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This is a game to practically teach chemistry and other topics through play. This truly brings interactive systems (ITS) into the classroom.
ITS is a connection between the user and the system. In my system I want both the user and machine to share information and learn from one another. This system promotes team work and being collaborative. It is also a goal of this system to facilitate creativity and creation/experiments
Schools still teach in an absorption of knowledge method, rather than a more hands‐on, activity‐based education. [Collins Halverson, 2010] Schools are in this way limiting their students as practical skills especially in technology is important in all aspects of life nowadays. All facts and general knowledge doesn’t need to be remembered as it is all a few taps away at any moment, don’t get me wrong I also believe knowledge is power. However, it is much more important nowadays is practical skills, creativity, and problem solving skills.
I want to offer a better method of teaching in a more interactive and interesting way to keep students focused and interested. I want to teach skills in a way that students can actually use in their everyday lives or practice.
How it actually works:
The game consists of a workstation that allows you to create anything and do experiments to find how certain materials react and how to use them.
The workstation is both physical and augmented allowing a greater range of supported features.
The system gives you challenges and games to use these skills.
One example is a game where each user is given an element and the other user needs to ‘guess’ the element and each turn they can test a property or examine it in one way.
This system was first thought of as a game like guess who but with the elements of the periodic table and the questions had to be about attributes. This upgraded to be much broader and complex, allowing for real reactions and physical interaction. It is a interactive system with the goal of facilitating practical learning of skills.
A key direction I want to take is as new technologies and teaching style are invented they can be incorporated into the system.
References
ActiveVision. (2018, 10). ActivStation. Retrieved from ActiveVision: https://www.activevision.co.nz/interactive-panels/activstation/
Barnatt, C. (2017). DIGITAL GENESIS - The Future of Computing, Robots and AI. explainingcomputers.com.
Collins, A., & Halverson, R. (2010, Jan 12). The second educational revolution: rethinking education in the age of technology. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 26(1).
Connor, A. M., Marks, S., & Walker, C. (2015). Creating Creative Technologists: Playing With(in) Education. Springer Series on Cultural Computing, 35 - 56.
Google. (2018, 10). The new Chromebooks are here. Retrieved from Google.com: https://www.google.com/chromebook/
Proctor, B. (2008). Group Supervision: A Guide to Creative Practice. SAGE.
By opening a sodium ion channel in the neuron you can cause an action potential. The problem is triggering the channel to open, so how do you go about this? By charging the ion channel above 70mv you can trigger it to open. To do this it is theoretically possible to do it with an IR Laser. The idea being the laser will focus on the sodium ion channel and then charge it by 70mv then the chain reaction known as an action potential will do the rest for you. This will not work though because you can’t get a laser to focus 70mv on 0.0003µm or 0.3nm. The other option is the Neurotransmitters, by giving that area of the neuron a charge of 70mv the chemical process will be triggered and will fire the next neuron. This area is significantly larger.
If I were to use voltage-sensitive fluorescence or intracellular fluorescent dye-marking to show the firing of neurons and aim the laser at the axon bouton then my prediction is the neuron will light up showing it has fired.
The uses of this are endless in BCI. This would be a whole new way of outputting directly into the brain. This would also have many medical applications as well. This although very exciting and possible is also incredibly dangerous. We are still only scratching the surface when it comes to understanding the brain.
BOISVERT, M. (2013, December 4). CONTROLLING THE BRAIN WITH LASERS! Retrieved from Neuwrite: https://neuwritesd.org/2013/12/04/controlling-the-brain-with-lasers/
Millisecond infrared laser pulses depolarize and elicit action potentials on in-vitro dorsal root ganglion neurons. (2017, September 1). Biomedical Optics Express, 8(10), 4568–4578. doi:10.1364/BOE.8.004568
O'DONNELL, E. (2012, March). Light-Up Neurons. Retrieved from Harvard Magazine: https://harvardmagazine.com/2012/03/light-up-neurons
Richter, C.-P., & XiaodongTan. (2014, May).
Photons and neurons. Hearing Research, 311, 72-88.
doi:10.1016/j.heares.2014.03.008
This expanded on the last idea but after reading https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/splitting-carbon-dioxide/ about how you can turn CO2 into oxygen and fuel. This is done by passing the gas through high powered lasers, This separates CO2 molecules to O2 and CO, if you add water (which is also in your breath) you can make a biofuel. I thought to moving this technology into a wind instrument. This way the environment is being saved (slightly) and you have music.
Interactive Technology in Education
Interactive Systems for Play
I want to create a fun, yet, educational game aimed at high school students to help teach chemistry in a fun way. This game will be similar to Guess Who, however using the elements and you need to guess by chemical properties.
This is a work in progress however I can see this being used in classrooms and by teachers. This idea is however lacking a ‘punch’, an idea or feature completely out of the ordinary and not thought of before. I would like to add more new ideas to this concept and see where it turns out.
