Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Building Capable, Energy-Efficient, Flexible Visualization And Sensing Clusters From Commodity Tablets, Thomas Delgado Dias, Xian Yan, Konstantin Läufer, George K. Thiruvathukal

George K. Thiruvathukal

We explore the application of clusters of commodity tablet devices to problems spanning a “trilogy” of concerns: visualization, sensing, and computation. We conjecture that such clusters provide a low-cost, energy-efficient, flexible, and ultimately effective platform to tackle a wide range of problems within this trilogy. This is a work in progress, and we now elaborate our position and give a preliminary status report. A wide range of Android tablet devices are available in terms of price and capabilities. “You get what you pay for” w.r.t. display resolution, sensors, and chipset---corresponding to the trilogy. $200 gets one a 1280x800-pixel touch display, …

Beyond Computer Science: Computational Thinking Across Disciplines, Amber Settle, Debra S. Goldberg, Valerie Barr

Amber Settle

Finding Evidence Of Metacognition In An Eportfolio Community: Beyond Text, Across New Media, Kathryn Wozniak, Jose Zagal

Kathryn Wozniak

Finding evidence of how metacognition is demonstrated in educational ePortfolios is often limited to written artifact analysis and ignores new media such as images, video, links, and navigation schema. This study seeks to begin to fill this gap through a qualitative content analysis of 30 learners’ ePortfolios developed in a networked ePortfolio community. We found evidence of learners’ metacognition in their choices, integration, and organization of new media content in the ePortfolio. We propose that intentional analysis of learners’ choices and arrangement of new media can help educators and researchers find additional evidence of metacognition beyond text within digital learning …

Editorial: High-Tech Lust, Katina Michael

Professor Katina Michael

Are you in love with your Android or Apple device? Do you have a deep affection and suffer from separation anxiety [1] when your smartphone is not within arm’s length of your bed at night?

Don’t worry, you’re not alone. Rossiter [1] differentiates between “brand love” and “brand liking” which is significant. When it comes to our high-tech gadgetry people are likely to be able to cope better with being separated from a partner or child than being separated from a vital piece of technology which goes with them everywhere.

Simple, Robust And Accurate Head-Pose Tracking Using A Single Camera, S. Meers, Koren Ward, I. Piper

Dr Koren Ward

This paper describes an inexpensive, robust method for tracking the head position and orientation of the user by using a single low-cost USB camera and infrared light emitting diodes concealed within spectacle frames worn by the user. Unlike gaze and head-pose tracking systems which rely on high-resolution stereo cameras and complex image processing hardware and software to find and track facial features on the user, the proposed system is able to efficiently locate and track the head's orientation and distance relative to the camera with little processing. Due to the infrared light emitting diodes having fixed geometry, the system does …

Head-Pose Tracking With A Time-Of-Flight Camera, Simon Meers, Koren Ward

Dr Koren Ward

Intelligent interfaces that make use of the user's head pose or facial features in order to interpret the user's identity or point of attention, are finding increasing application in numerous fields. Although various techniques exist to passively track the user's gaze or head pose using monocular or stereo cameras, these systems generally cannot perceive in detail the characteristic three-dimensional (3D) profile of the user's head or face. Time-of-flight cameras, such as the Swiss Ranger SR-3000, are a recent innovation capable of providing three-dimensional image data from a single sensor. The advent of such sensors opens up new possibilities in the …