2,844 research outputs found
Dynamic mapping tool for personalizing the city through collective memory
Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2001.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 51-54).This thesis investigates the use of handheld mobile devices as exploratory personalized tools for dynamic navigation of the cityscape that go beyond cartographic limitations and yellow-page directory services. One needs to capture the hidden information patterns of the city in order to experience it in a meaningful way. The volatile, unpredictable randomness of the city life and its ever-changing patterns need dynamic navigational means. Unfortunately, existing devices and their applications do not fully address the impelling potential of realtime interactivity generated by Wireless and Global Positioning Systems (GPS). This study proposes a tool, which encourages personal perception and collective experience of cities by providing a dynamic information space that overlaps the city with individual users, both spatially and temporally. The tool is characterized by a three-tier structure of Personal Filtering, Social Networking and Information Layering. It filters the information through personalization, shares the personal perception through social networks and layers the information with collective, thereby creating a regenerative system that allows for the creation of new patterns and interpretations.by Aradhana Goel.S.M
Digital Learning in the Wild: Re-Imagining New Ruralism, Digital Equity, and Deficit Discourses through the Thirdspace
abstract: Digital media is becoming increasingly important to learning in today’s changing times. At the same time, digital technologies and related digital skills are unevenly distributed. Further, deficit-based notions of this digital divide define the public’s educational paradigm. Against this backdrop, I forayed into the social reality of one rural Americana to examine digital learning in the wild. The larger purpose of this dissertation was to spatialize understandings of rural life and pervasive social ills therein, in order to rethink digital equity, such that we dismantle deficit thinking, problematize new ruralism, and re-imagine more just rural geographies. Under a Thirdspace understanding of space as dynamic, relational, and agentive (Soja, 1996), I examined how digital learning is caught up spatially to position the rural struggle over geography amid the ‘Right to the City’ rhetoric (Lefebvre, 1968). In response to this limiting and urban-centric rhetoric, I contest digital inequity as a spatial issue of justice in rural areas. After exploring how digital learning opportunities are distributed at state and local levels, I geo-ethnographically explored digital use to story how families across socio-economic spaces were utilizing digital tools. Last, because ineffective and deficit-based models of understanding erupt from blaming the oppressed for their own self-made oppression, or framing problems (e.g., digital inequity) as solely human-centered, I drew in posthumanist Latourian (2005) social cartographies of Thirdspace. From this, I re-imagined educational equity within rural space to recast digital equity not in terms of the “haves and have nots” but as an account of mutually transformative socio-technical agency. Last, I pay the price of criticism by suggesting possible actions and solutions to the social ills denounced throughout this dissertation.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Learning, Literacies and Technologies 201
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Education in the Wild: Contextual and Location-Based Mobile Learning in Action. A Report from the STELLAR Alpine Rendez-Vous Workshop Series
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Introduction to location-based mobile learning
[About the book]
The report follows on from a 2-day workshop funded by the STELLAR Network of Excellence as part of their 2009 Alpine Rendez-Vous workshop series and is edited by Elizabeth Brown with a foreword from Mike Sharples. Contributors have provided examples of innovative and exciting research projects and practical applications for mobile learning in a location-sensitive setting, including the sharing of good practice and the key findings that have resulted from this work. There is also a debate about whether location-based and contextual learning results in shallower learning strategies and a section detailing the future challenges for location-based learning
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Augmenting the field experience: a student-led comparison of techniques and technologies
In this study we report on our experiences of creating and running a student fieldtrip exercise which allowed students to compare a range of approaches to the design of technologies for augmenting landscape scenes. The main study site is around Keswick in the English Lake District, Cumbria, UK, an attractive upland environment popular with tourists and walkers. The aim of the exercise for the students was to assess the effectiveness of various forms of geographic information in augmenting real landscape scenes, as mediated through a range of techniques and technologies. These techniques were: computer-generated acetate overlays showing annotated wireframe views from certain key points; a custom-designed application running on a PDA; a mediascape running on the mScape software on a GPS-enabled mobile phone; Google Earth on a tablet PC; and a head-mounted in-field Virtual Reality system. Each group of students had all five techniques available to them, and were tasked with comparing them in the context of creating a visitor guide to the area centred on the field centre. Here we summarise their findings and reflect upon some of the broader research questions emerging from the project
Interactions between community traditions and geospatial technology in natural resource management: case studies from common property regimes in rural southern Mexico
Issues related to improving community participation and the effectiveness of green economy instruments are central to current debates regarding progress towards sustainable development. Information technology, such as Geographic Information Systems, may be able to play an important role in addressing these challenges. In this
study an experiment with introducing geospatial technology was conducted with four rural communities at different levels of engagement with institutional frameworks of payments for ecosystem services in Chiapas, Mexico. The purpose was to examine the impacts of such an intervention and evaluate whether it had the potential to enhance
collective understanding of natural resource management practices, lead to better shared decisions and enhance community social capital. By exploring the outcomes it was also possible to assess the conditions that enable or constrain such implementation processes. Five key themes (i.e. social structure, IT skills, participation in development,
external relations and power structures) were identified in an evaluation framework informed by actor-network theory concepts, and these guided the collection of evidence and data analysis. The results indicated that all of these factors had some influence over the success of geospatial technology analysis transfer, with community political decisionmaking
processes and previous involvement of external agents in local natural resource management activities being of particular importance
Collaborative geographic visualization
Dissertação apresentada na Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de
Lisboa para a obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia do Ambiente, perfil Gestão e
Sistemas AmbientaisThe present document is a revision of essential references to take into account when developing ubiquitous Geographical Information Systems (GIS) with collaborative
visualization purposes.
