More Multi-touch: Link to Scientific American article.

Scientific American, June, 2008 Hands On Computing: How Multi-touch Screens Could Change The Way We Interact With Computers and Each Other "The iPhone and even wilder interfaces could improve collaboration without a mouse or keyboard. "

"It is easy to imagine how photographers, graphic designers or architects—professionals who must manipulate lots of visual material and who often work in teams—would welcome this multi-touch computing. Yet the technology is already being applied in more far-flung situations in which anyone without any training can reach out during a brainstorming session and move or mark up objects and plans." -Stuart Brown

Comment:
In K-12 settings, this technology would be great for cooperative group learning, technology-supported project-based instructional activities, and group social skills training.

If you are looking for information about brain-computer interfaces, follow the link to my post about Emotive Systems neural interface on the Technology-Supported Human-World Interaction blog. It looks like it holds promise for cognitive rehabilitation applications and games.

Emotiv System's Neural Game Controller Headset: Human-Computer Interface of the Future?



Also see:
Game Interaction via Thoughts and Facial Expressions: EPOC - Emotiv Systems Neural Interface

Inclusive Music: Banana Keyboard SoundHouse Special Access Kit

For those of you looking for assistive technology for music, the Banana Keyboard and the SoundHouse special access kit might be the answer to you needs. According to the website, the kit is designed to support skill development in the following areas:

• Switch use
• Cause-and-effect
• Switch timing
• Choosing with a switch
• Music

(Pictures from the Spectronics website.)

Features:

• Sixteen keys, curved for easy access, fits well on a wheelchair or desktop.
• Connect up to eight switches to the keyboard.
• Play back words and speech, along with music.
• Software handles MIDI and WAVE sound files.
• Works with the Super Duper Music Looper software that allows children to use a paintbrush, an erase tool, and a mouse to create music.
  

Thanks, Gavin McLean, for the link!

Revisiting Interactive 3-D Brain Anatomy : The Secret Life of the Brain Website

I'm attending the first of three two-day institutes about neuropsychology, focusing on the assessment and intervention of traumatic brain injuries. It has been a while since I studied neuropsychology, so to brush up, I revisited Secret Life of the Brain, an on-line companion to the PBS series of the same name that aired in 2002. The materials cover the human brain from infancy through old age.

My favorite section of this website is the interactive 3-D Brain Anatomy tour. This on-line application allows for zooming in and out, 360 degree rotation, and exploration of the brain by area or function. When you roll over a brain part, you can find more information. The specific area of the brain becomes highlighted, and the rest of the brain becomes translucent.

Description from the website:
"THE SECRET LIFE OF THE BRAIN, a David Grubin Production, reveals the fascinating processes involved in brain development across a lifetime. The five-part series, which will premiere nationally on PBS in winter 2002, informs viewers of exciting new information in the brain sciences, introduces the foremost researchers in the field, and utilizes dynamic visual imagery and compelling human stories to help a general audience understand otherwise difficult scientific concepts."

MICOLE: Open-source multi-modal software supports cooperative learning among sighted and visually impaired children

According to an article on the ICT Results website, a project called "MICOLE" explores the ways multi-modal computing can support co-operative learning among sighted and visually impaired children by harnessing the sense of touch through haptic input devices, and providing a means to produce pictures that can be felt.

This is a quote from the article:
“Adding the sense of touch to information and communication technology is just getting to the point where it can be commercialised,” Raisamo continues. “The first people to benefit are people with disabilities, especially people who are blind or have visual impairment. The more senses you can use, the more multi-modal your computer interface, the more inclusive the technology can be.”










MICOLE stands for Multimodal Collaboration Environment for Inclusion of Visually Impaired Children.

MICOLE is an open-source project. You can download the software and SDK (MICOLELib) from the website. There also is an on-line support forum and a list of publications.

From the MICOLE project website:
"The work in the MICOLE project aims at developing a system that supports collaboration, data exploration, communication and creativity of visually impaired and sighted children. In addition to the immediate value as a tool the system will have societal implications through improved inclusion of the visually disabled in education, work, and society in general. While the main activity is the construction of the system, several other supporting activities are needed, especially empirical research of collaborative and cross-modal haptic interfaces for visually impaired children."

According to an article about MICOLE on the Axistive website:

"Among the interfaces and application prototypes that have been developed are an electronic browser, rhythm reproduction, Post-It notes with a haptic bar code, virtual maracas (percussion instruments), a tactile maze game, memory games, a haptic version of Pong and explorative learning of the internal layers of the earth."

