Innovating Pedagogy 2015: Open University Innovation Report 4

This series of reports explores new forms of teaching, learning and assessment for an interactive world, to guide teachers and policy makers in productive innovation. This fourth report proposes ten innovations that are already in currency but have not yet had a profound influence on education. To produce it, a group of academics at the Institute of Educational Technology in The Open University collaborated with researchers from the Center for Technology in Learning at SRI International. We proposed a long list of new educational terms, theories, and practices. We then pared these down to ten that have the potential to provoke major shifts in educational practice, particularly in post-school education. Lastly, we drew on published and unpublished writings to compile the ten sketches of new pedagogies that might transform education. These are summarised below in an approximate order of immediacy and timescale to widespread implementation

Cyber socialising: emerging genres and registers of intimacy

The popularity of digital media networks for socialising among the youth is well documented. Much has been written on the emerging norms of textese, the global shorthand for chatting. However, becoming a proficient user involves more than simply mastering this code: it requires knowing the appropriate genres and registers for chatting. This article aims to explore these conventionalised genres and styles from a discourse analytical perspective. It analyses data collected by first-year students in the Linguistics Department at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) who use an application called MXit for chatting with their friends. The analysis shows how, despite the seemingly unrestrained and non-standard nature of MXit chatting, it is highly conventionalised and structured and requires a particular ‘register of intimacy’ which relies heavily on evaluative language and affective markers. However, it is simultaneously fluid and innovative thereby enabling users to ‘style’ for themselves identities which combine elements of global sophistication with local situatedness.Web of Scienc

On the Development of Adaptive and User-Centred Interactive Multimodal Interfaces

Multimodal systems have attained increased attention in recent years, which has made possible important improvements in the technologies for recognition, processing, and generation of multimodal information. However, there are still many issues related to multimodality which are not clear, for example, the principles that make it possible to resemble human-human multimodal communication. This chapter focuses on some of the most important challenges that researchers have recently envisioned for future multimodal interfaces. It also describes current efforts to develop intelligent, adaptive, proactive, portable and affective multimodal interfaces

Learning from the learners' experience: e-Learning@greenwich post-conference reflections

This publication comprises papers from presenters who, having made a conference presentation, were invited to author an academic paper about their work

Interactive Food and Beverage Marketing: Targeting Children and Youth in the Digital Age

Looks at the practices of food and beverage industry marketers in reaching youth via digital videos, cell phones, interactive games and social networking sites. Recommends imposing governmental regulations on marketing to children and adolescents

Living and Learning With New Media: Summary of Findings From the Digital Youth Project

Summarizes findings from a three-year study of how new media have been integrated into youth behaviors and have changed the dynamics of media literacy, learning, and authoritative knowledge. Outlines implications for educators, parents, and policy makers

Age prediction through the influence of fatigue levels in human-computer interaction

Dissertação de mestrado integrado em Informatics EngineeringThe evolution of current times and the available technology is making it easier to access potentially inappropriate content. Therefore, the ability to detect the age of the human being, by non-invasive methods, is increasingly necessary to reduce possible false claims. All of these claims arise through interactions with the device, so, and taking into account the demands and the fast pace of everyday life, the intent is to develop a system capable of detecting age groups, taking into account the presence of human factors like fatigue or stress that can change the interaction patterns. This system will use biometric features created by keyboard and mouse events, describing typing velocity, mouse acceleration, and so on in the period of five minutes. However, keeping in mind the everyday pace and the growth in mobile phone use, a similar system is created for this case study.A evolução dos tempos modernos e das tecnologias existentes está a tornar mais fácil o acesso a conteúdos potencialmente impróprios. Assim, a capacidade para detetar a idade de um ser humano, por métodos não invasivos, é cada vez mais necessário de forma a reduzir potenciais falsas alegações. Todas estas alegações provêm através de interações com um dispositivo, dessa forma, e tendo em conta as exigências e o ritmo acelerado do quotidiano, o objetivo passa pelo desenvolvimento de um sistema capaz de detetar idades, considerando a presença de fatores humanos que poderão influenciar os padrões de interação, como fadiga ou stress. Este sistema irá utilizar biometrias criadas a partir de eventos de teclado e rato, descrevendo velocidade de escrita, aceleração do rato, entre outras no período de cinco minutos. Contudo, tendo em conta o ritmo acelerado do quotidiano e crescimento do uso de telemóveis, um sistema similar é criado para este caso estudo