedia exerts a different degree of effectiveness on different kinds of language learners, depending on their prior linguistic knowledge

    Reading Data-Image through Its Invisible Layers

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    Teaching adults with intellectual disability to combine symbols in a reading context

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    The aim of this study is teaching adults con intellectual disability to combine symbols to convey semantic relations during shared reading. A single subject, multiple probe design across three different types of semantic relations generated from a matrix and replicated across three adults with moderate to severe intellectual disability was carried out. A prompts hierarchy in order to produce symbol combinations on an augmentative and alternative device was applied. Clear changes in trend and level were observed in the percentage of trained correct graphic-symbol combinations and the generalization of semantic relations to untrained combinations, and post-intervention maintenance of skills

    Reading Data-Image through Its Invisible Layers

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    Exploration of visual pedagogy to make Mandarin learnable : a teacher action research project

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    Visual pedagogy plays a crucial role in foreign language teaching and the majority of students are mainly visual learners, especially public-school students. As a result, the teacher-researcher adopted various visual materials in this research for students from an Australian Public school in the Year Five and Six class. Based on those visual materials, the teacher-researcher developed visual teaching strategies aimed to fully explore visual pedagogy that can bring substantial benefits to young learners. This thesis is composed of 6 chapters. In Chapter 1, the thesis introduces a general background of the study, and in Chapter 2, it examines the research literature on which this study is based. The Chapter 3 explains the method and describes who the participants are. The Chapter 4 provides the data from the use of chosen visual materials. Chapter 5 extends the data by examining a range of visual strategies. In the final chapter, the thesis discusses the implications of this research for the teaching of Mandarin language in Australian schools. In the course of the research, the teacher-researcher found that a significant amount of content can be presented through visual materials. Considering students’ interest and curiosity, the teacher-researcher believes that the choice of visual materials should be student-centered. Additionally, a variety of visual materials based on strategies the teacher-researcher used can resulted in higher levels of students’ engagement in classroom than what would have been achieved with visual materials that only presente words. For an example, students can be more easily distracted by watching a lenthy video, but are better engaged with short videos. Basically, students are interested in visualizing and guessing, however, the teacher-researcher found that the same strategy may not work equally well for both boys and girls. Cultural issues also have impacts on the implementation of visual teaching strategies. Therefore, students’ age, interest, gender and cultural background should be considered when choosing visual materials and developing visual strategies

    Mobility, physical space and learning

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    Our biological inheritance is to sense the world through many channels including the non verbal. Learning theory, in both organizational and pedagogic contexts, has come to recognise as much, yet the dominant physical expressions given to learning space in both contexts remain rooted in linear arrangements. The advent of contemporary human processing tools and artefacts have the potential to liberate the learner yet space designs, driven by dictates of notional efficiency and a view of work and learning as separate, stationary processes, constrain through a reduction in the natural reliance on sensorial, embodied human capacities. With an example of case material, we suggest an asynchronous co-evolutionary process, a syncretisation of learning theories and space design. Granting physical expression to modern views of the learning process as mobile and corporeal can, accelerate learning. Key words Workspace, workplace, learning, complexity, organizational ecology, mobilit

    A Systematic Review of Academic Discourse Interventions for School-Aged Children with Language-Related Learning Disabilities

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    Purpose: This systematic review synthesized a set of peer-reviewed studies published between 1985 and 2019 and addressed the effectiveness of existing narrative and expository discourse interventions for late elementary and middle school-aged students with language-related learning disabilities. Method: A methodical search of the literature for interventions targeting expository or narrative discourse structure for students ages 9-14 with group experimental designs identified 33 studies, seven of which met specific criteria to be included in this review. Results: An 8-point critical appraisal scale was applied to analyze the quality of the study design and effect sizes were calculated for six of the seven studies; equivocal to small effects of far transfer outcomes (i.e., generalizability to other settings) and equivocal to moderate near transfer outcomes (i.e., within the treatment setting) were identified. The most effective intervention studies provided explicit instruction of expository texts with visual supports and student generated learning materials (e.g., notes or graphic organizers) with moderate dosage (i.e., 180-300 minutes across 6-8 weeks) in a one-on-one or paired group setting. Greater intervention effects were also seen in children with reading and/or language disorders, compared to children with overall academic performance difficulties. Conclusions: A number of expository discourse interventions showed promise for student use of learned skills within the treatment setting (i.e.,near transfer outcomes), but had limited generalization of skills (i.e., far transfer outcomes)
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