Related:

Hands on Learning for the Visually Impaired

Multisensory User Interface

Phun: An Interactive 2D Physics Sandbox

UPDATE 4/24/11:   Phun is commercially available and now optimized for use on the newer multi-touch, multi-user SMARTboards.  It is now known as Algodoo.

From the creators of Phun:
"Phun is an educational, entertaining and somewhat (!) addictive piece of software for designing and exploring 2D multi-physics simulations in a cartoony fashion. It is part of our long term mission to bring visual physics based simulation to the masses. The application is developed for Umevatoriet, Umeås new science center, where it will run on a large interactive display, but you can also download it and run it on your own pc."

This is a partial cross-post. Additional information and links to downloads and the music in the video can be found in a post on the Interactive Multimedia Technology blog.

Ninth Grade Tipping Point: What happens in the first year of high school impacts graduation and dropout rates.

A recent set of articles in Education Week, Diplomas Count: School to College, supported in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, discusses the need to "bridge the divide between precollegiate and higher education".

The article goes on to say that "despite the vital importance of education to young people’s job prospects, Diplomas Count 2008 projects that 1.23 million students will fail to graduate from high school this year. The lowest graduation rates are among African-American, Hispanic, and Native American students."

Powerpoint Presentation
Press Release
Contacts:
Robert Johnston, (202) 955-9450, ext. 313, rjohnston AT commworksllc DOT com
Kari Hudnell, (202) 955-9450, ext. 324, khudnell AT commworksllc DOT com

I was planning on posting about this topic several weeks ago. With the latest news about the persistence of our nation's low graduation rate, I thought it would be important to take a few minutes and share what I worked on during the first several months of this year.

Last semester, I took a Visualization and Visual Communication course in the computer science department at UNCC, taught by Dr. Robert Kosara. My team originally focused on the topic of school violence and related risk factors. After looking at a variety of data sets, we discovered that young people who fall within the ninth grade age range have high rates of problems across a variety of factors and indicators.

We quickly learned that risk factors related to violence, adolescent mental health, and school dropout are studied and analyzed by a variety of agencies and organizations, and the data is culled from many sources.

The problem for information visualization is to make this data meaningful, so that it can be easily understood by decision makers who are responsible for implementing procedures and policies that result in positive outcomes.

At the time that we completed our work, we did not have the information included in the Diploma Counts 2008 report. One data set we did not consider at the time relates to the level of experience of ninth grade teachers. An article written in Education Week, after the semester ended, highlights this problem in the Philadelphia high schools. Ninth grade students are taught by the least-experienced teachers.

My hunch, given the data we covered last semester, is this is the case in many school districts nation-wide.

Having worked in high schools for many years as a school psychologist, in several districts, I think this might be true. More experienced teachers wind up teaching Advanced Placement, Honors, and IB courses. Fresh-out-of-college and lateral entry math teachers end up teaching algebra to ninth grade students. Many of these students previously failed the subject.

For our project, we took data sets and ran quite a bit of the data in ManyEyes, part of IBM's Collaborative User Experience research group, to experiment with the different forms of data visualization and to see if we prepared the data appropriately.

(I will post some pictures and of our final project soon, along with a reference list.)

Below are some graphs we found as we were gathering information for our project:


Graduation Project, 2007 EdWeek Maps EPE Research Center



Annual Study of Suspensions and Expulsions, 2006-07 Report to the Joint Legislative Education Oversight Committee, Public Schools of North Carolina State Board of Education Department of Public Instructions

Alternative Learning Placements




Expulsions by grade level

"The ninth grade short-term suspension totals in the chart reveal a definite upward trend over the last five years. The total of 71,494 short-term suspensions received by ninth graders in 2006-07 is 22.6% higher than the 58,335 received in 2002-03."

"Students who are expelled from a school and who fail to return to school are coded with “Expulsion” (EXPL) as a reason for dropping out. These students are not included in the official counts or rates that appear in this report. In 2006-2007, there were 72 dropout events coded with EXPL, 69 of which were in grades 9 through 12."


