Presentation…

We presented our idea and stage we’re at to the rest of the group today. We felt it went really well, we both answered questions and made different parts of our idea clear and explained things in more detail. Hopefully it was interesting to listen to, fingers crossed we did alright!

E-learning Presentation

We also showed the screen layout we’d done (see previous post), so people could gain a better understanding of what we’re trying to do.

Listening to the others ideas was interesting, we all had such different ideas of things we could teach people, some more complex than others!

Negotiated Project Update

Well tomorrow is the final day of the battering that is the “Critique”. I had my presentation last Friday, which to my surprise went quite well. I didnt really have any bad points made about it, just a few suggestions. I have heard however that the less critque you recieve means that they may not like the idea but I think thats just hear-say.

 I can now start thinking about setting up the nodes around the University and work out the best way of getting students to apply the Cityware App to their facebook. I really want to try and adapt the app first though so I shall get in contact with the developers and see what is possible.

Java Idea

We have been thinking long and hard about what we could do for this assignment, the brief is pretty open so it does leave us alot to think about.

Here is what we have come up with:

Personalized jukebox.

The user will have to log onto the site via username and password, this will be the only way to enter the site. This takes them to their profile page, where they can upload songs, see songs which others have uploaded and use the application like a jukebox.

There will be a database connected to the site which allows for the updating of song information, uploading of songs to it and playing of them too. There will also be the opportunity to search for music using terms like, artist, genre etc.

The profile page will look like a jukebox, with all the functions mentioned above.

Sessions will be used to tell the user their last time and date of login and the last songs they played.
A log out function, which doesn’t allow for the pressing of the back button, to get back into the site.

We think its a fair proposal which could push our java skills that little bit futher. And ultimately have a proud piece of work at the end of it.

E-Learning update

Me and Suzie spent the day getting our Presentation ready for Friday, all the notes are done and Powerpoint is finished, just needs a little touching up. The content of the presentation will be added after Friday!

The project is coming along very well and we have recieved very positive feedback from teacher and lecturers, we have got some layouts on the mend, once they have been completed we can start drawing up all the content then polishing it together.

Presentation Preparation…

Today was spent sorting out our presentation for Friday, we spent a lot of time sorting out ho we wanted the GUI to look. We constantly referred to what we’d been told by the teachers and teaching assistants, in reference to simplicity, language, colours, recognizable symbols etc.

Here’s the layout we decided on, who knew cutting and sticking could be so much fun!!

To explain it:

Colours	We’re sticking to bright, fun, lively colours to hopefully attract and keep the attention of the children.
Font	This is the Nelson font which the children at Boringdon are familiar with seeing everyday. we decided to use this rather than arial for instance is because we hope the children will find it easy to read and instantly recognizable. We’ve been told continuity is very important for young children, so we hope this will help.
Layout	We were concerned at the size of the drawing panels, we weren’t sure they were big enough, or not big enough. So we spoke to Mrs John who seemed confident that the size we have them at will be fine. So we’ve taken her advice and stuck with them as they are.
Language	We still need to sort out how we’re going to ask the questions, this is an example of a question though.
Icons	We were concerned last week that the children may not recognise such symbols as the play triangle, or the red cross for closing an application. However when we observed the IT lesson it became clear the children were already very familiar with such simple symbols, and us using them wouldn’t be ill advised.

Negotiated update

I’ve been in contact with Mike about the arch-os system, the university has an agreement to only look at the flow of people in the public space and not deal with individuals. If I can maybe push these limits as far as I can, I could have notices which lets users know about the risks using the set-up etc.

I have been doing some other research into current technologies which (must be careful) access other peoples data, through bluetooth. I have came across an app called Cityware. I have contacted the developers, here is my e-mail:

____________________________________________________

Hey,

Firstly, I like your cityware project. I’m having a few problems setting it up. I would like to try and have this as an interactive piece at Plymouth Uni. I have a project where I want to show how people feel/react to when their information is accessed online anonomously. And in comparison how does a camera capturing their movement (like CCTV) on to a TV difer… dont think I really explained that too well but its late :p

Im just looking for some hints and tips really, I have a presentation on thursday which requires a demo, so any help would be amazing as I only came across this app about 2 hours

P.S. the wirelessRope is working fine

Thanks,

Simon M

_____________________________________________________

I have also been looking into the law side of the what is possible to do, there are many links which can be found here. There are many links about facebook and current online threats. Some also address the level of data which is readily available to the average user.

I have now had a reply so another update will be available tomorrow I expect.

An Education…

We just got back from an hour of IT with the two reception classes, lets say it’s very concentrated and a little hectic! We originally were just observing, but the computers decided to play up a bit so we ended up getting the kids all logged on and the rest of it.

The kids were using the snakes and ladders game available on the BBC education site, it was their first time using it so a little bit of help was needed getting going, but it soon became apparent not many of them actually understood how to play the game, and many had never played it as a board game, let alone online.

We picked up on a few things we picked up on with the snakes and ladders:

1 – Lack of instructions. There were next to none. It was assumed the kids knew how to play, the one we were with proved this theory wrong!

2 – The kids whose teacher took longer to run through how to play, like a demo, managed to play the game with more ease, although still struggled. It gave the kids a clearer idea of what to expect and how to play.

3 – There was no way of telling what it was they were doing wrong, they all panicked when the counter didn’t more to the space they thought it should, there were no instructions or hints as to what they should or need to do.

The second class had a go on another game called, find one more. Which is basically pairs. They all knew exactly what to do with this game. We asked why they were so good with it, and apparently they play this most days while waiting for dinner or home time. So its more a case of repetition than anything else. None of them seemed to respond as far as we could see to the flashing trim around the cards to indicate right or wrong, they just wanted to push on with the game.

When we observed the children it became apparent that some of the kids hadn’t used a mouse as much as some of the other children. Some were handling the task just fine, but others had very poor hand to eye co-ordination, they couldn’t relate that there wasn’t any space on the table for the mouse to move, when the mouse wasn’t at the end of the screen. Even when demonstrated that you could lift the mouse some were still confused.

Vanessa Cload one of he teachers got a little boy to show Simon “Tizzys toy box” and a little girl to show Suzanne “Izzys Island”. This gave us the chance to ask the kids themselves questions about what they were doing and describing how they knew what to do etc.

Simon – I then was given the opportunity to sit with a pupil, then he was demonstrating to me a shape game on the Tizzy’s Toybox software. The game was called jigsaw, the user had to click where the correct piece should go. The jigsaw obviously had an image to make it more user friendly from him but I asked if he was paying any attention to the pictures and he said “No, I’m looking at the sides. (of the shapes)” He clearly had spent time on the pc before, his hand to eye co-ordination was excellent and knew how to control the mouse.

Suzanne – I watched a little girl play with Izzys Island, she showed me a couple of the games she likes to play. One game was about patterns and deciding which came next. I was asking her different questions about what she was doing and why. The most interesting answer she gave when i asked her about the instructions at the bottom of the screen, did she know what they said, her answer was no. So she wasn’t paying any attention to the written instructions, but still knew what to do, i think this shows more her ingenuity than anything else.

Navigational Aids for iBionic

I’ve been thinking of the navigation part of the iBionic contact lense. When I was brainstorming previously I mentioned about submersive games etc. I have thought how I could use certain aspects of games and incorporate this into my idea. for example on Grand Theft Auto the navigation aid is looking right from above, this would be very handy as a form of Satallite Navigation, the icons could be possible destinations where you want to go i.e. the shops, bank, quickest route etc.

This view from above has a historical background first created by the Nazca culture between 200BCE and CE700. It is presumed that these people could never have seen their work in its entirety.

 

The pieces were made by removing the iron oxide coated pebbles which cover the surface of the Nazca desert.

In some cases these lines have been reported a being landing strips for aliens. This was a theory made by Erich von Daniken.
You must be thinking where is this heading… The Nazca Lines also feature at the end of the game Assassin’s Creed (Xbox 360) where ‘eagle vision’ is used to reveal markings in blood, including the Nazca monkey, hummingbird and spider.

Now combine this with my news feed style then you have a fairly complex interface which will not detract from vision. I think my next step is to start get some filming ideas and then possible icons/alerts to have on the interface.

Neg Project update ideas

After much pondering,  I have been trying to think of what to do for the upcoming presentation on thursday. I still cant find a good solution to this project, my ideas are there but how to produce this i’m not too sure. I will seek the guidance of Mike Philips to ask him about the Archos system thats in Portland square.

This system monitors the buildings health, from temperature to oxygen levels etc. the system must use some sort of tracking device so I will try to find out if there is any ways I could use that.

Me and Suzie were brainstorming earlier over what we could do for both of ours. rather than define what to do we talked about things like have a facebook like site called alter egos, this could be where you can be like superhero or something like that, the only downfall is how people would use it i.e. paedophiles and other sexual predators.

Then, I thought of a possible idea. How about when people walk past a camera (which is hooked up to a tv), the user not only gets filmed and broadcast in a live space there personal details from facebook/myspace are visible aswell. This addresses my earlier thoughts from marie sesters idea.

The idea of being put on public display seems to be far worse than having random strangers from anywhere in the world looking at your personal details.

I can now start to do further research into how to display these details in a public space, I think Mike Philips will be my first port of call.

iBionic – The Bionic Contact Lense

Ok quick update on Vlads Augmented reality project… I have come up with the idea of iBionic. It will be a short advert explaining how the bionic contact lens can be linked to your mobile or give you directions etc I’ve went along with the same style as Apple. I have created a logo which can be incorporated into the advert, as well as a possible slogan. The slogan was taken from Apples’ earlier campaign iThink, therefore iMac. I’ve went with iSee, therefore iBionic. 

                                               

I’ve also started to do some research into how the display will look and decided the best way to give the user a type of news feed. For example when you are watching the news you usually have the time displayed, also some sort of moving text like an rss feed which moves from right to left across the bottom. Weather updates can also be used. This is an example from sky news posted on youtube:

Cutting and Sticking…

Today was possibly one of the best practical sessions ever! Was all about getting us to think about layouts and things to include in our games. Katina had a whole stationary cupboard with her! Although the cutting and sticking made a pleasant change from all the programming and what have you we’re doing at the moment, it was also really useful in getting us to think about colours which could be used and how we want to lay the screen out.

Here’s what we came up with:

To explain it:

• We’ve gone with very bright colours, we think predominantly primary colours as they are very bright and will hopefully grab the attention of children, who often have very short attention spans.
• The red rectangle would be where the questions are written, in a nice big clear font.
• There’s a colour palette, which we’re debating over whether to include. It would be used as part of the questions, ie ‘draw a blue square’ and the child would need to select the colour blue then draw the shape.
• The screen is divided into , one area for each part of the process, to show them as separate component parts of a whole process, although this wont be apparent to the children. This could just be seen as levels to them, they need to complete one part to move on to the next.
• Rounded corners give the screen a more approachable quality, this is important we feel, in gaining the children’s confidence. If they think the game is fun they’ll get more out of it.
• The video symbols. It was pointed out to us that the children might not know what the symbols mean. We’re going to investigate this, and ask either the children themselves or their teaching staff, possibly both to make sure we’re not adding a component to the game which they wont understand, and therefor use.

We arranged to go into Boringdon on Monday to observe an IT lesson with each reception class, so this will give us a chance to see what sort of level the children’s skills are currently at and give us a better idea of how challenging to make the game. As well as this we hope to see if the children are familiar with the video symbols.

Today at the Eden Project.

Today the team of designers that helped on the previous eden project, The Edge, went to pay them a visit. Firstly i’d like to thank Howard for all of his time and hard work today, he dedicated pretty much the entire day showing us around. Free lunch and drinks were thrown in aswell as ice skating.

Myself, Suzie, Ollie and Claudia all attempted the skating but more importantly Aqeel!!! This was his first time EVER! and he was actually very brave. Poor Ollie and Claudia were terrified, but low and behold they got their skates on… no pun intended and went round once.

All skating aside, the day was fantastic. The biomes were incredible, and the heat was intense. I won’t tell much about what we talked about… you’ll have to go and see it.

We were able to harass Howard all day, he gave us loads of information, not just with regarding university but information about all the different areas inside the biomes, alot of the history of the project as well as plants and animals that are inside.

       

Negotiated Project thoughts

I have been thinking for ages on this project, I have finally had some thoughts. My essay was loosely based on Motion Tracking and I am quite intrigued about the amount of information that is available on one person on the internet. And the news headlines stating that the Identities of millions have been lost on a single CD is quite worrying. In my preliminary research I came across this clip:

http://cs.nyu.edu/%7Ejhan/tracking/index.html

I wanted to start thinking about how Motion Tracking could be used in such a way that its obvious, so that the irony is possible. For Example, if they didnt want to be watched in comparison this is the equivalent of someone looking at their profile on facebook without them knowing about it.

