It is critical that we increase public knowledge and understanding of science and technology issues through formal and informal learning for the United States to maintain its competitive edge in today's global economy. Since most Americans learn about science outside of school, we must take advantage of opportunities to present chemistry content on television, the Internet, in museums, and in other informal educational settings. In May 2010, the National Academies' Chemical Sciences Roundtable held a workshop to examine how the public obtains scientific information informally and to discuss
This report highlights advances in neuroscience with potential implications for education and lifelong learning. The report authors, including neuroscientists, cognitive psychologists and education specialists, agree that if applied properly, the impacts of neuroscience could be highly beneficial in schools and beyond. The report argues that our growing understanding of how we learn should play a much greater role in education policy and should also feature in teacher training. The report also discusses the challenges and limitations of applying neuroscience in the classroom and in learning
Finger-based touch input has become a major interaction modality for mobile user interfaces. However, due to the low precision of finger input, small user interface components are often difficult to acquire and operate on a mobile device. It is even harder when the user is on the go and unable to pay close attention to the interface. In this paper, we present Gesture Avatar, a novel interaction technique that allows users to operate existing arbitrary user interfaces using gestures. It leverages the visibility of graphical user interfaces and the casual interaction of gestures. Gesture Avatar
This paper explores the interactive possibilities enabled when the barrel of a digital pen is augmented with a multi-touch sensor. We present a novel multi-touch pen (MTPen) prototype and discuss its alternate uses beyond those of a standard stylus, such as allowing new touch gestures to be performed using the index finger or thumb and detecting how users grip the device as a mechanism for mode switch-ing. We also discuss the hardware and software implemen-tation challenges in realizing our prototype, and showcase how one can combine different grips (tripod, relaxed tripod, sketch, wrap) and
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Jim SpadacciniHyunyoung SongHrvoje BenkoFrancois GuimbretiereShahram IzadiXiang CaoKen Hinckley
In this paper we describe two projects that utilize reality-based interaction to advance collaborative scientific inquiry and discovery. We discuss the relation between reality-based and embodied interaction, and present findings from an experimental study that illustrate benefits of reality-based tabletop interaction for collaborative inquiry-based learning.
New mobile devices with large multi-touch displays, such as the iPad, have brought revolutionary changes to ways users interact with computers. Instead of traditional input devices such as keyboards, touchpads and mice, multi-touch gestures are used as the primary means of interacting with mobile devices. Surprisingly, body-motion gestures are evolving to become a new, natural, and effective way for game players to interact with game consoles in a very similar fashion: in Kinect for Xbox 360, a controller-free gaming experience is made possible by using body-motion gestures to play games.
Direct-touch interaction on mobile phones revolves around screens that compete for visual attention with users‟ real-world tasks and activities. This paper investigates the impact of these situational impairments on touch-screen interaction. We probe several design factors for touch-screen gestures, under various levels of environmental demands on attention, in comparison to the status-quo approach of soft buttons. We find that in the presence of environmental distractions, ges-tures can offer significant performance gains and reduced attentional load, while performing as well as soft buttons
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Andrew BragdonEugene NelsonYang LiKen Hinckley
Recent advances in touch screen technology have increased the prevalence of touch screens and have prompted a wave of new touch screen-based devices. However, touch screens are still largely inaccessible to blind users, who must adopt error-prone compensatory strategies to use them or find accessible alternatives. This inaccessibility is due to interaction techniques that require the user to visually locate objects on the screen. To address this problem, we introduce Slide Rule, a set of audiobased multi-touch interaction techniques that enable blind users to access touch screen applications
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Jim SpadacciniJeffrey BighamJacob Wobbrock
Many tasks in graphical user interfaces require users to interact with elements at various levels of precision. We present FingerGlass, a bimanual technique designed to improve the precision of graphical tasks on multitouch screens. It enables users to quickly navigate to different locations and across multiple scales of a scene using a single hand. The other hand can simultaneously interact with objects in the scene. Unlike traditional pan-zoom interfaces, FingerGlass retains contextual information during the interaction. We evaluated our technique in the context of precise object selection
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Dominik K¨aserManeesh AgrawalaMark Pauly
Modern smartphones contain sophisticated sensors to monitor three-dimensional movement of the device. These sensors permit devices to recognize motion gestures— deliberate movements of the device by end-users to invoke commands. However, little is known about best-practices in motion gesture design for the mobile computing paradigm. To address this issue, we present the results of a guessability study that elicits end-user motion gestures to invoke commands on a smartphone device. We demonstrate that consensus exists among our participants on parameters of movement and on mappings of motion
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Jim SpadacciniJaime RuizYang LiEdward Lank
Choreographed by Liz Lerman and the Dance Exchange, The Matter of Origins is a contemporary dance exploring historical perspectives and cutting edge physics about our beginnings. In Act One, audience members watch as science concepts are translated into images, music, and dance. Dancers portray ideas such as the complexity of measurement, the ways atomic particles interact, and the origins of the universe. Science-themed, multi-media experiences including images from the Hubble space telescope, CERN, and replications of atomic bomb explosions accompany the dancing. In Act Two, audience members
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Liz LermanDiane DoberneckJohn SchweitzerPaula MillerJohn Borstel