Report to the Joint Legislative Education Oversight Committee Annual Report on Dropout Events and Rates Public Schools of North Carolina, State Board of Education
Department of Public Instruction





Here is something from the Milwaukee Public Schools:




A few references:

Collins, L., Fruth, L., Sessa,M., Laird, E. The Right Data to the Right People at the Right Time: How Interoperability Helps America's Students.
June 2007

Data Quality Campaign
http://www.dataqualitycampaign.org/

Linking Education and Social Services Data to Improve Child Welfare October 2007
http://www.dataqualitycampaign.org/files/Meetings-DQC_Quarterly_Issue_Brief_091807.pdf

Age Distribution of Dropouts
NC Annual Report of School Violence 2006-07
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=704133

Report on the Implementation of the Gun-Free Schools Act in the States and Outlying Areas 2003-04

Short Term Suspensions, Long Term Consequences, Real Life Solutions pdf
(Action for Children, N.C.)

Dismantling the School to Prison Pipeline (pdf)
NAACP

Visual Learners: Phoenix Mars Mission Resources

In August 2007, the Phoenix Mars Mission was launched, led by Peter Smith, a scientist at the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetory Laboratory. With the effort of a large team of people, on Mary 25th, the mission was successfully landed in the north polar region of Mars, with the purpose of studying the potential for habiting Mars and also to gain an understanding of the history of water on the planet.

The gallery of the Phoenix Mars Mission is where you can view and download the latest images from Mars. The Phoenix Mars Mission website contains a wealth of resources that would appeal to anyone curious about Mars and the current mission. It will especially appeal to people who are visual learners.

If you are an educator with access to an interactive whiteboard and can integrate a visit to Mars into your lesson plans during the last days of the school year, a trip to the Phoenix Mars Mission website is a must! The website is well designed and user-friendly.

Renderings of the Phoenix Mars Lander

Here are few places to start:

Phoenix Mars Mission News
Web Exhibit -Mars: The Search for Water, the Search for Life
Flash Video Stream (the video has relaxing ambient music, by the way)
Images
Videos and Animations
Just for Kids - this site was designed with content by kids to share with others.

From Mars to Earth: An Interactive Timeline

Link to Top 100 Web 2.0 Tools for Educators & Resources for iPods and iPhones for Learning

If you haven't come across this link, take a look! The Top 100 Web 2.0 Tools list was put together by 155 learning professionals, who were asked to share their top 10 tools for their own learning and productivity as well as for students and others.

This list reflects the ranking as of March 31, 2008, and is posted on the Centre for Learning and Performance website.

Be sure to check out the iTouch Learning resources to see how iPods and iPhones can be used for education.

OLPC: New Design Includes Dual Touch Screen for Collaboration and Digital Books XO

Photo from One Laptop per Child via MIT Technology Review

"Hundred-dollar laptop, revisited: The next-generation version of the One Laptop per Child machine will dispense with keypads. It can be folded flat to make one larger screen (left); here, two children could play a game, each using the touch-screen capability. Or it can be held on its side and used as an electronic book (right)."

I'm impressed with the new design of the OLPCthe dual touch screen, the support of collaboration and sharing between children, and the flexibility it will provide educators and students. It can even be used as an e-Book! This laptop would be welcomed in UDL classrooms.

For detailed information about the new OLPC laptop, which has not yet been released, read David Talbot's article in the MIT Technology Review.

I want one.

eSchool News: Response to Intervention (RTI) and related resources and links

If you haven't heard of eSchool News, take a look!

I subscribe to eSchool news and have found it very useful. The resource section includes information about topics such as Response to Intervention for reading and math, student data and information systems, and more.

Classroom 2.0 Discussion Topics

If you are interested in technology and education, join Classroom 2.0! Here is a list of some forum discussions that I think you'd find worthwhile:

How are you using your classroom smartboard?

Gaming in the classroom

Second Life?

Let's share links to our blogs!

Favorite Open Source Software

Ten things every teacher should know about technology

Games for Health conference audiocast; Game Accessibility in K-12

I recently presented at the Games for Health conference in Baltimore, Maryland. The attendees and presenters at the conference came from a variety of fields- game development, education, occupational and physical therapy, health, bio-mechanical engineering, media arts, and more, all interested in sharing ideas about using game, simulations, and virtual worlds to improve health.

Many of the topics covered during the recent Games for Health conference apply to K-12 settings. If you think about it, many children and teens are at risk for health problems that will adversely impact their lives as adults. If we can provide a means for young people to develop healthy behaviors and attitudes at an early age, we will help to ensure healthy futures, for individuals and communities alike.

If you have a little time, you can listen to the overview provided in an audiocast consisting of interviews with Ben Sawyer and others involved with the conference.