And also more importantly from Ars Electronica, a public art installation called Access by Marie Sester. Her influences are Big Brother and websites like JenniCam. The quote at the bottom of the article sums it all up:

Beware. Some individuals may not like the ideal of being under surveillance.
Beware. Some individuals may love the attention.

I thought I could incorporate some sort of tracking system around the university. This could reflect how uncomfortable it is when someone is watching you, but if you dont know about it in a physical sense then it doesnt worry them i.e. Facebook

Augmented Reality thoughts part 2

Ok so I was in work today and asked the guys around me “What would you do with a Bionic Eye?” the main response was to zoom into something. I then thought about military uses and how this could adapted to into combat. The first thing that comes to mind would be a sniper, the advantages that this would give them would be immense, the tracking could then be adjusted into the sight of the gun to give a more accurate aim. (previously Vlad mentioned about using the bionic eye as some sort of spying gadget) I then started to think of other roles in the military, for example when soldiers clear a room they could use the bionic eye to show up infra-red or nightvision. This again would give a huge advantage over less equiped enemies. And finally RAF Pilots. The possibilites for a pilot would be significant, the need for all of the displays would be removed, these could then be displayed at the viewers comfort.

Q and A…

Here are the answers to the questions we asked Sarah, the other day. Just getting round to posting it. Bear in mind these are brief and written after speaking to her, without taking any notes!

What shapes are the children at this age required to know?
Sarah lent us the Nelson Maths folder which contains the shapes the children are required to know.

Just 2d shapes?
2d and 3d shapes are needed.

Do the children just see visual representations of the shapes, ie drawn on the white board or do they get to handle and look at the shapes?
They see the shapes drawn on the board, they also get a chance to play with some 3d shapes and see what they look and feel like as well as how the shapes move i.e. roll.

How do the children learn best?
Seeing and doing. This gives them an idea of what they should be looking at and what to do with it. Repetition helps to get the information to stick in the children’s minds.

How do you ensure what the children are learning they remember?
This is more difficult, as each child learns at a different speed, however in general talking about what they’ve just done is useful and testing them in simple ways like getting them to draw you a shape, one they’ve just been learning about, is a good idea.

What material do you currently use to teach shapes?
We have 3 or 4 different softwares installed on the system which the children have access to, usually in the IT lesson. Although we do look at the games as a whole class and all play together. We have videos, which reinforce what we do in our maths lessons, and these can feature heavily depending on the circumstances.

Now we have some answers to our questions we feel more confident to carry on, knowing our game could actually be of use.

Finding out what the kids need to know…

Yesterday Suzanne went into Boringdon after school had finished to have a quick word with one of the Reception class teachers, Sarah Worley to ask her a few question we had come up with whilst brainstorming ideas and things we needed to research in order to make the game educationally viable and fun. Unfortunately Simon couldn’t make it this time, but we’re planning to go in after half term so he can chat with Sarah too.

Sarah was really helpful and gave us a folder with the maths the children need to learn in their first year at school, which has a massive chapter on “shape & space”. In the chapter are the 2 main areas we’re concentrating on, 2D and 3D shapes.

We read through the chapter in detail today and wrote a load of notes down. It states which shapes the children need to learn, the folder says they should learn 3D shapes first then 2D. Sarah said from her experience of teaching this, she finds it better to start with 2D so that’s what we’ll do.

So in amongst all the other information in each section there’s a list of what the children need to know in order to describe the shapes. As of September the curriculum is changing, the children no longer need to be able to name the shape i.e. “that’s a circle”, instead they just need to be able to describe what it looks like, i.e. “it has one side and looks like a wheel”. Although Sarah recommended we use the actual shape names to get the children used to them.

The 3D vocabulary for the required shapes is as follows, straight from the folder:

Boxes – box, flat side, corner, face, slide.
Balls – ball, round, shape, roll.
Cylinders – tube, cylinder, curved side, flat end, roll.
Cones – cone, curved side, flat end, point, shape, roll.

The 2D vocabulary for the required shapes is as follows, again straight from the folder:

Square – square, the same, straight lines, faces.
Rectangle – rectangle, straight sides, the same length as.
Circle – face, circle, round.
Triangle – triangle, straight sides, 3 sides.

