Mixed Reality Environments as Collaborative and Constructive Learning Spaces for Elementary School Children

Abstract. Learning is an active, constructive and collaborative process, where people construct knowledge from their experiences in the world. People construct new knowledge with particular effectiveness when they engage in constructing personally meaningful products, that is meaningful to themselves or to others around them. The construction of knowledge from experiences in the world seems to be especially important in childhood learning, as children need to learn through their senses and through physical activity. Unfortunately, for school children there are few learning situations where senses and physical activity is involved. This is partly due to the nature of the concepts to be learned and partly to the lack of manipulative learning material. This contribution introduces a mixed reality environment as a collaborative and constructive learning space for elementary school children. During recent teaching experiments in an elementary school children created their own mixed reality environment which served from a scientific point of view for a semiotic-based understanding for the creation and usage of physical and digital media bringing together arts and computer science.

M.: Scenario-Based Design for Flexible Hypermedia Learning Environments

Abstract. Software development processes need to cover usability relevant information. Although several methods have been proposed how to collect usability relevant data, there is a lack of suggestions on how to deal with this information and how to ensure that it is available in a proper way at the relevant stages of the software development process. This paper proposes a framework to store and retrieve usability relevant data using object-oriented OOA and OOD methods together with scenario-based analysis. As this framework combines advantages of all these methods, uses a XML-based, relational database with server pages and networking, it is an ideal repository for distributed design teams.

Virtuelle Teams Erkenntnisse ueber die Nutzung von Video Conferencing und Application Sharing bei der Unterstuetzung virtueller Teams

'Der Beitrag fasst Erkenntnisse ueber die Nutzung von Video Conferencing und Application Sharing zusammen, die im Rahmen einer Kooperation der Abteilung Produktionssysteme des Instituts Arbeit und Technik mit dem Institut fuer Multimediale und Interaktive Systeme (IMIS) der Medizinischen Universitaet zu Luebeck (MUzL) erarbeitet wurden. In diesem Band wird das Konzept der 'Virtuellen Teams' als organisatorische Anwendung der Moeglichkeiten des kooperativen Arbeitens mit Video Conferencing und Application Sharing Systemen beschreiben. Zwei Projekte, in denen virteulle Teams in unterschiedlichen Anwendungsbereichen kooperieren, werden vorgestellt. Die praktische Erprobung unterschiedlicher Hard- und Software-Konstellationen bildet dabei ebenso die Grundlage dieser Ausfuehrungen wie Experimente und Pretest zur Arbeit mit Desktop-Video-Conferencing-Systemen mit Studenten der MUzL und Mitarbeitern des Multimedie Entwicklungszentrums Schleswig-Holstein (MESH). Darueber hinaus wird ein Erhebungsbogen fuer die systematische Beschreibung von Video Conferencing und Application Sharing Installationen in der beruflichen Alltagswelt vorgestellt, dessen Ziel die Ermoeglichung eines empirischen Vergleichs der Auswirkungen unterschiedlicher Nutzungsformen ist.' (Autorenreferat)'This report summarizes latest results about the usage of video conferencing and application sharing, as the result of a co-operation between the department of production systems at the Institute for Work and Technology in Gelsenkirchen and the Institute for Multimedia and Interactive Systems (IMIS) at the Medical University at Luebeck (MUzL). 'Virtual Teams' are described as an organizational application of the potential of cooperative work with video conferencing and application sharing. Two projects are presented, where people are cooperating in virtual teams. Practical tests of various hard- and software platforms are the foundation for this to this document as well as the experiments and pretests made with students of the MUzL and employees of the Multimedia Development Center Schleswig-Holstein (MESH) in Luebeck. In addition, a questionnaire form for the systematical description of video conferencing and application sharing installations is introduced as a tool for the empirical comparison and analysis of different forms of implementation.' (author's abstract)Available from http://iat-info.iatge.de/aktuell/veroeff/ps/paul00a.pdf / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekSIGLEDEGerman