Getting away from screens

After yesterday’s session on multi-touch surfaces, I saw that Rhodri Thomas tweeted:
v interesting demo earlier on use of ‘Surface’-like multitouch table – but are we ever going to get away from interacting with screens?
Which got me thinking about the degree to which we already interact with computers without screens.  I was also reminded of a [...]

ERA: Enabling remote geology fieldwork by transient wireless networking

Trevor Collins (KMI) and Mark Gaved (IET)

The Enabling Remote Activity (ERA) project provides opportunities for mobility impaired students to fully participate in fieldwork learning activities. Over the last three years ERA has developed a rapidly deployable, lightweight, battery-powered wireless network that can be used to transmit video, audio, and high resolution still images between a [...]

Sheep Dalton: How to make a multitouch surface for less than £500

IET Tech Coffee Morning: Sheep (Nick) Dalton from Computing Dept.
Change to ubiquitous/pervasive computing: from one computer to thousands of users, through one PC per desk, to thousands of computers per person.
So multi-touch surface allowing many people to interact at the same time. (Which is actually several users to one computer … interesting!)
Biggest ontology to visualise: [...]

What’s the point of it all?

My colleagues Chris Jones and Gráinne Conole are at a learning design workshop hosted by Peter Goodyear, listening to contrasting talks from John Sweller and Roger Saljo.  Chris tweeted that he didn’t like the Information Processing view:
John Sweller argued “the purpose of education is to get information into long-term memory”. I just don’t buy that [...]

Appropriation and the real function of artefacts

What’s the educational use of an iPod?
Al Briggs points to an article in the Independent about the Teaching Awards last month.  (Incidentally, these were an idea of Lord Puttnam’s, who’s now the OU’s Chancellor.) Shawlands Academy in Glasgow won an award for a scheme where the kids got iPods.  Al comments:
On seeing the headline [...]