The Potential of Digital Tools in Art Lessons at Junior School Level to Improve Artistic Ability Using Tamazight Fonts

The aim of this research is to explore how pupils in art classes can use creative digital art tools to redesign Tamazight fonts, in order to develop children’s artistic creativity, enable them to learn about a new culture, and to help the teacher assess the creativity of pupils in the art class. It can also help students to improve their talents in drawing. The study could relate to research in Libya among the Amazigh people (better known as Berber) and possibly the development of Tamazight fonts with new uses in art. The research involved students aged 9-10 years old working with digital art tools, and was designed to explore the potential of digital technology by discovering suitable tools and techniques to develop children’s artistic performance using Tamazight fonts. The project also sought to show the aesthetic aspects of these characters and to stimulate the artistic creativity of these young people

A proposal of calligraphy learning assistant system with letter portion practice function using projection mapping

Purpose For several decades, calligraphy has been popular among people in Japan, China, and even in the world. Traditionally, a teacher teaches how to write letters on a paper with a brush, and a student will imitate them by referring to the model letters. However, if a teacher is not available, this method will not be applicable either. This study aims to propose a calligraphy learning assistant system (CLAS) using projection mapping, which allows a student to learn calligraphy by him/herself. Design/methodology/approach By following the letter writing video of a teacher that is directly projected on the paper, a student is able to learn the stroke order and writing speed in addition to the letter shape. Moreover, the letter portion practice function is incorporated in CLAS to allow a learner to repeat practicing hard portions of each letter. Findings For evaluations, the authors implemented CLAS using Raspberry Pi and open-source software and asked students to use it. The results confirmed that CLAS is effective in improving calligraphy skills of novice students. Originality/value With CLAS, a student can practice calligraphy using a conventional brush, ink and paper at a desk while looking at the model letter writing of a teacher projected on the paper using projection mapping

Preferences in Learning Hiragana : A Comparative Study Between Mobile Apps and Paper Worksheets

In 2020, technology is generally accepted, and we can see many people using their digital devices such as smartphones everywhere. It is easy to see how dependent we are on technology, anytime and anywhere. Mobile apps are one of the time-effective tools for our daily lives. College students in the United States are always busy with their classes and assignments, and for them, apps are not only for having fun but are also convenient, reliable, and essential supporting tools for their academic and daily lives. This paper examines the students’ preferences in learning the Japanese writing system “Hiragana” with mobile apps and paper worksheets. The study had 14 participants who joined a 4-day-a-week class. The participants were asked to use both the app “Ganbatte kana” and copies of the worksheet “Purinto Kizzu” to practice Hiragana in and out of class. After all four classes over 1 week, the participants answered a questionnaire about the class and what they thought of using the paper and the app to study Hiragana based on their experience. The results of this study showed that most students preferred the paper to the app. While most of them use their smartphones every day, they have an attachment to paper. Some of them preferred physical experiences more than digital experiences for writing. However, most of them appreciate the app’s multifunctionality and convenience, and half of them want to use both apps and paper for their future learning. If we can use both in each strong area effectively, we can expect new technology and traditional materials to become more satisfying and useful learning tools

A Computer-Based Method to Improve the Spelling of Children with Dyslexia

In this paper we present a method which aims to improve the spelling of children with dyslexia through playful and targeted exercises. In contrast to previous approaches, our method does not use correct words or positive examples to follow, but presents the child a misspelled word as an exercise to solve. We created these training exercises on the basis of the linguistic knowledge extracted from the errors found in texts written by children with dyslexia. To test the effectiveness of this method in Spanish, we integrated the exercises in a game for iPad, DysEggxia (Piruletras in Spanish), and carried out a within-subject experiment. During eight weeks, 48 children played either DysEggxia or Word Search, which is another word game. We conducted tests and questionnaires at the beginning of the study, after four weeks when the games were switched, and at the end of the study. The children who played DysEggxia for four weeks in a row had significantly less writing errors in the tests that after playing Word Search for the same time. This provides evidence that error-based exercises presented in a tablet help children with dyslexia improve their spelling skills.Comment: 8 pages, ASSETS'14, October 20-22, 2014, Rochester, NY, US

Impacts of WeChat on Millennials’ Perceptions and Consumption Behaviors in the Hotel Industry

Social media, known as interactive Web 2.0 Internet-based applications, has deeply changed and reformed interpersonal communication and business operation with the wide spread of Internet and the development of technology. In the past few years, since mobile apps are becoming more and more popular, the access of social media is not limited to tablet computers only, but is also available for almost all kinds of smart phone devices, such as iPhone, Android, Symbian and so on. The function of social media is not confined to real- time message transmission or information sharing any more. It has expanded to a widely range of features, such as online purchase and payment, e-commerce business, and service for different types of social events. Social media plays an increasingly important role in daily personal life as well as in business activities. People are not merely considered as social media users, but also the component of social media itself. As a result, it is very crucial for people to realize the importance and impacts of social media, especially for those business operators. WeChat (Weixin in Chinses, literally “micro message”) is a cross-platform instant text and voice messaging communication service for multiple mobile devices, developed by Tecent in China, first released in the January of 2011. It is claimed to provide “the new way to connect” and create “a way of life”. It is free to download, install and register, and support all kinds of smart phone platforms with multiple language versions, such as Chinese, English, Japanese, French, and Spanish. WeChat provides its users different ways to communicate and interact with friends innovatively through instant text messaging, hold-to-talk voice messaging, group messaging, lively video sharing, location sharing, money transferring, and contact information sharing. Among all the WeChat users, Millennials is the majority. With the growing-up of Millennials, they are becoming more and more powerful and important to the society and will be the next target segmentation for most of the industries in the very near future. Especially for the hotel industry, the industry that urges to attract Millennials patrons for further substantial development, how to attract Millennials is becoming a critical issue for those hotel operators

Embodied interaction: Learning Chinese characters through body movements

This experimental study examined the design and effectiveness of embodied interactions for learning. The researchers designed a digital learning environment integrating body joint mapping sensors to teach novice learners Chinese characters, and examined whether the embodied interaction would lead to greater knowledge acquisition in language learning compared to the conventional mouse-based interaction. Fifty-three adult learners were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The study adopted a pretest, an immediate posttest, and a delayed posttest on knowledge acquisition. Although higher scores were found for the embodied interaction group in both posttests, only the delayed posttest showed a statistically significant group difference. The findings suggested that active embodied actions lead to better knowledge retention compared with the passive visual embodiment. The body-moving process works as an alternative and complementary encoding strategy for character understanding and memorization by associating the semantic meaning of a character with the construction of a body posture