How Do I Find My "Slither" of Research

 

 

Here is a little information about the program that I facilitate at STCC. It was developed by Pearson, and I am still learning about the various components. I work in the Reading lab, and I see that the students who are motivated to finish, do just that. Other students only work on the program when they are in class, and that was not the intention of the program. Most of the work is to done outside the classroom, and tests are the only things that need to be done in class as they are proctored. I am still thinking about the problem or question that I could have, and I think student motivation could be something that I delve deeper into… hummm:

More about MY LABS PLUS:

MyLabsPlus is a dynamic online teaching and learning environment designed to support online instruction programs with rich, engaging customized content. Convenient administrator tools and dedicated administrator support allow departments to grow their programs with confidence.

Jackson State Community College's Mathematics Department Wins Prestigious Bellwether Award Pearson's MyMathLabPlus helps colleges and universities improve student performance, control costs

Using Pearson's MyMathLabPlus, an innovative online homework and tutorial system, Jackson State Community College has achieved a 13 percent improvement in student learning, a 45 percent increase in its student pass rate and a 12 percent increase in retention--all while realizing a cost-per-student savings of more than 20 percent.

MyMathLab, MyMathLabPlus Help Colleges and Universities Control Costs, Increase Student Gains Pearson, University of Alabama Honored for Groundbreaking Use of Technology to Increase Student Achievement

Pearson and the University of Alabama have received top honors from a consortium of the world's leaders in education and learning technology, in recognition of their innovative use of technology to improve math achievement.

Pearson offers colleges and universities even more benefits with MyLabsPlus--an enhanced version of the MyLabs and Mastering programs, featuring more robust administrative and reporting tools and enhanced customer support.

Pearson Announces Plans for Integration of Learning Technologies with Oracle.

Integration expected to enrich students' online learning experience, save institutions time and money

Pearson announced plans to integrate Oracle's PeopleSoft Enterprise Student Administration Integration Pack (SAIP) with a variety of Pearson products, including the Pearson LearningStudio advanced online learning environment and Pearson's MyLabs and Mastering personalized learning solutions. The announcement was made at the 2009 EDUCAUSE annual meeting in Denver, one of the largest gatherings of education technology professionals in the world.

My Labs Plus

I have been giving some thought to what I would do my dissertation on, and I keep coming back to the My Labs plus program that Southwest TN Community College uses for their remedial programs.  They are all online, however the students have to do testing on campus as it has to be proctored.  I am interested in studying it more, but what would be my problem or question?  I know I have time, but it has a way of sneaking up on me….

 

 

The History and Future of AR

The term "augmented reality" has been around since 1990 but that doesn’t mean that it was never there before. The moment that man-made gadgets that could relate to their environment and supply their users with information based on that, AR was there. It’s just that nobody thought to call it that.

 So, for those who want to know how it all went down, here is the history of augmented reality from birth to where we are today.

 Beginnings

From 1957, a gentlemen known by the name of Morton Helig began building a machine called the Sensoria. It was designed as a cinematic experience to take in all your senses and, shaped, rather like arcade machine from the 80s, it blew wind at you, vibrated the seat you sat on, played sounds to your eyes and projected a form of a stereoscopic 3D environment to the front and sides of your head. It was supposed to be impressive with its demo film of a cycle ride through the streets of Brooklyn but it never sold commercially and was very expensive to make films for largely because it involved the camera man having three cameras strapped to him at all times, and while it was really more an adventure in full virtual reality, there are clearly elements of AR involved with both the devices in place between the user and the environment and that fact that the environment itself was, itself, the real world viewed in a real time situation - even if recorded.

In 1966 Professor Ivan Sutherland of Electrical Engineering at Harvard University invented the first model of one of the most important devices used in both AR and VR today - the head-mounted display or HMD. It was a monumental piece of kit that was too heavy for the human head to actually bear and so hung suspended from the ceiling of the lab instead which was how it got its nickname as The Sword of Damocles. Being early in the scale of computer technology, its graphical prowess was fairly limited and provided just simple wireframe models of generated environments. Nonetheless, it was the first step in making AR a usable possibility.

