Teaching with Technology: Digital Tools for Archaeological Education

Recent technological advances have greatly altered how scholars record, study, and educate the public about cultural resources. Data can now be instantly recorded, analyzed, and widely shared. Digital tools can help create multimedia, interactive products that have contributed greatly to education and outreach initiatives worldwide. Both the National Park Service (NPS) and the National Council for Preservation Education (NCPE) are dedicated to studying, preserving, and educating the public about cultural resources. A recent internship project between these two institutions produced online lesson plans that educated students about cultural materials and the various methodologies scholars use to study them within archaeology, historic preservation, and additional cultural resource. Several of the lessons included digital technology, specifically 3D artifact models and virtual site tours. Both types of additions allow students to question and interact with featured cultural materials in novel ways. This article will detail these two tools, discuss how they were applied within the NPS/NCPE project, and provide a list of additional factors for others to consider when creating archaeological educational content using digital technology

Creation of a virtual tour of the Faculty of Science of Charles University suitable for students with special needs

Bachelor thesis deals with the creation of a virtual tour. It discusses the possibilities of acquiring data for virtual tours, their editing and visualization in a suitable program. The aim of this work is to design and create a virtual tour of Faculty of Science of Charles University for students with special needs, especially for people with limited mobility. The tour was created from 360ř images edited in the Zoner Photo Studio. Created tour is visualized in the 3DVista which was chosen based on the analysis of software for creating virtual tours. The text also dsscusses the importance of of user elements and features of the virtual tour. The output of this work is a complete virtual tour of the faculty with information about barrier-free movement.Bakalářská práce se zabývá tvorbou virtuální prohlídky. Pojednává o možnostech pořízení dat pro virtuální prohlídky, jejich úpravu a vizualizaci v příhodném programu. Cílem práce je navrhnout a vytvořit virtuální prohlídku Přírodovědecké fakulty Univerzity Karlovy pro studenty se speciálními potřebami, zejména pro osoby se sníženou možností pohybu. Prohlídka byla vytvořena z 360ř snímků, které byly upraveny v programu Zoner Photo Studio. Výsledná prohlídka je zpracována v programu 3DVista, která byla zvolena na základě výsledků analýzy různých softwarů pro tvorbu virtuálních prohlídek, která byla dílčím cílem práce. V textu je také řešena důležitost uživatelských prvků a funkcí virtuální prohlídky. Výstupem této práce je kompletní virtuální prohlídka fakulty s informacemi o bezbariérovém pohybu.Department of Applied Geoinformatics and CartographyKatedra aplikované geoinformatiky a kartografiePřírodovědecká fakultaFaculty of Scienc

New media technologies to enhance learning and audience engagement in cultural institutions

New media technologies have drastically changed most aspects of our daily lives in a short time span. They have become ubiquitous in the workspace, they have made their way to our homes and remarkably changed the ways by which knowledge is disseminated. The growing pervasiveness of those technologies has led to fundamental transformations in cultural institutions’ organisational factors on a global scale (Bearman and Geber 2008, 387). New media technologies have also contributed to changing educational institutions on a managerial level and on a pedagogical level; they have paved the way for the digitalisation of the classroom and for more interactive ways of learning, some of whose concepts have been implemented in cultural institutions for the dissemination of knowledge. In this internship report, we will particularly drive our attention towards the use of new media technologies in cultural institutions and to the correlation between those technologies, audience engagement and learning experience enhancement within cultural institutions. It is our belief that such technologies have the potential to enhance cultural institutions’ educational programs, strengthen audience engagement, and create stronger and more genuine links between traditional institutions and the audience. In this report, we will qualitatively and critically shed light on how new media technologies have fundamentally contributed to changing audience engagement and ways of learning within the cultural institution. We will put the highlight on the institutional shifts and extensions that new media technologies gave rise to. Then, we will drive our attention towards the educational possibilities that those technologies have led to, we will see how new media technologies can contribute to improving engagement and learning for audiences with disabilities, and we will, finally, shed light on the experiential metamorphoses that new media technologies have induced within cultural institutions. We will use our case study, which is a Viennese augmented reality application named Artivive, in order strengthen our analyses and respond to our research question

Virtual envonments and spatial ability to people with special educational needs (SEN)/disabilities

Σημείωση: διατίθεται συμπληρωματικό υλικό σε ξεχωριστό αρχείο

Effects of desktop virtual reality environment training on state anxiety and vocational identity scores among persons with disabilities during job placement/job readiness activities

This study examined how desktop virtual reality environment training (DVRET) affected state anxiety and vocational identity of vocational rehabilitation services consumers during job placement/job readiness activities.It utilized a quantitative research model with a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design plus some qualitative descriptive techniques. A small purposive sample was used, comprising 8 individuals currently participating in the Oklahoma Department of Rehabilitation Services Project SEARCH job placement program.Independent variables were the DVRET experimental treatment and the backgrounds and demographics of the subjects. Dependent variables were Modified Percent Gain Scores (MPGS) on the State Anxiety Inventory and the Vocational Identity (VI) sub-scale of the My Vocational Situation (MVS) Inventory.Descriptive statistics, cross tabulations, independent sample t-tests, and correlation coefficients were used for statistical analysis. The DVRET presented significantly lower state anxiety and small but not significantly higher VI. Correlations indicated state anxiety and vocational identities were related. Post-treatment questionnaire comments showed the treatment group unanimously found pre-employment VR exploration was beneficial.This study implies that desktop VR has promise in the vocational rehabilitation profession

Concept Mapping Strategy For Academic Writing Tutorial In Open And Distant Learning Higher Institution

Universitas Terbuka (UT) an open and distant higher education institution of Indonesia conducts the in-service teacher education program. In order to complete the program, the students – mostly teachers - have to submit the final academic paper. In fact, most of the UT students have difficulty to write this academic paper. UT offers an academic writing course to solve this writing program. Most of the student view academic writing still as a difficult assignment. Most of the students view academic writing as a difficult assignment to complete. UT has to find an appropriate instructional strategy that can facilitate student to write the academic writing assignment. One of the instructional strategy that can be selected to solve the academic writing problems is concept mapping. The aim of this study is to elaborate the implementation of concept map as an instructional strategy to facilitate the open and distance learning students io complete academic writing assignments. A design based research was applied to measure the effectiveness of using concept mapping strategy in helping students to gain academic writing skills. The steps of research and development model from Borg, Gall and Gall which consist of instructional design and development phases were implemented in this study. The result of this study indicated that students were facilitated and enjoyed the process of academic writing used the concept map strategy