Looking BK and Moving FD: Toward a Sociocultural Lens on Learning with Programmable Media

Part of the Volume on Digital Young, Innovation, and the Unexpected This chapter is a look back at ideas about programming as a form of digital media for learning in the mid-1990s to help realize more of the potential of these tools in the future. It presents a close examination of the work of children who became fluent in programming animations, games, and interactive stories using MicroWorlds Logo. A vignette from the creation of a movie remix by African American girls in a culturally relevant school is analyzed. Their work supports a constructionist perspective that children can learn both programming and other subject-matter ideas through creating personally meaningful projects with programmable media. Unexpected from this view is that the children brought practices from living culturally to define and produce their project and that these cultural practices were integral to their learning. Implications are outlined for educators, policy makers, and researchers to use views of culture in learning with programmable media to connect more children to the benefits of these media

Computers as an environment for facilitating social interaction in children with autistic spectrum disorders

Autism is a developmental condition that affects communication, imagination and social interaction. Of these three impairments, it is the last which has the greatest negative impact on the life of children with autism and their families. Different intervention programs have attempted to address social interaction difficulties but there is clearly a need for a school-based program that helps develop social interaction and promote social skills within educationally 'natural' settings.Teachers, parents and researchers widely believe that children with autism enjoy using computers and in most western countries, most children with autism have access to them at home or at school. Drawing from communication theory, this thesis explores the hypothesis that computers can provide a motivating, real-life environment in which social interaction in children with autism can be facilitated.In a series of staged studies, the ways in which computers might be used to facilitate social interaction are investigated. The first phase established the level of access to computers that children with autism typically now have and how educators currently use computers with this group of children. The experience of those working in non-school based programmes aimed at developing social interaction in children with autism was also explored. It was also necessary to explore any inherent constraints on the development of software specifically aimed at children with autism.Having established available resources and constraints, the thesis then explored the social behaviours of children with autism within a computer-based environment, using play-based activities. In a number of interlinking studies, differences and similarities in social interactions were explored when i) working on a paper-based versus computer-based version of the same two player game, ii) playing the same game at the computer, either against a partner or alone, and iii) working with a partner on a series of graded, computer-based jigsaw puzzles, with the partner acting either as a collaborator or competitor.The findings presented illustrate the potential for eliciting increased social interaction in children with autism when working alongside other with computers, and suggest the possibility that time spent with computers by children with autism may help them to gravitate from a solitary activity towards a social one. The relevance of the findings of these studies to practice are discussed and the need for further studies highlighted

Play Redux

Play Redux is an ambitious description and critical analysis of the aesthetic pleasures of video game play, drawing on early twentieth-century formalist theory and models of literature. Employing a concept of biological naturalism grounded in cognitive theory, Myers argues for a clear delineation between the aesthetics of play and the aesthetics of texts. In the course of this study, Myers asks a number of interesting questions: What are the mechanics of human play as exhibited in computer games? Can these mechanisms be modeled? What is the evolutionary function of cognitive play, and is it, on the whole, a good thing? Intended as a provocative corrective to the currently ascendant, if not dominant, cultural and ethnographic approach to game studies and play, Play Redux will generate interest among scholars of communications, new media, and film

Virtual Reality Games for Motor Rehabilitation

This paper presents a fuzzy logic based method to track user satisfaction without the need for devices to monitor users physiological conditions. User satisfaction is the key to any product’s acceptance; computer applications and video games provide a unique opportunity to provide a tailored environment for each user to better suit their needs. We have implemented a non-adaptive fuzzy logic model of emotion, based on the emotional component of the Fuzzy Logic Adaptive Model of Emotion (FLAME) proposed by El-Nasr, to estimate player emotion in UnrealTournament 2004. In this paper we describe the implementation of this system and present the results of one of several play tests. Our research contradicts the current literature that suggests physiological measurements are needed. We show that it is possible to use a software only method to estimate user emotion

Proceedings, MSVSCC 2012

Proceedings of the 6th Annual Modeling, Simulation & Visualization Student Capstone Conference held on April 19, 2012 at VMASC in Suffolk, Virginia

Creating a modeling culture : supporting the development of scientific practice among teachers

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2001.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 146-153).This thesis describes the processes of teacher learning and explores the associated changes that take place in classrooms. It describes the Adventures in Modeling Workshops, which we designed and created to introduce teachers to the process of conceptualizing, building, and analyzing their own models of complex, dynamic systems. The Workshops facilitate the growth of a modeling culture among teachers by giving them the tools and the ability to pose, investigate, and answer their own questions. This research examines the development, sustainability, and impact of that culture. It describes how participation in a modeling culture can contribute to a scientific way of thinking, for both teachers and their students, and can help teachers bring authentic science practice into high school classrooms. Employing technological tools developed at the Media Lab, we crafted an introduction to scientific modeling for teachers. These tools, used in concert with a constructionist pedagogy of design and creation, enable teachers to become full-fledged practitioners of modeling. Our workshop structure supports teachers as they learn to act as scientists, creating and exploring models of phenomena in the world around them, evaluating and critiquing those models, refining and validating their own mental models, and improving their understandings. This work serves as a proof of concept for a structure and methodology that increases teachers' individual capacities and helps them integrate aspects of their learning into their own classes. It examines the role that new media plays in supporting new ways of thinking and enabling explorations of new domains of knowledge. It also serves as a platform for examining the details of three components of educational change: 1) the development of technology-enabled materials and activities for teacher and student learning, 2) the construction of a scientific culture among teachers through learning about, gaining fluency with, and exploring modeling technologies, and 3) the paths toward implementation of new content and educational approaches in teachers' classrooms. The results of this project provide one benchmark for evaluating the potential that new ideas and technologies hold for facilitating lasting change in America's classrooms.Vanessa Stevens Colella.Ph.D

The experience of low-skilled students in public school physical education : the significance of being chosen last.

Thirteen low-skilled sixth graders enrolled in 4 classes in 3 different schools were identified using a combination of teachers\u27 rankings and skill test scores. The thirteen were interviewed both individually and in small groups, and were observed over two contiguous units of their physical education class. Use of the Brophy-Good Dyadic Interaction recording instrument was interspersed throughout the study. All low-skilled students experienced physical education classes as humiliating, frustrating, embarrassing, and barely tolerable. They were subjected to continuous criticism and harassment by their peers--abuse which their teachers did not challenge or act to limit. Success was largely attributed to previous experience and luck. It was rarely attributed to instruction and practice. Failure was attributed to inability or lack of effort. Students devised a number of behaviors to reduce continued failure, from announcing failure in advance, to avoiding the learning task. The professional rhetoric of providing a positive learning environment for all and having fun in physical education class must be re-examined in light of this study

1999 Scholar\u27s Day Abstracts

Scholars\u27 Day was established in 1997 and is a day-long conference devoted to showcasing the wide array of scholarship, research and creative activities occurring on campus. In 2012, a new emphasis on student research lead to a name change to Transformations: A Student Research and Creativity Conference. This event focuses on student research, which is defined as an original investigation or creative activity through the primary efforts of a student or group of students. The work should show problem-solving skills and demonstrate new conceptual outcomes.https://digitalcommons.cortland.edu/transformationsprograms/1005/thumbnail.jp

Masculinity in American Television from Carter to Clinton

This dissertation examines American television during a period I call the long 1980s. I argue that during this period, television became invested in new and provocative images of masculinity on screen and in networks’ attempts to court audiences of men. I have demarcated the beginning and ending of the long 1980s with the declaration of Jimmy Carter as Time magazine’s Man of the Year in 1977 and Bill Clinton’s inauguration in 1993. This also correlates with important shifts in the television industry, such as the formation of ESP-TV (later ESPN) in 1979 and the end of Johnny Carson’s tenure as host of The Tonight Show on NBC in 1992. During this period, seemingly dichotomous images of masculinity were present in American politics and culture: the “new man” embodied by Jimmy Carter, who is sympathetic and supportive of the women’s movement, and the cowboy ethos embodied by Ronald Reagan, which favors a more traditionally patriarchal social order. On television, these dueling masculinities were depicted in sitcoms, dramas, late-night comedy shows, and sports programming. Although much of 1980s television scholarship has unearthed network and programming strategies that favored women as audiences, I demonstrate how the formation of niche cable networks and changes to traditional television genres like the action series aggressively targeted male audiences. Masculinity on television in the long 1980s was therefore not limited to changes in representations on screen but extended to technological and industrial concerns as well. By the end of the long 1980s, these developments had the effect of increasing possibilities for queer viewing practices. As television is an intrinsically domestic medium, this also meant a challenge to expectations for American masculinities. The connection between domesticity and masculinity encouraged more flexible identities at time when gender roles in American culture were swiftly changing. Through industrial practices, representations of “new men” on screen, genre shifts, and home viewing technologies, television in the 1980s became masculinized, but that masculinization was a move away from an aggressive patriarchy and toward a queer domesticity