As you can see the folder states the children need to know the names of the shapes, but like we said this is changing as of September. We also made the following notes having read through the folder, and possible solutions to the things we’re finding out:

3D shapes:
Children experience the world in 3D. The world is made of 3D shapes. They experience objects through using toys and home and at school. Most children understand the words box and ball but struggle with cone and cylinder.

How we could test their 3D knowledge?
The shapes come in different sizes and different colours, question how the shape moves i.e. slides or rolls. How many sides does the shape have? Get the children to point out where certain shapes are in a picture. Get them to create a house using 3D objects. Allow them to test their predictions i.e. Will the ball roll?

How to do it:
Create a list of movie clips based on the shapes that they will be learning. Extend these clips by animating the movement that these shapes will take if pushed. Create some shapes, which can be dragged around the stage to help create another object (house).

2D Shapes:
Children are already familiar with shapes but not in a formal sense. They are most familiar with squares and rectangles.

How we could test their 2D knowledge?
We could get the children to trace around a shape. We could further there hand to eye co-ordination skills by getting them to colour in the shape. This could be a free choice of audio prompt ‘Colour the circle blue…’ etc. Like the 3D shapes we could get the children to create a bigger picture using smaller shapes.

How to do it:
Create a list of movie clips of all the different shapes to show the children how to trace the shape. This can be backed up with audio cues. The flash screen will be drawable, which means that the children can trace around the shape using the mouse or stylus.

Design Proposal

As part of the coursework Katina requested our design proposals in for yesterday so she could read them and give us feedback today. Here’s our proposal:

Description of application:
Design and implement and game for children aged 4-5 (reception age) to aid them in their learning of shapes, both 2D and 3D.

Learning by doing – active participation.
Watch a video of someone drawing a shape, on part of the screen, then the child sees an outline of the same shape, which they are to draw over to gain an idea of how the shape should look, then finally the child is expected to draw the shape by themselves without a video or outline.

The closer the trace and their own attempt is to the original shape at the end, an audio cue and visual will appear to congratulate the child, if not close to the original shape an audio cue and visual will display to inform them. To feel as if the children are aiming for something and feel as though they are achieving, the more shapes they draw well, these will then combine to create a small entertaining 2D/3D animation.

There are elements of behaviourism such as observing demonstrations and receiving audio and visual feedback, for either drawing the shapes well or not. As well as elements of cognitivism – visual examples and comparisons.

                           

Learning Objectives:
• Hand and eye coordination.
• The drawing can be through either use of mouse, or graphics tablet and pen. The latter may prove to be more effective as it feels more natural. It will also give the children the opportunity gain confidence in using the computer, drawing and shape learning.
• Following aural and visual instructions.
• Learning variety of 2D and 3D shapes, based on the curriculum requirements.
• Gaining independence in drawing shapes, through use of video and trying themselves.

Plan for research and development:
• Visit Primary School (Boringdon) and talk to teachers to determine how complex the game should be for the children’s’ level of learning.
• Find out what resources are used now to teach the children their shapes and the game could be integrated into their learning process, simply for fun to reinforce the learning, or as more of an aid in teaching the actual learning of shapes.
• By making a series of prototypes, which can be taken into school to be used by the children and tested by them. Gain feedback from them; ask them simple questions, see if they are actually learning their shapes.
• Get feedback from the teachers and teaching assistants to see how effective they deem the game in the learning process, and any improvements and developments that they feel could be made.

Technology and platform:
• Flash, this will allow best for interactivity, buttons and user drawings. We can include movies into the game, to aid visual cognition. Flash makes it easier to make the game aesthetically appealing.
• Allows us to use ActionScript, which will be completely hidden from the user.
• We also have the option of updating, relatively easily, in the future should it be necessary.
• Able to run on Mac and PC, to make sure the game is compatible with the majority of systems available in schools.

Well….. Katina was really impressed, which is excellent! She had a few concerns, one being the state of the computer system in the primary school we wanted to use to test our software out on, but Suzanne assured her that Boringdon’s computer set up is really good and that it shouldn’t be a hindrance to us. The other suggestion was while prototyping, get the kids to peer assess each other, that way we’d get a balanced review of the game, from them and the teaching staff. Which we will of course be taking on board and doing.

We’re really keen to get on with this project, the whole design process is really exciting and being able to test it on real kids and see how they rate it is incentive to do a really decent job of it!