“Teleport around boundless virtual worlds sitting at your desk, or create a dedicated room-scale play area where you can physically walk around. “ https://www.vive.com/
head tracking was like real life when looking around. The controllers are also tracked and show in the environment. It was a very immersive experience, however as an interactive system, innovation was missing. the controllers are pretty standard and the technology inside them has been around for quite a while. Even the PlayStation has a trackable controller, in fact most consoles seem to now. https://www.playstation.com/en-us/explore/accessories/vr-accessories/playstation-move/
“Microsoft HoloLens is the first self-contained, holographic computer, enabling you to engage with your digital content and interact with holograms in the world around you.” However, I found it to have limited view area. The gestures worked well to control the virtual components.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/hololens
instruments have also made use of these actions such as the Infra-Red Harp. http://www.thenaturalistsnotebook.com/our-blog/a-harp-with-no-strings
The Quipu was an ancient system of recording data as knots. One user would tie knots in a row of hanging strings and another person could read it. This was also sometimes worn. This I believe is a valid example of an interactive system as data flows.
There are many systems that are interactive without technology, they are arguably endless.
ban-sugoroku (Board)
e-sugoroku (Picture)
ban-sugoroku is similar to western backgammon, whereas, e-sugoroku is similar to western Snakes and Ladders.
A group of people made a computer, microcontroller, and projection mapping version of this game for use in museum displays to teach the rules through play.
This opens up a plethora of opportunities for teaching about the past and history. Even things that cannot be reproduced in the real world can be achieved in a virtual/augmented one.
A lot of buildings are interactive. You walk up to the door and it opens, press a button and a lift comes to your floor, etc.
How do you make buildings interactive for everyone?
Technologies, any technology, a website, how do you make this inclusive of all users?
A major part of ITS is accessibility in my opinion. Making an interactive system that is usable by everyone is an important part of any design and should always be considered. In a lot of cases you need to be accessible by law.
Some common things to account for is:
You should also consider conditions like epilepsy in projects.
Orphe is a throwback to childhood with light up shoes. The difference is they are programmable and connect to a smartphone. Gestures and movements can trigger the lights as well as change the colour.
Furthermore, the shoes can be used as an instrument. On top of that they have an opensource SDK so you can program them to do whatever you want or just use their smartphone app.
“Beautiful gradation and catchable animation. Orphe has a LED sole inside which realize completely new expression, but that’s not all. Built-in motion sensor will detect your legs movement in real time, and your walk will get analyzed in high accurate data. By connecting to smartphone and computer, Orphe may turn into a musical instrument and controller. If you are a developer, you can develop an application compatible with Orphe by using the free SDK. You may use this as a dance, music, health care, VR/AR and more.“
This is another accidental device discovery for experimental music.
SketchSynth is an interactive synthesizer that the user creates by drawing the controls and that creates a touch interface. This is interactive in both the setup/drawing and in the use/ synthesizer.
SketchSynth developed by Mr. Billy Keyes is a device that currently has three kinds of parameters, “momentary button”, “toggle switch”, and “slider”. Just by drawing on paper you can make a synthesizer.
SketchSynth is built with a camera that can read the drawin/sketch on paper, a special projector that displays the parameters, and the main program open Framework. At this moment, it is not a product that has been commercialized as a musical instrument, so anyone can not easily introduce it, but this kind of interesting idea and connection of state-of-the-art technology will be a catalyst for creating a wonderful instruments.
I see SketchSynth having more uses than just a synthesizer and hope they explore other areas such as experimental instruments.
A wooden window with a piece of material on the back so we could backward project a storm. This also has storm sounds through a set of speakers. We also have a heart rate monitor and a tablet on the table. The storm changes when you type in words and also changes with your heart rate. j
I have worked on many more systems that can be considered Interactive, in fact, most things I have made are interactive in one way or another.
Using multiple cameras in sports tournaments to have in-home 360-degree view using your remote.
Features
Robust object tracking technology using machine learning.
With object tracking techniques using machine learning, you can track balls robustly under various circumstances. Also, by improving the frame rate of the processed video, you can track balls with faster motion than ever before.
Camera calibration for multiple movable cameras
We developed a calibration technique for multiple movable cameras that can process with high accuracy and in real time. Through this, even when the camera and subjects move, accurate three-dimensional position calculation and CG synthesis can be done in real time.
Future plans
In addition to improving the performance of each elemental technology, [NHK] will proceed with verification in various competitions aiming for use at the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympic Games in 2020.
Interactive viewing of multi-view video using MPEG-DASH
MPEG-DASH is a technology that you can watch while switching the viewpoint smoothly by touch operation with PC web browser or smartphone. It is done by generating the camera image of each viewpoint by the MPEG-DASH method and efficiently distributing it according to user’s operation.
Utilization of image processing technology on the cloud
You can now watch content such as 360 degree video that requires advanced video processing even on terminals like CPU and memory with limitations on TV and memory [by using the cloud]. Execute video processing according to user’s operation on the server on the cloud and realize it by transmitting to the television by WebRTC.
Future plans
We are pursuing technological verification for practical application and R & D aiming for stable and comfortable net viewing.
- Translated from the original in Japanese on the NHK website: https://www.nhk.or.jp/strl/open2017/tenji/ display 4 and 5
I believe this technology is inevitable and shows new ways to watch and think about television. This adds a whole new level of interaction to TV and video viewing in general. I look forward to seeing if they succeed in time for the 2020 Olympic games.