iPad: Links to a couple of interesting articles from WIRED

I thought I'd share links to two articles about the iPad, a tablet that is enchanting millions around the globe: 


Nobody Needs a Tablet.  So Why Are We Gobbling Them Up?
Brian X. Chen,  WIRED Gadget Lab, 3/24/11


"Indeed, it turns out that a tablet needn’t do everything that a more powerful PC can, according to multiple research studies on iPad usage. Rather, the tablet’s main appeal lies in the approachable touchscreen interface that just about anybody at any age can pick up and figure out...That’s the genius of the blank slate — with nearly 400,000 apps that allow the iPad to become a toy, a TV, a medical tool for doctors, a notetaker for students and more, it caters to an extremely broad audience." -Brian X. Chen


iPads Are Not A Miracle for Children With Autism
Daniel Donahoo, WIRED GeekDad, 3/22/11


" ...the potential of the iPad is not achieved by the iPad alone, nor by simply placing it in the hands of a child with autism. The potential of the device is realized by the way professionals like speech pathologists, educators, occupational therapists and early childhood development professionals apply their skills and knowledge to use the iPad to effectively support the development of children. The potential is realized by engaged parents working with those professionals to explore how the device best meets the individual needs of their child." -Daniel Donahoo


(I have a few thoughts about the iPad of my own that I'll share in a future post.)

Cross-posted on the Interactive Multimedia Technology blog.

Chid-Computer Interaction: A Featured Community at the Upcoming CHI 2011 Conference

During CHI 2010, I signed up for the  "Designing for the iChild" course.  In one afternoon, I learned more than I had expected, especially the technique called "Layered Elaboration", a collaborative design strategy that involves inter-generational teams of children and adults.  One of the leaders of this course was Allison Druin, Associate Professor and director of theHuman-Computer Interaction Lab at the University of Maryland.  Dr. Druin's focus is in the area of child-computer interaction and how children can be meaningfully involved as partners in the design process.  

The quote below, found on the HCIL Children as Design Partners website, explains why this is so important:

"We have a chance to change technology, but more importantly we have a chance to change the life of a child. Every time a new technology enables a child to do something they never dreamed of, there are new possibilities for the future."  -Allison Druin

In my work as a school psychologist, I use technology with students quite often, especially when I'm at Wolfe, a program for students who have more complex disabilities, including severe autism.  I have been fortunate to have a new SMARTBoard at my fingertips, and access to the school's SMARTtable.  I learn from my students every day.

I believe that we are only at the "tip of the iceberg" with this sort of technology- and related applications such as the iPad and similar devices.   In my experience, well designed technologies and applications can open up a meaningful window to the world for children, teens, and others with disabilities.

Most of the information below was taking from the CHI 2011 conference website:

About the Child-Computer Interaction (CCI) community:

"At CHI, the CCI community will want to attract papers and contributions that represent real advances in the understanding of, or development and refinement of methods for, child computer interaction. It will also seek to unearth groundbreaking innovations addressing the needs, capabilities and preferences of children that have the potential to become reference works for developments in this field."

"By its very nature, The CCI community will have to be divergent in its thinking at CHI; it must also be about two of the mainstream CHI communities – engineering and design, but will potentially also be concerned with many of the communities of technologies (Smart devices, surfaces, mobile), of experiences (Play, Learning, Communication) and of methods (participatory design, evaluation)." ....

"Child Computer Interaction is a new community for CHI. It is a place for contributions where a method or a design is proposed that is especially suited to children and that could not sensibly be easily adapted for adults.  

We are keen to have contributions to all the usual CHI tracks but are also offering four special tracks for our own extra special community. These are:

• Child Partnership Projects (CPP): A design competition for teams that include children.

• Participatory Papers: Scholarly publications that are disseminated for children readers. (i.e. written in a different way)

• Lessons from the Trenches: Targeting industrial cases and experiences. A lively venue where experiences can be exchanged, and researchers can be exposed to the realities of industrial practice in this domain.

• Theatre pieces: High quality video contributions, available in a library after the conference, of methods that can be re used and learned from."

Child-Computer Interaction Chairs:
Janet C. Read
University of Central Lancashire
Panos Markopoulos
Eindhoven University of Techology
Allison Druin
University of Maryland
childcomputerinteraction@chi2010

RELATED
Walsh, G., Druin, A., Guha, ML, Foss, B., Golub, E., Hatley, L (2009)  [PDF] Layered Elaboration: A New Technique for Co-Design with Children.  ACM CHI 2009 

Last year, I attended CHI 2010 and participated in a workshop about the next generation of HCI and education.  It was a wonderful opportunity to share ideas with people from all over the world who are interested in emerging technologies, kids, and education.  I plan to attend CHI 2011 in Vancouver, Canada next May 7-11, and even though the conference is months away, I can barely wait.  The good news it that the Child-Computer Interaction community will have an important presence at the 2011 ACM CHI conference.  I wanted to share a little bit about this development on this blog. 

Note: This was also posted on the Interactie Multimedia Technology blog.

Rich White's "Mobile Immersive Learning Lab" Project; EduSim Update

Rich White is an educational technologist for Greenbush County, Kansas, has been working with the 3D interactive virtual world, EduSim, for quite a while. He's taking EduSim to the next level.

"The concept is one of an enclosed virtual learning space - with surrounded projection of the virtual learning world the students are exploring - similar to the StarLab Concept (with a rectangular configuration). along the lines of a CAVE - however simpler, mobile, and relatively in-expensive by comparison."

The project is at the beginning prototype stage.

Below is a demo of the virtual world as it is projected on two screens that are placed next to each other at a right angle, with the center of the virtual-world view positioned where the two screens meet:

This might be a great way of reaching students who have autism!

More about EduSim:

EduSim, for those of you haven't seen my previous posts on the topic, is a multi-user 3D interactive environment used in classrooms with interactive whiteboards:

Information from Rich White's Greenbush blog about Edusim:

Wikipedia entry:
"Edusim is a Cave Automatic Virtual Environment based concept of lesson driven 3D virtual worlds on the classroom interactive whiteboard or classroom interactive surface. The Edusim concept is demonstrated by the Edusim free and open source multi-user 3D Open Cobalt virtual world platform and authoring tool kit modified for the classroom interactive whiteboard or surface. The Edusim application is a modified edition of the open source Open Cobalt Project and relies heavily on the affordances of direct manipulation of 3D virtual learning models and Constructionist Learning Principles."

History of Edusim:
"The Edusim project began in September 2007 at the Greenbush Education Service Center in Southeast Kansas as an effort to bring an engaging 3D experience to the classroom interactive whiteboard. Pilot groups were established with 6th and 7th grade middle school students throughout Southeast Kansas to observe how students would be engaged through the software, and how the user interface would need to be augmented to account for the affordances of the whiteboard, and the usability of the students."

Here is a virtual world in Edusim in COBALT, showing how a drag and drop function is used for in-world VNC application sharing:

The Cobalt 3D metaverse browser has been modified for multi-touch interaction by some of the members of RENCI, a collaborative venture of Duke University and several other North Carolina universities. The video below is Dr. Xunlei Wu, demonstrating how gesture and touch is used to manipulate items and navigate through two Cobalt virtual worlds:

Some of the members of RENCI built a multi-touch table in addition to the collaborative multi-touch wall. For more information:

RENCI: Multi-Touch Collaborative Wall and Table using TouchLib: More about UNC-C's Viz Lab