Archive for March, 2012

Brainstorming: Field studies for situated learning – Søren Eskildsen

Written by matthias on . Posted in Events

Date: 23 May 2012
Time: 13.00-14.00
Place: NJ14 3-228 (Las Vegas)

Between 2007 and 2009 around 60.000 immigrants were coming to Denmark each year (Grunnet 2010). The main integration activities for these new citizens are language courses run by the communities, which are offered free of charge or with a minimal fee. The goal of these courses is to put the new comers into a position, where they can participate in everyday Danish life. But although the courses establish a thorough theoretical understanding of the language, they often lack the possibilities to motivate the students in their everyday activities to apply this knowledge in real cultural settings and thus to pro-actively participate in their host society.

To cope with this applicability problem, we suggest an approach based on our previous work on intercultural communication (e.g. Rehm et al. 2009) that puts the cultural and language learning task in the context of its actual use by embracing new and innovative training methods – like situated and experience-based learning – that have been shown to be more effective in terms of cultural integration (Landis et al 2004). Imagine e.g. a situation where the student stands in line at the train station in order to purchase a ticket. This can be seen as an ideal situation to trigger a Danish learning session on buying a train ticket. The student has some time for this session as he is waiting for his turn, he is in the right context for the knowledge that is conveyed and he is able to apply the knowledge shortly afterwards in a real situation.

The talk will be about presenting the idea and approach on how to incorporate a system/application, which will support this claim about how context based learning can be more effective in cultural integration. I hope to gain some insight from many of the “immigrants” that currently inhabit here on the department.

Bio
Søren Eskildsen graduated as M.Sc. from Medialogy in the summer 2011 at AAU Aalborg. With main focus on creating virtual environments with the purpose of investigating learning possibilities by using a more vivid approach to creating learning material. This idea has paved the way to Namibia to work on preserving indigenous knowledge for duration of 3½ weeks. His master thesis focused on learning from a virtual environment and measuring different activities like preferred media. He is currently employed as a Research assistant at Medialogy Aalborg, where the current project regarding cultural support in a learning context is being investigated. In addition he teaches Animation and Graphic Design on first semester as well as supervising on several semesters (2nd & 6th).

An Art and Technology of Understanding – Jamie Allen

Written by matthias on . Posted in Uncategorized

Date: 09 May 2012
Time: 13.00-14.00
Place: NJ14 4-107

Jamie will present the work and direction of CIID’s new Research group and discuss the particular situation that is Interaction Design Research within a private Institution that encompasses Consulting, Education and research interests.  He will also present a series of his art-design and technology projects which develop ideas in the discovery of systems, and the possibility of fostering creative relationships to the systems and material complexes of technology.
http://heavyside.net/
http://ciid.dk/consulting/people/jamie-allen/
http://ciid.dk/

Bio
Jamie Allen is Head of Research at CIID and directs the strategy and focus of research and experimentation at the institute. He has taught at the Interactive Telecommunication from the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, the Pratt Institute of Art and Design, the Kolding School of Design and others. Prior to his work with CIID, he was Assistant Direct of Culture Lab, Newcastle University developing artistic and technology initiatives. His own work is focused on intersections between art and design, technology and culture, people and knowledge.  He has extensive industry experience and expertise in people-centered technologies, having worked with IBM, DuPont Inc., ESI Design and the American Museum of Natural History.

Software-Based Adjustment for Static Parallax Barriers for Autostereoscopic Mobile Displays – Martin Marko Paprock

Written by matthias on . Posted in Events

Date: 02 May 2012
Time: 13.00-14.00
Place: NJ14 3-228

We show that the autostereoscopic display of stereoscopic images using a static parallax barrier can be improved by adapting the rendering to the angle under which the user is looking at a mobile display; thus, ghosting artifacts and depth reversals can often be avoided even if the user tilts the mobile device. Instead of moving the barrier itself to compensate for a misplacement of the device in relation to the user, a pixel column shifting in software can provide a similar compensation. This requires a parallax barrier where each section covers two pixel columns at a time. The proposed method has been implemented using OpenGL shaders and a parallax barrier that was designed for a display of exactly half the resolution of the employed display. Technical tests showed a good left and right image separation with a viewing angle of up to 60 degrees. Preliminary user tests indicate that an improvement in stereo experience can be observed.