DAT305 – The Dissertation!

Here is my dissertation in PDF format entitled:

“The Effect on Learning using Gesture Controlled Technology in Education”

Click here to download PDF

Abstract:

There have been massive leaps in gesture controlled technology in recent years with the release of games peripherals that enable players to interact with their consoles in innovative new ways by just moving parts of their body. While the technology has been popularised with great success in video games, it currently has limited exposure and usage in an education environment.

This new way of interacting with digital systems has lead to new thinking on educational applications and their place in the modern, technology enabled classroom.

The main purpose of this paper is to find out what the effect of using Gesture Controlled technology has on learning for the student. Other points of interest also include the effects on the teacher and the modern educational environment in general.

The questions asked are can this technology can fill the gap where other technology has failed to integrate itself into teaching environments before? And if it can, what is the best way to implement it?

The emerging gesture controlled applications that are coming to fruition are researched for their effects on learning and the various learning processes; active, cognitive and creative learning that gesture controlled interaction enables. Though study of learning methods, this paper aims to find out how using gesture controlled applications affect a students learning, the student’s requirements of such technology, the implications of this for the teacher and the educational environment in general. With particular focus on the effects of learning to the student, the effect on the teacher is also analysed.

The conclusion is intended to summarise a number of factors, including the positives and negatives of gesture controlled learning applications for learning, the effects on the student, teacher and classroom. The intended outcome is to clarify the validity use of such technology, its optimum place and usage in an educational environment and the potential to improve not only the learning experience of the individual student but the class group and possibly the teacher as well.

DAT302: Population – Final Presentation video

Here is the video for the final DAT302 project: Population.

DAT302: Population – How to use

If you would like to use Population, here’s how;

1.Download the Layar app on your smart phone:

2.Go to settings and then select Log in with Layar;

3.Login with the following details (This is because you can only see it through my developer account!);

4.Search for ‘Population’ and select it

5.Launch the app! You can also select your  year by pressing the  i icon in the bottom menu bar.

DAT302: Everyware – Final project Overview

Purpose

The future city is one that is going to become seriously over populated. The effects of this over population on the environment will be un-miss able and potentially disastrous to our future quality of life.

Using the immaterial layers of data that now surrounds our environment, this app aims to raise awareness of environmental issues by altering the users environment in front of them, in real time, through Augmented Reality.

This app uncovers the real environmental issues in the city in a real and impactful way. Peoples opinions of pollution and damaging environmental issues in the area they live may well change when they see how it is going to change their home and surroundings in years to come.

 

Here is a brief overview of the project;

• Population is an augmented reality app that enables you to see the effects of the growing population in your area.
• It raises the question of how we treat our physical environment by uncovering the data that is available.
• You can see land that has given way for housing  in the past and areas that may be built on in future.
• Real data is used to present things such as population, energy usage, forest loss and more
• The data is relevant to the area in which you use the app
• Links to a set of webpages that run from a database, showing you even more information
• Allows you to look at different years, from the past and in the future

The question is;

Will you change your ways after seeing what effect we’re having  on our environment?

DAT302: Everyware Final Project – Future improvements

Just some future improvements I thought of that could be done with my app..

• In the future there are many features that could be added to Population.
• More data relevant to the area could be displayed, such as the amount of natural fuels left in the area, Co2 emissions, electricity usage and more
• With faster and more accurate 3G and GPS technologies, the app can be improved to be more precise
• With the enhancement of Augmented Reality technology, a more intuitive graphical interface could be developed, to make it much easier to use
• Planning applications in your area could be visualised through the app, effecting your decisions of buying houses

DAT302: Everyware – Population: App Key explanation

Here is a key to show how the data is represented in the app;

Person

Represents 10 people in the area

 

 

 

 

House

Represents 25 people in the area

 

 

 

 

Building 

Represents 50 people in the are

 

 

 

 

 

Info icon

There is also an Info icon, which appears when there is more information available. Pressing this icons links you to a webpage with more information about your area.

DAT302: Everyware – Population: Webpages

As well as providing real time visuals in your location, Population also has a set of virtual web pages that show real time information about certain environmental data relevant to your location.

These include things like the current population, energy consumption and forest loss.

For demonstration purposes, I have only created pages here for Plymouth.

You can access the webpages here;

Plymouth pages;

http://lukebest.co.uk/population/2012.html

http://lukebest.co.uk/population/2020.html

http://lukebest.co.uk/population/2100.html

DAT302: Final Project – Population – The Presentation

Here is a link to view the Powerpoint presentation that I will be using tomorrow to present Population;

www.lukebest.co.uk/population/population_presentation.pptx

DAT302: Final Project – Coding the webpages

The webpage build has been fairly simple

Optimising for mobiles

Because the webpages will only be accessible through mobile devices, I wanted to make sure all the various elements of the pages displayed correctly, and were well optimised so that would load quickly through 3G.

Luckily I did some optimising for mobiles before, I created a set of mobile friendly webpages for the Devonport project in this module so it was a case of revisiting that information.

Some of this info is from an blog post I did for the Devonport projected (See here) but with additions related to this new project.

Developing web pages for smartphones

The pages are going to be accessed by smartphones mostly so I have focused on creating web pages formatted for smart phones and, in particular, the Iphone.

I used the following template (right) to get the dimensions of the viewing area correct so we would have a nice visual interface for the user. I didn’t want the user to have to scroll everywhere so I have created the pages in a long portrait format which works quite nicely.

To accomplish this, I found some tutorials and found that you need to set the viewport width to the width of the device by adding the following declaration to the head of your HTML file:

<meta name = "viewport" content = "width = device-width">

Then you need to set the initial scale to 1.0;

<meta name = "viewport" content = "initial-scale = 1.0"> 

And finally set the initial scale and to turn off user scaling, by adding this to the head of your HTML file:

<meta name = "viewport" content = "initial-scale = 2.3, user-scalable = no"> 

Tutorials from: http://shaunmackey.com/articles/mobile/6-tips-to-optimize-your-website-for-iphone/

Elements of the webpages

The webpages are going to contain the following features and graphics

• Logo
• Javascript counters
• Information area
• Comments area

Layouts

Data counters

Comments

Information area

 

DAT302: Final Project – Getting the counters to work

I talked a while ago about a website that showed world statistics such as population, energy consumption and forest loss in real time through use of counters called Worldometers.

I thought this way of displaying data was really impactful but unfortunately it was generalised at a world level. I wanted to do something very similar to display on the webpages.

To achieve this I found a simple open sourced Javascript counter online (Credit to http://www.hashemian.com/tools/javascript-countdown.htm) and modified it to display my data.

There is a lot of Javascript behind this, but here is a snippet of the Javascript code which basically references and sets the data within the HTML document.

<script type="text/javascript">

// <![CDATA[var myCounter3 = null
var timerId3 = null

function loadCounter(){ myCounter3 = new Counter("my_counter_3", { digitsNumber : 8, direction : Counter.ScrollDirection.Upwards, characterSet : Counter.DefaultCharacterSets.numericUp, charsImageUrl : "images/numeric_up_blackbg5.png", markerImageUrl : "marker.png" }); myCounter3.value = 2831432;
timerId3 = window.setInterval("myCounter3.setValue(parseInt(myCounter3.value) + 1,500);",4000); } loadCounter();// ]]>

</script>