Tablet PC use in teaching and learning : a case study

With the emergence of the use of the traditional (non-touch screen) notebook computer in the classroom, different teaching styles and equipment have been introduced. Teachers have started to use the Notebook PC to support their teaching. They now have the ability to gather and use a far greater range of materials in the classroom with little distraction. The introduction of the touch screen Tablet PC has brought another dimension to the way technology can be used in the classroom. This study seeks to investigate the ways in which Tablet PC technology has been used to enhance the learning of students within the classroom and how that differs from that of the traditional notebook. The purpose of this study was to look at ways in which the Tablet PC technology was being used in a specific school setting. It looked at how teachers used the Tablet PC in a classroom environment; investigated what unique features of the Tablet PC were being utilised; and for what purposes specific features were being used. It looked at how classroom dynamics changed; the physical look and feel of the classroom; as well as the changes in pedagogies around the use of the Tablet PC. Additionally, the study looked at teacher/student and student/student interactions as a result of the use of the Tablet PC. The study concluded that the Tablet PC was implemented with some success, within the selected school, and a number of unique features were used. The results suggested that in particular circumstances the dynamics of the classroom changed for the better as did classroom setup, pedagogies and interactions between students and teachers. The study found that there were a number of key indicators that needed to be improved before a Tablet PC program could become successful. These included: increased Professional Development for teachers around the use of the Tablet PC in the classroom; increased time allocation for teachers to investigate and create learning activities; improvements in the school’s infrastructure and quality of the students’ Tablet PCs. The study also recommended that once the key indicators have been met, another study into the use of the Tablet PC in a school setting should be conducted. This should be able to give a far greater indication of the role the Tablet PC has in education

DocMIR: An automatic document-based indexing system for meeting retrieval

This paper describes the DocMIR system which captures, analyzes and indexes automatically meetings, conferences, lectures, etc. by taking advantage of the documents projected (e.g. slideshows, budget tables, figures, etc.) during the events. For instance, the system can automatically apply the above-mentioned procedures to a lecture and automatically index the event according to the presented slides and their contents. For indexing, the system requires neither specific software installed on the presenter's computer nor any conscious intervention of the speaker throughout the presentation. The only material required by the system is the electronic presentation file of the speaker. Even if not provided, the system would temporally segment the presentation and offer a simple storyboard-like browsing interface. The system runs on several capture boxes connected to cameras and microphones that records events, synchronously. Once the recording is over, indexing is automatically performed by analyzing the content of the captured video containing projected documents and detects the scene changes, identifies the documents, computes their duration and extracts their textual content. Each of the captured images is identified from a repository containing all original electronic documents, captured audio-visual data and metadata created during post-production. The identification is based on documents' signatures, which hierarchically structure features from both layout structure and color distributions of the document images. Video segments are finally enriched with textual content of the identified original documents, which further facilitate the query and retrieval without using OCR. The signature-based indexing method proposed in this article is robust and works with low-resolution images and can be applied to several other applications including real-time document recognition, multimedia IR and augmented reality system

The Role of Computers in Research and Development at Langley Research Center

This document is a compilation of presentations given at a workshop on the role cf computers in research and development at the Langley Research Center. The objectives of the workshop were to inform the Langley Research Center community of the current software systems and software practices in use at Langley. The workshop was organized in 10 sessions: Software Engineering; Software Engineering Standards, methods, and CASE tools; Solutions of Equations; Automatic Differentiation; Mosaic and the World Wide Web; Graphics and Image Processing; System Design Integration; CAE Tools; Languages; and Advanced Topics

Virtual reality and stroke rehabilitation: a mixed reality simulation of an everyday task

This thesis is about the process of designing a computer simulation as a treatment tool for stroke rehabilitation. A stroke is a debilitating disease that is characterised by focal neural damage usually leading to physical and cognitive impairments. These impairments may severely compromise the stroke survivor's ability to perform everyday tasks of self-care such as dressing, washing and preparing meals. Safety issues are also an important consideration for the rehabilitation of the stroke survivor. Some everyday tasks can be hazardous, particularly when electrical equipment or hot liquids are involved. Computer simulations are gaining interest as a tool for stroke rehabilitation because they offer a means to replicate assessments and everyday tasks within ecologically valid environments. Training the motor skills required to perform everyday tasks together with the cognitive component of the activity is desirable however this is not always achieved due to the limitations of the human computer interface. These limitations are addressed by a simulation that is presented in this thesis. Stakeholders in stroke care contributed to the design and development of the simulation in order to ensure that it conformed to their requirements. The development culminated in a mixed reality system with a unique method of interaction in which real household objects were monitored by various electronic sensing technologies. The purpose of controlling the computer simulation using real objects was to encourage users to practice an everyday task (making a hot drink) using naturalistic upper limb movement whilst performing the task in a safe and controlled environment. The role of the computer was to monitor and score user's progress, and to intervene with prompts and demonstrations as required. The system was installed on a hospital stroke unit and tested by patients, something that had previously not been achieved. It was found to be acceptable and usable as a means of practicing making a hot drink. The system design, limitations and recommendations for future developments are discussed