Its chapters focus, respectively, on general principles of GIS, its multimedia components and ubiquitous practices; geo-referenced information visualization and its graphical components of virtual and augmented reality; collaborative environments, its technological requirements, architectural specificities, and models for collective information management; and some final considerations about the future and challenges of collaborative visualization of GIS in ubiquitous environment
Walking with portable projections: a creative exploration into mediated perception in the environment
I have used practice as method to investigate the creative potential of portable projectors, and
theoretical approaches to reflect on: 1. the perception of the environment and its textures, 2. the
sense of place-making and being while in motion, 3. the portability and collective mediation of
the environment, and 4. the collaborative process of participation. These four themes emerged
from the four video walks I developed during the research: The Surface Inside (2011), I-Walk
(2012), Walk-itch (2013), and (wh)ere land (2014). To delve into the philosophical nuances
and practical outcomes, I have paired the four video walks with the four themes. This research
approach resembles the design process, where practice develops in the action of reflection (Sch¨on,
1983). The thesis and portfolio are the result of an iterative practice-reflection process which is
based on the thread metaphor.
The experience of being and walking in the environment is proprioceptive (J. J. Gibson, 1986)
and can only be partially conveyed through audiovisual records. People experience the complex
texture of the environment in motion (i.e. accretion of surfaces). While moving, they thread
their own paths into the environment (Ingold, 2007) and establish links with the environment,
technology and others. As they move, people experience the texturality of the surfaces they
encounter. Video records captured with visual apparatuses (Flusser, 2000) are a fraction of
the points of observation a person may have adopted while walking in and experiencing the
environment. These records are likely to be created with PEDs, shared in digital environments
and accessed on digital screens. When these records are experienced on digital screens, the
texture of the environment is reduced to a flat surface.
PEDs, with their digital screens, are carried around everyday and enable people to communicate
with others, to collect and share audiovisual material, and to experience hybrid environments
where tangible and digital realms converge (Coyne, 2010). Audiovisuals can be accessed anywhere
and are no longer dependent on the architectures that hosted them in the past. Yet, PEDs may
also isolate people from their immediate surroundings and favour introspective engagement with
audiovisual content, digital others and digital environments (Turkle, 2011). The size of PEDs
limits the number of people that can engage with the content at only one time. Pocketsize devices
tend to be used individually, and their audiovisual content played through digital screens and
headphones which foster cocoon-like engagement. Through the four video walks, I investigate
how portable projectors may be used to challenge this inward looking mode of experiencing
audiovisuals on flat digital screens, and to devise participatory events where people thread their
paths in the environment, and project and engage with audiovisuals together.
In the video walks, I invite people to move with projections and explore mediated public
environments. Instead of sitting in front of fixed projections or looking at digital screens, people
experience and share visuals while walking and projecting them in the environment. Portable
projectors are starting to be embedded in mobile phones and other portable electronic devices
(PEDs), and this presents new challenges and opportunities to creative practitioners. Thus,
I study the affordances of portable projectors and develop artworks where participants walk,
project visuals and explore textures in the environment collectively
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