Coherence compilation: applying AIED techniques to the reuse of educational resources

The HomeWork project is building an exemplar system to provide individualised experiences for individual and groups of children aged 6-7 years, their parents, teachers and classmates at school. It employs an existing set of broadcast video media and associated resources that tackle both numeracy and literacy at Key Stage 1. The system employs a learner model and a pedagogical model to identify what resource is best used with an individual child or group of children collaboratively at a particular learning point and at a particular location. The Coherence Compiler is that component of the system which is designed to impose an overall narrative coherence on the materials that any particular child is exposed to. This paper presents a high level vision of the design of the Coherence Compiler and sets its design within the overall framework of the HomeWork project and its learner and pedagogical models

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

At home with the future : influences on young children's early experiences with digital technologies

Early years curricula encourage practitioners to build on children's home experiences. Research into the kinds of activities that young children engage in at home and considerations of how to link these to their experiences in pre-school settings can therefore make an important contribution to practice. This chapter, which draws on studies investigating young children's home experiences with digital technologies, seeks to identify some of the key factors that influence the nature and extent of these experiences. Although digital divides - reflecting classic social divisions of economic status, gender and ethnicity - have been extensively explored in order to understand the causes of inequalities in access to digital technologies, our research concluded that parental attitudes towards these technologies are more influential than economic disadvantage in determining young children's experiences. To explore this issue in greater detail, we have drawn on the concept of prolepsis, a key influence on parents' interactions with their children deriving from the projection of their memories of their own idealised past into the children's futures (Cole, 1996). Parents' assumptions, values and expectations are influenced by their past experiences, enacted in the present, and are then carried by their children into the future as they move from home to formal education. We argue that prolepsis has powerful explanatory force for understanding the kinds of decisions parents make about activities such as the extent to which children engage in technological play

Virtual reality: Theoretical basis, practical applications

Virtual reality (VR) is a powerful multimedia visualization technique offering a range of mechanisms by which many new experiences can be made available. This paper deals with the basic nature of VR, the technologies needed to create it, and its potential, especially for helping disabled people. It also offers an overview of some examples of existing VR systems

Reservoir hill and audiences for online interactive drama

This paper analyses the interactive experiences constructed for users of the New Zealand online interactive drama Reservoir Hill (2009, 2010), focusing both on the nature and levels of engagement which the series provided to users and the difficulties of audience research into this kind of media content. The series itself provided tightly prescribed forms of interactivity across multiple platforms, allowing forms of engagement that were greatly appreciated by its audience overall but actively explored only by a small proportion of users. The responses from members of the Reservoir Hill audience suggests that online users themselves are still learning the nature of, and constraints on, their engagements with various forms of online interactive media. This paper also engages with issue of how interactivity itself is defined, the difficulties of both connecting with audience members and securing timely access to online data, and the challenges of undertaking collaborative research with media producers in order to gain access to user data

Teensites.com: A Field Guide to the New Digital Landscape

A 2001 report from the Center for Media Education, provided here as background to work produced by Kathryn Montgomery after coming to American University and CSM (see http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/resources/publications/ecitizens/index2.htm -- Youth as E-Citizens'), surveys the burgeoning digital media culture directed at -- and in some cases created by -- teens.This report surveys the burgeoning new media culture directed at -- and in some cases created by -- teens. TeenSites.com -- A Field Guide to the New Digital Landscape examines the uniquely interactive nature of the new media, and explores the ways in which teens are at once shaping and being shaped by the electronic culture that surrounds them

Emerging technologies for learning (volume 1)

Collection of 5 articles on emerging technologies and trend