 

AR is born

While it might have been around for a few years in one shape or other, the phrase Augmented Reality is supposed to have been coined by Professor Tom Caudell while working in Boeing’s Computer Services' Adaptive Neural Systems Research and Development project in Seattle. In a search to find an easier way to help the aviation company’s manufacturing and engineering process he began to apply virtual reality technology and eventually came up with some complex software that could overlay the positions of where certain cables in the building process were supposed to go. It means the mechanics didn't have to ask or tries to translate from what they found described in abstract diagrams in manuals.

 

At the same time, in 1992, two other teams were made big steps into this new world. LB Rosenberg creates what’s widely recognized as the first functioning AR system for the US Air Force known as VIRTUAL FIXTURES where fixtures were what he described as cues to help guide the user in their task and did so in very big letters.

 A second group, also fond of capping things up, made up of Steven Feiner, Blair MacIntyre and Doree Seligmann - all of whom now lead in the field of AR - submitted a paper on a prototpye system they called KARMA (Knowledge-based Augmented Reality for Maintenance Assistance). The team from Columbia Uinversity built an HMD with Logitech-made trackers attached to it and the object they were dealing with - a printer. The project was then to develop 3D graphics of a ghost image to show people how to load and service the machine without having to refer to instructions. The paper went down rather well and was widely cited within the science community.

 And just to prove it’s not all work, work, work, AR hit the arts world in 1994 as Julie Martin (presumably not of Neighbors fame) became the first person to bring the concept into public performance. She created a government-funded show in Australia, sounding rather like a ITV celeb show, called Dancing in Cyberspace where dancers and acrobats interacted with virtual objects projected into the same physical space as themselves. Sadly, we haven’t been able to track down any reviews.

 

The app revolution

 Until 1999, AR remained very much a toy of the scientist. Expensive, bulky equipment and complicated software all meant that the consumer never even knew of this growing field. As far as they were concerned, explorations into virtual worlds had died along with the Lawnmower Man. All that was to change though when Hirokazu Kato of the Nara Institute of Science and Technology released the AR Toolkit to the open source community. For the first time, it allowed video capture tracking of the real world to combine with the interaction of virtual objects and provided a 3D graphics that could be overlaid on any OS platform. Although the smartphone was yet to be invented, it was what allowed a simple, handheld device with a camera and an internet connection to bring AR to the masses. Almost all of the Flash-based AR you see through your web browser will have been possible because of the ARToolKit.

Educational Implications of AR in the Classroom and Training Environments

There are many different ways for people to be educated and trained with regard to specific information and skills they need. These methods include classroom lectures with textbooks, computers, handheld devices, and other electronic appliances. The choice of learning innovation is dependent on an individual’s access to various technologies and the infrastructure environment of a person’s surrounding. In a rapidly changing society where there is a great deal of available information and knowledge, adopting and applying information at the right time and right place is needed to main efficiency in both school and business settings. Augmented Reality (AR) is one technology that dramatically shifts the location and timing of education and training. My research describes Augmented Reality (AR), how it applies to education and training in the k-12 sector and the potential impact on the future of education.

I have narrowed down my focus, and I am finding it difficult to find empirical evidence that supports my thesis.  However, this is a fun process.  I am off to training Thursday to hear how AR can be integrated in to the classroom environment.  There are a lot of educational implications for AR and we are just scratching the surface. 

Narrowing My Focus

I read an article called, Alien Contact!: Exploring teacher implementation of an augmented reality curricular unit.  This paper reports on findings from a five-teacher, exploratory case study, critically observing their implementation of a technology-intensive, augmented reality (AR) mathematics curriculum unit, along with its paper-based control. The unit itself was intended to promote multiple proportional-reasoning strategies with urban, public, middle school students. The researcher used lesson transcripts, observation field notes, and teacher electronic journals, along with pre-/post-interviews and pre-observations to examine differences in implementation between the AR and Control versions of the unit. The author observed less mathematical substance and more adaptations to structure and quality during the AR implementations. In addition to uncovering some significant limitations with AR as it is currently utilized, this study also addresses gaps in the technology literature. Criticism of technology literature includes the fact that it does not consider the effects of teacher and curricular factors on technology-based curricular interventions. By closely examining the implementation of one augmented-reality based, mathematics curriculum, this research provides insights about how and why such curricula become transformed in the classroom.

I am narrowing my focus every day by reading research.  I know that I want to know more about how AR has been implemented in the K-12 classroom, particularly the younger students in lower middle and elementary schools.