Electronic Portfolios: a Path to the Future of Learning

Wired Campus: Electronic Portfolios: a Path to the Future of Learning - Chronicle.com: "If we truly want to advance from a focus on teaching to a focus on student learning, then a strategy involving something like electronic student portfolios, or ePortfolios, is essential.

"In an essay in the current issue of Academic Commons, three researchers write that “ePortfolios may be the most likely vehicle to help us make the transition to an academy of the future that is both relevant and authoritative.”"

Robot body language helps humans

New Scientist: Giving robots more human expressions makes them easier to understand.

Google Rolls out Semantic Search

Business Center - PC World Google Rolls out Semantic Search Capabilities: "Google has given its Web search engine an injection of semantic technology, as the search leader pushes into what many consider the future of search on the Internet.

"The new technology will allow Google's search engine to identify associations and concepts related to a query, improving the list of related search terms Google displays along with its results, the company announced in an official blog on Tuesday."

GR: A nod to the importance of higher-level cognition.

Sign Language by Cellphone

IEEE Spectrum Sign Language by Cellphone: "In the past, engineers working on technology to aid the deaf had focused primarily on hearing devices, such as hearing aids and cochlear implants, but recently they’ve been getting into what’s known as deaf technology: applications designed to make the day-to-day lives of the deaf and hearing-impaired easier. Now engineers from the University of Washington, in Seattle, and Cornell University, in Ithaca, N.Y., have taken a big step toward developing a mobile phone that allows real-time conversations in sign language.

Of course, many in the deaf community already use mobile phones to communicate via text messaging and e-mail, but deaf people almost always prefer sign language: It’s faster and more natural, just as speaking is easier than writing for most hearing people. Laptops are getting smaller and more portable, making video chats outside the home possible, but Wi‑Fi–enabled cellphones would provide even more freedom. When cellphones became capable of video sharing a few years ago, Eve Riskin, Sheila Hemami, and Richard Ladner, all newly minted IEEE Fellows, felt the time seemed right to develop a sign-language-capable phone. “Today’s world is more connected by cellphones than by any other device,” says the University of Washington’s Ladner, whose parents were deaf."

GR: This is parallel to what acoustic phoneticians have done in determining which aspects of the sound signal are crucial for understanding human language, allowing for compressed signals and thus greater maximization of bandwidth.

Wag the Robot? Brown Scientists Build Robot That Responds to Human Gestures

Brown University Media Relations Wag the Robot? Brown Scientists Build Robot That Responds to Human Gestures: "Imagine a day when you turn to your own personal robot, give it a task and then sit down and relax, confident that your robot is doing exactly what you wanted it to do."

"So far, that autonomous, do-it-all robot is the stuff of science fiction or cartoons like “The Jetsons.” But a Brown University-led robotics team has made an important advance: The group has demonstrated how a robot can follow nonverbal commands from a person in a variety of environments — indoors as well as outside — all without having to adjust for variations in lighting."

Advance in Augmented Reality

Fraunhofer FIT - Press releases 2009: "The Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology FIT just presented an Augmented Reality system for use under water. A diver's mask with a special display lets the diver see his or her real submarine surroundings overlaid with computer-generated virtual scenes. In the pilot application, an AR game, the player sees a coral reef with shoals, mussels and weeds, instead of a plain indoor pool. Applications for professional divers are being investigated.

Augmented Reality research has made enormous progress in the last few years, creating many exciting, albeit land-based applications. Now, FIT researchers are the first to demonstrate an AR application designed for underwater use. Submerged use is a major challenge for technical systems. They must be waterproof and robust enough to withstand the high additional pressure of increasing diving depth."