Nice idea to turn the syntax structure of a programming language into a theatrical play. The program is arranged into dialogues.

The Shakespeare Programming Language is different from the ordinary languages. It has got a wonderful syntax. The programs resemble the Shakespearian plays. The whole program is arranged as dialogues between the different characters in the play. It is divided into acts, which are further divided into scenes. Each scene consists of different lines, which may be the statements of different characters on the stage.

Some time ago we hosted a guy who developed a project for detecting patterns with camera phones. Interesting enough to catalog and tag data, this approach can present an interesting solution for scrolling the map in our interface design.

With the integration of cameras, mobile phones have evolved into networked personal image capture devices. Camera-phones can perform image processing tasks on the device itself and use the result as an additional means of user input and a source of context data.

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Accidentally I found this link to a commercial product that does exactly as the program developed in Zurich. It is used to read barcodes. Funny! By the way, link provided by the Tao of Mac.

Just finished reading Nicolas’ research plan, which focus on the impact of location awareness on collaboration. His hypothesis is that the underlying mechanism that impact on the collaboration performances is Mutual Modelling: the construction, made by each partner of the other partners’ beliefs, knowledge and goals.

His previous research (Nova et al, 2003) showed as maintaining a model of the partner’s position enables the other partner to infer what s/he is doing or what s/he is going to do.

Therefore, the inference process has a very central role in the collaboration. May it be that Mutual Modelling enables for faster and more efficient inferences?

Are there studies connected with the way people make inferences using spatial information?

References:
[Nova et al.2003] Nova, N., Wehrle, T., Goslin, J., Bourquin, Y., and Dillenbourg, P. (2003). The impacts of awareness tools on mutual modelling in a collaborative video-game. In Favela, J. and Decouchant, D., editors, Proceedings of the 9th International Workshop on Groupware, pages 99–108, Autrans, France.

Two interesting links about the possibility to run Mac OSX on Windows machines.

The first is the PearPC, an OpenSource project. The second is called CherryOS and is a commercial product currently at version 1.0. Both seem to promise this ability of “Penny-less Switching”. I am looking forward to a version that actualy instal itself in the place of the Microsoft Operating system, or eventually we can start from a linux install. ..

Again from Nicolas, I had a look at this interesting blog post, pointing on recent hacks for accessing an external bluetooth device. Basically, the semester project we intended to give out here at CRAFT.

The story contains some interesting links to technical articles on how to access the bluetooth communication on the phone, the OS Symbian system an how to parse NMEA data. To be continued …

Nicolas passed to me this interesting link to hacking the XboX for installing Mac OSX. I am looking forward to try it out. If it works, I have to find a replacement for the XboxMediaCenter which I use to watch DivX while at home.

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After a meeting with Pierre, we defined the best strategy for developing the computational side of my PhD.

First of all, my work wont be about building a model of communication, there are plenty of them and it is not very smart to start over with a brand new model. On the contrary, my work will target the definition of an appendix, of one chosen model, for communication enhanced with spatial information.

At first I will have to chose a model which is particularly suited for my purpose [i.e., Traum, Clark & Schaffer, Sperber & Wilson, Speech Act, M. Beker, ?]. Then I will have to justify why I choose a particular model. Essentially, each of this model referenced above is focused on Dialogue Moves, where, for instance, they focus on “acknowledgments” acts given by silence, or by non-verbal cues, of by utterances, or by action-movement.

In my case I should tailor these ideas toward an incorporation of spatial features that are the core of my particular design. Particularly, I should focus on how: 1) the emitter makes inferences about the listener reception; 2) the adaptations of the listener inferences to the emitter communication acts (trigging of preventive repair).

TITLE OF PAPERs: CSCL Symposium
PRESENTED BY: Sten Ludvigsen

CONFERENCE: CSCL Symposium
DATE: October, 9th, 2004
LOCATION: EPFL, CRAFT

—
REAL-TIME NOTES / ANNOTATIONS OF THE PAPER:
-G. Stahl, Drexel University, Philadelhia-
Thinking at the Small-Group unit of analysis.

How can we analysie collaborative learning? What are students doing in a video-clip? How should we analyse the interactions?

Should we view a group as the sum of its individual members? I am going to stree the small group as the unit of analysis.

To distinguish the perspective we have to look at Small Group where the activity is targeted to Meaning-making.

There are three theories of Collaborative Learning:
-Vygotsky: internalization
-Lave[1]: participation in a community of practive
-Small groups as enfine of knowledge building: focus on the intermediate unit of analysis.

The small group is the unit that mediates between the individual learning and the community learning. Community participation takes place primarily within small group activities. Individual learning is acquired through …

Group activity theory_ Mediation of Group Cognition_
Shannon trasmission theory situated dialog or discourse theory
Vygotsky mediated cognition mediated group cognition
Engestrom activity structure

Cognition= coherent sequence of meaningful units
Rationality as sequentiality
Dyadic conversation as sequantiality

I see mind as a cognitive artifacts. Group underwent cognitive change.
I can see different kind of collaborative learning. One of them can be called parallel collaboration which intercur when they are working on their own but they are sharing comments and talking aloud.

Making Learning Visible: participants must make thsir learning and understanding visible to each other in order to collaborate. Videas makes thsir display visible to researchers. We can identify member methods and interaction, practices of enactions. Practices can serve as snalysis.

My project is called the Virtual Math Teams.

Group discourse is the medium in which shared meaning is constructed during collaboration: the group cognition emerge as shared siscourse, which provides ideas, vocabulary, artifacts and meaning for both individualparticipants and for their community of practice.

[2]

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REFERENCES: {as documents / sites are referenced add them below}

[1] Situated Learning
[2] www.cis.drexel.edu/faculty/gerry/
…

TITLE OF PAPER: CSCL Symposium
PRESENTED BY: Sanna Jarvela, keynote

CONFERENCE: CSCL Symposium
DATE: October, 9th, 2004
LOCATION: EPFL, CRAFT

—
REAL-TIME NOTES / ANNOTATIONS OF THE PAPER:
-Sanna jarvela, University of Oulu, Finland-
Motivation in CSCL: What type of context does CSCL provide for student motivation and learning?

Why do we need motivation? Becose we have only few research in motivation. There are some naive beliefs of motivation in technology based learning. Thbeories of motivation focus on individual psychological phenomena. There are not appropriate methods available.

How motivation should be investigated? The questions about the impact of technology on student motivation have not yet been clearly formulated. We need more specific elaborations about the learning process.

The existing research on CSCL raises several questions: What type of motivation are present in the computer supported learning environment and how are these addressed?

What are the possible motivational expectations? -openess of choice; -more space for individual activities; -autonomy and sense of personal control; -contributions from pedagogical ideas; -student interest.

What do we mean about motivation in theory? Goals as cognitive representations of what students are trying to attain.

Socio-emotional interpretations are at the crossroad of this framework.

The notion of contextual motivation is a useful grounding.
Empirical findings: -non task oriented students had two kinds of motivational tendencies; progressive and regressive motivational coping.

At the beginning ot the learning project self-driven emotions play an important role.

Technology created a socially shared object which facilitates joint task-oriented work between the students.

Motivation in collaborative learning has not been specified: Group members should be motivated to share their ideas (Levine et. al., 2003). The emotional dynamics of collaboration is important (thomson & fine, 2004)

What makes students engaged in collaborative activities? How the circumstances for potential collaboration are made more optimal?

A game environment was created in order to create spaces for collaboration and increase awareness of social processes: eScape, the virtual game!

Working with technology can teach students more advances learning strategies such as social knowledge building strategies.