Digital Artifacts of Daniel

Authors:

Tracy Hammond and Kenneth Mock

Summary:

Paper opens with summary of this paper.

There are two types of “digitizers”, or ways the tactile sketching device receives input: active and passive.

• Active digitizers require a special stylus that is sensed through electromagnetic signals.  The Wacom tablet is the best example. This allows for hovering, pressure sensitivity, and additional functionality through buttons on the pen. However, these pens can be lost and require calibration.
• Passive digitizers accept any form of touch, though can field more natural when using one’s finger. However, they suffer from “vectoring” when other parts of the body (i.e. the palm) touch the screen and cause jumping.

Tablet computers are convertible, switching between slate and traditional notebook form.  A standard computer can use a USB attached tablet. Microsoft Windows XP Tablet Edition and Windows Vista include handwriting recognition, other drawings, or an on-screen QWERTY keyboard. Apple computers have Inkwell, but a tablet Mac is only available in aftermarket. Linux has it’s normal issues: need drivers but lots of open source solutions.

Digital drawing obviously has advantages over it’s normal counterpart: copying, moving, deleting, etc.  These abilities are  applicable to text, imagery, handwriting, and drawn strokes, and be grouped for through functionality.  Any example program is ScanScribe. Many shapes can be auto-recognized allowing a clean up shape and/or command to follow.
In a teaching situation, drawing surfaces can supplement the experience through projection from a tablet PC or use of a large area device such as a SMART board.  Large computer displays, such as models by Cintiq, also have advantages in teaching, a lab setting, or a classroom setting.  Recording of a lecture allows students to review a missed class or material not understood during the first pass.  Drawings will then be supplemented by audio/video playback. Examples are OneNote, Captivate, and Camtasia. Reviewing recorded lectures has evidence of improving student comprehension and morale.  For a lecturer, this may require time to adapt to the medium and creation of lecture templates that allow space for annotation.

For students, a tablet’s ability becomes useful for homework assignments, as flash cards, for digital books, and curriculum-specific software. Equations, diagrams, and pictures co-exist with normal text for a completely electronic learning process.  Other domains are sketch recognition of sheet music, chemistry diagrams, mechnical engineering simulations, finite state machines, UML diagrams, etc.

Each of domains listed are supported by the author’s LADDER software which uses the FLUID framework and the GUILD system for shape recognition. This framework is extentible to other domains by writing a LADDER domain description that defines the domain’s shapes as if drawn perfectly and providing an optional hook into a CAD or other program. Shapes can also be defined by drawing them. While drawing, shapes are identified by meeting certain thresholds from the perfect shape and being within the correct context (ex: pin joint can only exist if a body and moving part are recognized first).

Two case studies are discussed.  One involved high school math teacher who, using a tabet PC and recorded lectures, noticed increased attention span and better questions. At the time, the school intended to move to a one-to-one ratio of computers-to-children with a computing environment supportive of sharing notes and electronic submissions. A second involved a middle school teacher who performed polling and teaching with tablet technology and a projector.  He noticed excitement among the students because of the technology, better assignment assignments, and more participation from parents when the material was posted online.  Both case study participants preferred a tablet PC to an interactive whiteboard, citing portablility and ease of use.

Discussion:

In the future, supply page numbers.  This one was printed in an incorrect order.

Most of the material presented is summative, minus the discussion of the FLUID framework and the use cases.  Thus I will only discuss the latter.

I am excited about the FLUID framework because, as presented, it’s open-end integration for any domain makes it quite robust.  I’d most like to see such technologies in the creation of animation, animation review, web conferencing, etc.

For the case studies, I would have liked to see more quantitative data, though the teachers were quite capabile of recognizing the qualitative results.  Did grades improve or contrast greatly from a previous semester or another offer of the same course?

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