ReMagicMirror: Action Learning Using Human Reenactment with the Mirror Metaphor

MMM 2017: 23rd International Conference on Multimedia Modeling, Jan 4-6, 2017, Reykjavik, Iceland,We propose ReMagicMirror, a system to help people learn actions (e.g., martial arts, dances). We first capture the motions of a teacher performing the action to learn, using two RGB-D cameras. Next, we fit a parametric human body model to the depth data and texture it using the color data, reconstructing the teacher’s motion and appearance. The learner is then shown the ReMagicMirror system, which acts as a mirror. We overlay the teacher’s reconstructed body on top of this mirror in an augmented reality fashion. The learner is able to intuitively manipulate the reconstruction’s viewpoint by simply rotating her body, allowing for easy comparisons between the learner and the teacher. We perform a user study to evaluate our system’s ease of use, effectiveness, quality, and appeal

Digital Sound Studies

The digital turn has created new opportunities for scholars across disciplines to use sound in their scholarship. This volume’s contributors provide a blueprint for making sound central to research, teaching, and dissemination. They show how digital sound studies has the potential to transform silent, text-centric cultures of communication in the humanities into rich, multisensory experiences that are more inclusive of diverse knowledges and abilities. Drawing on multiple disciplines—including rhetoric and composition, performance studies, anthropology, history, and information science—the contributors to Digital Sound Studies bring digital humanities and sound studies into productive conversation while probing the assumptions behind the use of digital tools and technologies in academic life. In so doing, they explore how sonic experience might transform our scholarly networks, writing processes, research methodologies, pedagogies, and knowledges of the archive

The dawn of the human-machine era: a forecast of new and emerging language technologies

New language technologies are coming, thanks to the huge and competing private investment fuelling rapid progress; we can either understand and foresee their effects, or be taken by surprise and spend our time trying to catch up. This report scketches out some transformative new technologies that are likely to fundamentally change our use of language. Some of these may feel unrealistically futuristic or far-fetched, but a central purpose of this report - and the wider LITHME network - is to illustrate that these are mostly just the logical development and maturation of technologies currently in prototype. But will everyone benefit from all these shiny new gadgets? Throughout this report we emphasise a range of groups who will be disadvantaged and issues of inequality. Important issues of security and privacy will accompany new language technologies. A further caution is to re-emphasise the current limitations of AI. Looking ahead, we see many intriguing opportunities and new capabilities, but a range of other uncertainties and inequalities. New devices will enable new ways to talk, to translate, to remember, and to learn. But advances in technology will reproduce existing inequalities among those who cannot afford these devices, among the world's smaller languages, and especially for sign language. Debates over privacy and security will flare and crackle with every new immersive gadget. We will move together into this curious new world with a mix of excitement and apprehension - reacting, debating, sharing and disagreeing as we always do. Plug in, as the human-machine era dawn

Long After the Battle: James Hope’s “Authentic” Commemoration of Antietam’s Bloody Lane

James Hope’s 1888 painting After the Battle was his initial composition commemorating the Civil War battle of Antietam. Supposedly based on Hope’s own eyewitness sketches, the painting and its copies have been valued mainly as accurate documentary images. However, After the Battle was an imaginative reconstruction, compiled from multiple sources more than two decades after the war. Hope incorporated specific figures from Alexander Gardner’s photographs of the dead at Antietam into a participatory experience, using the evidence of the photographs to authenticate his panoramic painting of the post-battle landscape. After the Battle was a purposefully retrospective memorial image, one that supported sectional reconciliation in post-Reconstruction America

ELEMENTARY TEACHERS’ PERCEPTION OF DIGITAL RESOURCES BASED ON STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT

Many factors impact teachers’ decisions about when and how to implement technology during instruction. However, a gap exists in understanding teachers’ motivations for technology integration and face-to-face instruction. Therefore, this qualitative case study explored how teachers’ perceptions of student achievement, motivation, classroom behaviors, and digital challenges influenced their decisions about using technology or direct instruction in the classroom setting. A group of 20 teachers from two southern Florida public elementary schools completed anonymous Likert-scale surveys; six teachers participated in semi-structured interviews. The findings determined via descriptive statistics and thematic analysis revealed that teachers’ inclusion of technology and traditional resources is influenced by teachers’ perceptions of students’ achievement, motivation, behavior, and technology challenges during instruction. To increase technology inclusion, teachers stressed the importance of a balanced and ethical learning experience that promotes students’ achievement. Participants indicated that to increase teachers’ technology inclusion, greater focus must be placed on resources that enhance students’ learning and achievement rather than focusing on student motivation, behavior, and technology challenges

Instructional Message Design: Theory, Research, and Practice (Volume 2)

Message design is all around us, from the presentations we see in meetings and classes, to the instructions that come with our latest tech gadgets, to multi-million-dollar training simulations. In short, instructional message design is the real-world application of instructional and learning theories to design the tools and technologies used to communicate and effectively convey information. This field of study pulls from many applied sciences including cognitive psychology, industrial design, graphic design, instructional design, information technology, and human performance technology to name just a few. In this book we visit several foundational theories that guide our research, look at different real-world applications, and begin to discuss directions for future best practice. For instance, cognitive load and multimedia learning theories provide best practice, virtual reality and simulations are only a few of the multitude of applications. Special needs learners and designing for online, e-learning, and web conferencing are only some of many applied areas where effective message design can improve outcomes. Studying effective instructional message design tools and techniques has and will continue to be a critical aspect of the overall instructional design process. Hopefully, this book will serve as an introduction to these topics and inspire your curiosity to explore further!https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/distancelearning_books/1003/thumbnail.jp