Supporting user appropriation of public displays

Despite their prevalence, public engagement with pervasive public displays is typically very low. One method for increasing the relevance of displayed content (and therefore hopefully improving engagement) is to allow the viewer themselves to affect the content shown on displays they encounter – for example, personalising an existing news feed or invoking a specific application on a display of their choosing. We describe this process as viewer appropriation of public displays. This thesis aims to provide the foundations for appropriation support in future ‘open’ pervasive display networks. Our architecture combines three components: Yarely, a scheduler and media player; Tacita, a system for allowing users to make privacy-preserving appropriation requests, and Mercury, an application store for distributing content. Interface points between components support integration with thirdparty systems; a prime example is the provision of Content Descriptor Sets (CDSs) to describe the media items and constraints that determine what is played at each display. Our evaluation of the architecture is both quantitive and qualitative and includes a mixture of user studies, surveys, focus groups, performance measurements and reflections. Overall we show that it is feasible to construct a robust open pervasive display network that supports viewer appropriation. In particular, we show that Yarely’s thick-client approach enables the development of a signage system that provides continuous operation even in periods of network disconnection yet is able to respond to viewer appropriation requests. Furthermore, we show that CDSs can be used as an effective means of information exchange in an open architecture. Performance measures indicate that demanding personalisation scenarios can be satisfied, and our qualitative work indicates that both display owners and viewers are positive about the introduction of appropriation into future pervasive display systems

Counting on You: The Rhetoric of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Standards .

This study sought to initiate the process of identifying the rhetoric of mathematics as a distinct field of research, while acknowledging its basis in the rhetoric of science and other literatures. Accordingly, the study started by examining the external basis of the rhetoric of mathematics; in other words, how discourse affects the way in which the culture views mathematics. The primary text for this study was the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics\u27 three-volume Standards for School Mathematics. This document, designed to reform mathematics education from kindergarten through twelfth grade, was shown not to be completely successful in its goal of encouraging teachers to adopt its viewpoint. A synthesis of narrative theory and movement theory was used in this analysis. Marie Maclean\u27s and Susan Lanser\u27s conceptions of narrative were used to ground the theoretical framework, with Didier Coste\u27s work used to bridge the gap between literary conceptions of narrative and communication theory. The study also examined the Standards as a movement, using Ralph Smith and Russell Windes\u27 approach to the study of innovational movements. The NCTM had aspects of a transformational movement as well as an innovational movement, but did not completely belong to either type of movement. This study also examined the NCTM as an expert rhetor, using Thomas Lessl\u27s conception of scientific rhetors who move into the public sphere. The study examined how expert rhetors must ultimately exhort fellow members of an elite subgroup, while at the same time, encouraging new members to join