My presentation slides - Game Accessibility and Health Education in K-12 Settings - from the pre-conference, are posted SlideShare, where you can find slides from other presentations on the Games for Health group section.

You can find more information on the Pioneer Portfolio of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation website, including a section about Games for Health.

(Cross-posted on Interactive Multimedia Technology.)

News: Game Accessibility Preconference in Baltimore at Games for Health Conference

I'm writing this post from the Games for Health pre-conference about games accessibility, listening to a presentation by Eleanor Robinson, from 7-128 Software.

If you are looking for family-friendly games that are accessible, the developers from 7-128 have evaluated a wide range of accessible games, and have listed them all of them on their research. Many games on the list are free:

There are several lists that are useful- where to find the games, what to look for when selecting the games, suggestions for using the games, and who to go for for help.

Alert- Links about accessible games

More to come!

Shneiderman's book, "Leonardo's Laptop" and Don Norman's "The Design of Everyday Things: Must-Reads for Universal Design for Learning Enthusiasts

UNIVERSAL USABILITY DESIGN AND THE EDUCATION CONTROL PANEL

Don Norman and Ben Scheiderman are well known in the fields of Human-Computer Interaction and Human-Centered Computing, but not as well known by K-12 educators.

Don Norman's Design of Everyday Things (2002) was originally issued as the Psychology of Everyday Things, published in 1988. It is a fun book to read, and the inspiration for my hobby of collecting pictures and video clips for my "usability and interaction hall of shame/fame".

Don has a background in cognitive psychology and computer science, and is the co-founder of the Nielson Norman group, a consulting company that focuses on human-centered services and product development.

Here is a quote from his book:

• "Before I wrote this book, I was a cognitive scientist, interested in how the mind works. I studied human perception, memory, and attention. I examined how people learned, how they performed skilled activities. Along the way I became interested in human error, hoping that my understanding of error would provide ways to teach people how to avoid mistakes. But then came the nuclear power plant accident at Three Mile Island in the United States, and I was among a group of social and behavioral scientists who were called in to determine why the control-room operators had made such terrible mistakes. To my surprised, we concluded that they were not to blame: the fault lay in the design of the control room. Indeed, the control panel of many power plants looked as if they were deliberately designed to cause errors."

If you think about it, Norman's insights hold true for the way many textbooks, lessons, and tests are designed. School psychologists and educators are interested in how people learn, and gain much information to guide instruction and interventions from the errors students make. This is also holds true during the process of functional behavioral analysis. We look for patterns of "error" behaviors to inform the sorts of behavioral interventions and supports needed for helping the student gain effective coping strategies, social skills, and related positive behaviors.

Take a few steps back, and think about the "things" common to many schools- the layout of the hallways and classrooms, the configuration of furniture and learning materials within the classroom, the organization of the instructional day, curriculum guidelines, method of instructional delivery and student assessment. How might these be elements be similar to the design of the control panels in power plants?

From this vantage point, administrators, teachers, students, and support staff play the role of the power plant operators. They are the humans embedded in this system, and they must interact within its constraints. Without much notice, the system maximizes the "error rate" for many more students than it should. This is the opposite of the intentions of the humans involved in the design. The faulty design of the education control panel may also also unintentionally contribute to the "errors" made by teachers when they make decisions about instruction and behavior management.

Universal Design for Learning principles entice us to look at how our schools are structured and and instructional methods and materials are designed, in ways that are very much akin to Don Norman's observations. From the UDL perspective, up-front design decisions made by educators or teams of educators, can ensure the likelihood that outcomes for students are maximized and errors are minimized.

On a similar note, Ben Shneiderman, in his book, Leonardo's Laptop: Human Needs and the New Computing Technologies , discusses ways that computers and technology can support the participation of all ages, abilities, and levels of literacy , in modern society.

Shneiderman begins his discussion about the concept of universal usability with the following quote from Thomas Jefferson, from a reply to the American Philosophical Society (1808):

• "I feel... an ardent desire to see knowledge so disseminated through the mass of mankind that it may.. reach even the extremes of society: beggars and kings."

Universal Usability combines the concept of Universal Design with the concepts of accessibility and usability. It is apparent that Shneiderman's thinking is strongly influenced by Jefferson's quote, which in todays terms, can be viewed as a desire for universal knowledge dissemination. This means that we must work towards inclusiveness, and exclude no one.