Virtual reality and stroke rehabilitation: a mixed reality simulation of an everyday task

This thesis is about the process of designing a computer simulation as a treatment tool for stroke rehabilitation. A stroke is a debilitating disease that is characterised by focal neural damage usually leading to physical and cognitive impairments. These impairments may severely compromise the stroke survivor's ability to perform everyday tasks of self-care such as dressing, washing and preparing meals. Safety issues are also an important consideration for the rehabilitation of the stroke survivor. Some everyday tasks can be hazardous, particularly when electrical equipment or hot liquids are involved. Computer simulations are gaining interest as a tool for stroke rehabilitation because they offer a means to replicate assessments and everyday tasks within ecologically valid environments. Training the motor skills required to perform everyday tasks together with the cognitive component of the activity is desirable however this is not always achieved due to the limitations of the human computer interface. These limitations are addressed by a simulation that is presented in this thesis. Stakeholders in stroke care contributed to the design and development of the simulation in order to ensure that it conformed to their requirements. The development culminated in a mixed reality system with a unique method of interaction in which real household objects were monitored by various electronic sensing technologies. The purpose of controlling the computer simulation using real objects was to encourage users to practice an everyday task (making a hot drink) using naturalistic upper limb movement whilst performing the task in a safe and controlled environment. The role of the computer was to monitor and score user's progress, and to intervene with prompts and demonstrations as required. The system was installed on a hospital stroke unit and tested by patients, something that had previously not been achieved. It was found to be acceptable and usable as a means of practicing making a hot drink. The system design, limitations and recommendations for future developments are discussed

Hierarchical categorisation of tags for delicious

In the scenario of social bookmarking, a user browsing the Web bookmarks web pages and assigns free-text labels (i.e., tags) to them according to their personal preferences. In this technical report, we approach one of the practical aspects when it comes to represent users' interests from their tagging activity, namely the categorization of tags into high-level categories of interest. The reason is that the representation of user profiles on the basis of the myriad of tags available on the Web is certainly unfeasible from various practical perspectives; mainly concerning the unavailability of data to reliably, accurately measure interests across such fine-grained categorisation, and, should the data be available, its overwhelming computational intractability. Motivated by this, our study presents the results of a categorization process whereby a collection of tags posted at Delicious #http://delicious.com# are classified into 200 subcategories of interest.Preprin

Telepresence: Joan Jonas and the Emergence of Performance and Video Art in the 1970s

This dissertation is a study of the early career of the American artist Joan Jonas that spans the years 1970-1984. At the turn of the 1970s, Jonas was one of the first artists to pick up a video camera. Exploring “live” video’s unique capacity to mediate the present moment, Jonas actively integrated the technology into her live pieces, which are some of the earliest examples of what was then first called “performance art.” Performance art has often been aligned with presence. In contrast, I argue that what at stake in the proliferation of live artworks by Jonas and others that merged performance and video was not a reserve of unmediated experience, but a presence that was newly technologized: telepresence. As Jonas investigated the novel ability to perform at a distance enabled by electronic media, her work led somewhere surprising: to telegraphy, telepathy, and the earliest telephones—“tele”-technologies that appear long obsolete (or completely fantastical). Evoking optical telegraphs, spirit mediums, speaking trumpets, and science fictional prostheses, Jonas’s early oeuvre reactivates the historical contexts and unrealized potentials surrounding these dead media. In so doing, she illuminates enduring formations of the body, subjectivity, and teletechnology underlying not only the twinned emergence of performance and video art in the 1970s, but also telepresence as a seemingly very contemporary (and increasingly pervasive) category of experience

Stratigraphic visualisation for archaeological investigation

The principal objective of archaeology is to reconstruct in all possible ways the life of a community at a specific physical location throughout a specific time period. Distinctly separate layers of soil provide evidence for a specific time period. Discovered artefacts are most frequently used to date the layer. An artefact taken out of context is virtually worthless; hence the correct registration of the layer in which they were uncovered is of great importance. The most popular way to record temporal relationships between stratigraphic layers is through the use of the 2D Harris Matrix method. Without accurate 3D spatial recording of the layers, it is difficult if not impossible, to form new stratigraphic correspondences or correlations. New techniques for archaeological recording, reconstruction, visualisation and interpretation in 3D space are described in these works and as a result software has been developed. Within the developed software system, legacy stratigraphy data, reconstructed from archaeological notebooks can be integrated with contemporary photogrammetric models and theodolite point data representations to provide as comprehensive a reconstruction as possible. The new methods developed from this research have the capability to illustrate the progression of the excavation over time. This is made possible after the entry of only two or more strata. Sophisticated, yet easy-to-use tools allow the navigation of the entire site in 3D. Through the use of an animation-bar it is possible to replay through time both the excavation period and the occupation period, that is to say the various time periods in antiquity when human beings occupied these locations. The lack of complete and consistent recording of the soil layers was an issue that proved to be an obstacle for complete reconstruction during the development of these methods. A lack of worldwide archaeological consensus on the methods of stratigraphic recording inhibited development of a universal scientific tool. As a result, new recording methods are suggested to allow more scientific stratigraphic reconstruction.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo