Helping digital learning become physically interactive

When combining my interests for education and architecture, I started to think about how digital technologies were impacting on the teaching of subjects within our schools, and in particular, within maths.

Currently digital technologies and teaching maths fuse together mainly through web based, or at least screen based, maths tasks which are reliant upon the students maintaining interest in looking at a computer screen for long periods of time. This can become boring, especially for younger children who become fidgety!

On the other hand, however, classrooms are full of physical maths aids, such as abacus', movable clocks, counting blocks, etc.

What I'd like to look into is combining these two elements into a spatial, tangible learning experience, which uses digital technologies embedded in physical objects or environments to generate ideas and help the learning process. This could easily be translated into other subjects, such as English, science, geography, history, foreign languages, etc.

I'm sure there are precedents of this that have been looked into already and over the next few days, I'd like to look into any existing research that has been carried out.

So far I have found one learning proposal, suggested by Larissa Alexander at Stanford University, which talks about creating a series of blocks, which when linked together add up on a counter below and feed back the total number.

I like this idea, however I'd like to go further by looking into how children learn, and instead of returning a number straight away, creating a system which challenges the child into thinking about the answer of the task, before the real answer is declared.

I'd also like to make the spatial experience into one which is even more tangible and physical, perhaps even linking it into P.E. classes or full internal/external space designs.

Another quick blog post I stumbled across is one by UpsideLearning, which explains how digital technologies embodied in physical objects can aid learning and which digital technologies could be employed to do this.

Interactive Display Window Concept

This is something that I found that I thought might be interesting for Hannah and her shop fronts.

Conversational Space

My first blog post this week, Research Adjacencies looked at a method of sorting people with regards to using their tablet computers and research data but a question I want to then ask is how can this mediate the landscape around them? Do we want to have a space that can sense tension in our voice and then adjust the space accordingly or is this something we do manually?

A simple example of this can be seen in the computer game, The Sims where characters emotions and feelings are highlighted above their head with a simple symbol. Can this then be translated into spatial terms? If someone is having a heated debate then can the atmosphere change around them?This then brings rise to another question, can the architecture around us encourage conversations that are social and not just individual?

Two projects that I have found that seem to address this are:

1. ‘Bubbels’ by Michael Fox. This is a more abstract art installation however, the bubbles have the potential to change the space from an open space to allow lots of people to associate together or a series of smaller spaces.

2. ‘Hug’ by a group of students at the g-five imbedded interaction workshop. This project examines how busy spaces can be translated into mor private space by the architecture moving around them.

Also, can architecture represent certain atmospheres generated by the meeting of two people?

Research Adjacencies

“An interactive architecture environment can also provide a unique sense of space heightened by the constantly changing information exchanges in small or large groups.”

The above is an interesting quote from Interactive Architecture by Michael Fox and Miles Kemp that has inspired my blog posts this week.

This post really stems from a piece of software that Martyn is developing with a software engineer and adapting it to a different situation. The tablet is a fast growing device and provides a platform for people to store their life on. What I am interested in exploring is how the tablet can represent (research wise) the person and then how can this orientate them with other people and shape the environment around them. What I am proposing is that if everyone in a research group stores and reads there current papers on their tablet then a piece of software could search through these looking for key words. From these key words a database can be compiled and used to link people researching the same/similar topic together. Also, if certain clashes were known in a research field then these people could meet up to debate.

An interesting question that stems from these associations is to do with adjacencies of people. Can we have an environment that re-arranges itself to link certain people together (like the Boeing example that I talked about a few weeks ago ) creating a space in constant flux? Will this lead to a more productive research environment?

It’s all front.

Continuing to focus my ideas on the high street, today I have decided to look at the shop front. I find the shop front an interesting place to start because I believe it is one of the many large influences over our movement on the high street. The high street is essentially a massive shop shelf with all the products vying for our attention. The lure of a fantastic shop window can literally change the course of your direction.

The shop front strongly relates back to the seven seconds rule I have spoken about in a previous blog. At a glance the shop has to convince you that they have exactly what you need. They need to some up the entire shop in their display.

Creating the perfect shop front has become a profession within itself and it is usually the visual merchandising team that help create it. Visual merchandising has become such an important element in retailing that a team effort involving the senior management, architects, merchandising managers, buyers, the visual merchandising director, industrial designers, and staff is needed.

Selfridges are the Norman Foster of shop fronts with their windows becoming attractions in themselves.

This had me thinking about what the shop front may become in the future. Already when I am on certain websites adverts pop up that seem very much aimed at me and I’m sure they have information on my age, sex, location and even sometimes my name. What would happen in the future if the shop front would change depending on who’s looking at it?

This had me thinking about what my shop front would be like and so for a quick exercise I’ve designed my own personal shop window.

The shop’s name is my nick name given to me by some of my closest friends. The display consists of taramasalata and diet coke (my staple diet), a drawing board, a portfolio, a drawing of my friends, ‘Effy’ boots, boxing gloves, music headphones, disco ball, an urban sign, a ‘I heart north London’ t-shirt, cut off shorts, a pint and 90% student discount!

The question is, what would be in yours?

Where no one knows your name but everyone’s welcome.

After a manic week I thought I would quickly blog about where I think I would like to focus my project in preparation for my expressions of interest over Easter.

I would like to focus my attention on a particular place which is layered with different activities, architecture, economics, communities and so much more.

The one place all these different people share and still feel like they belong.

…..AND pretty much everyone in-between?........The Great British High Street.

It is recognised as one of, if not the, best in the world for fashion which relates to my earlier blog posts.

The British economy relies on us splashing out our well earned cash on it and we don’t let them down, spending billions each year.

The tapestry of life encompassed within it is fascinating and I believe it is the perfect setting for my research to take place whatever that may be and wherever that may take me.

Current Affairs

Tasked this week to come up with a post relating to an interaction more personal to me, I started thinking about how I spend my weekends - I like to go kayaking, with a club based out at Blyth within sight of a project Newcastle Universities Culture Lab put together last year.

"Current" is a simple premise, expressing the wind energy available on a coastal site as a sort of light show embodied within a series of beach huts. I like this installation, certainly more than I like the IDP designed beach huts themselves. With a history of wind generation on the site the installation gives a visual representation to the element and reacts in real time to changes.

Its a simple idea, I wondered weather we could do something similar to express human presence within buildings? Could we use piezo-electric devices to convert the vibrations from foot steps on a floor to power a visual or aural expression of the that persons movement within the building facade? Could we even take this notion further to map working relationships within an office or studio?