Shneiderman suggests that it is important to work collaboratively in order to develop methods that bridge the gap between what people know and what people need to know. Although Shneiderman's book has a broad scope,much of what he discusses holds true for K-12 settings. He proposes that education should provide students with learning opportunities beyond the traditional lecture-discussion format. Below is an outline of the components that should be incorporated into the classroom:

• Collect: Gather information and acquire resources

• Relate: Work in collaborative teams

• Create: Develop ambitious projects

• Donate: Produce results that are meaningful to someone outside of the classroom

Take the time to read Design of Everyday Things and Leonardo's Laptop. I think they would be great for school-based book studies.

muCI: Muscle-Computer Interfaces- Link to post on the TSHWI blog

Take a look at my recent post on the Technology-Supported Human-World Interaction blog about an article written by Desney Tan and his colleagues. Their recent research focused on the development and user-testing of a muscle-computer interface.

I think that the muCI system holds promise for children, teens, and adults who have special needs. I believe that this sort of interface will prove to useful in healthcare, education, homes, and community spaces, if it allows for interaction and interoperability with the technologies that people encounter in their daily lives.

This was cross-posted on the Interactive Multimedia Technology Blog

Visualization Symposium 2008, UNC-Charlotte

I recently attended the Visualization in the World Symposium, hosted by the Charlotte Viz Center at UNC-Charlotte. I was impressed by the variety of disciplines represented at the symposium- the speakers came from fields such as architecture, psychology, and geography. The audience was also diverse.

The slides from the presentations will be available soon, so check back to follow the links, or visit the Charlotte Visualization Center's website.

If you are interested in visual thinking, visual literacy, visual communication, and visualization in education, take the time to explore the links once they are posted!

FYI: There is a growing group of people who'd like to get a "World Visualization Day" off the ground. Earth Day is celebrated in our schools, why not a visualization day?! Dr. Kosara, the author of the Eager Eyes blog, is a strong supporter of this movement.

At the moment, various colleges and organizations offer a "visualization day" from time-to-time. If you live in the New York area, you might be interested in attending Visualization Day at City College of New York.

Links to papers presented at the CHI 2008 Workshop on Technology in Mental Health

A workshop on technology in mental health was held on April 6th at the 2008 CHI conference in Florence, Italy. The workshop participants covered a range of topics, including the use of technology with children who have autism spectrum disorders.

Several of the papers focused on how technology or digital media can support storytelling, an effective therapeutic tool. There is a need for technology-supported mental health interventions- I've read that In the US, up to four out five young people who have mental health problems have inadequate mental health care.

• Timothy Bickmore, Laura Pfeifer, "Relational Agents for Antipsychotic Medication Adherence". PDF

• Christine L. Lisetti, "Embodied Conversational Agents and Psychotherapy". PDF

• Julie A. Kientz, Rosa I. Arriaga, Gillian R. Hayes, Gregory D. Abowd, "Designing and Developing Technology for Caregivers of Individuals with Autism". PDF

• Joshua Hailpern, Karrie Karahalios, Laura DeThorne, James Halle, "Encouraging Speech and Vocalization in Children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder". PDF

• Eileen Brosnan, John Sharry, Carol Fitzpatrick, "Using collaborative multimedia stories as a means of engaging adolescents in psychotherapy". PDF

• David Coyle, Gavin Doherty, "Designing Adaptable Technologies for Talk-Based Mental Health Interventions". PDF

• Connor Graham, Mark Rouncefield, "‘Reminders’ for design in mental health care". PDF

• Giuseppe Riva, Andrea Gaggioli, "Virtual Reality as Experiential Tool for Supporting Empowerment and Clinical Change". PDF

• M Alcañiz, R. Baños, J Guixeres, J Gomis Tena, J Saiz, "TIPS-Intelligent Sensory Platform for Clinical E-Therapy" PDF

• Marije Kanis, Mark Perry, Willem-Paul Brinkman, "Positive Expressive Technologies for Mental Wellness". PDF

• Mark Matthews, Gavin Doherty, John Sharry, "My Mobile Story: supporting content creation and analysis in mental health interventions". PDF

• Helen Minnis, Warren Read, Tanja Schumm, Suren Putter and Jonathan Green, "The Computerised Manchester Child Attachment Story Task: a novel medium for a measure of attachment patterns". PDF

• Marcela Musgrove, "Towards a More Inclusive and Ethical InterventionT". PDF

• Markus Wolf, Stephanie Bauer, Markus Moessner, Benjamin Zimmer and Hans Kordy, "Online delivery of mental health treatments – Approaches and future perspectives for research and practice". PDF