From The Theme
ADVANCED HUMAN COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES

WHAT IF?
What if learning materials could support input, feedback and interaction between users – learners, instructors, authors, mentors etc?

WHAT WE SET OUT TO DO
Input, feedback, and interaction among learners, instructors, mentors and authors are key to facilitating questioning and thinking. Using a scenario-based approach, this project set out to study the continuum between learners’ dialogue and paper/pencil sketching in order to develop a model of the future interactive paper textbook. This interactive textbook would potentially create and capture sharable and reusable items in context – for example, capturing user questions and thoughts, and communicating between learner, instructor, expert or author. Insights from ethnographic observations were used to design and develop new scenarios for interaction, information and activity. These scenarios served as blueprints for a rapid prototyping cycle to model and test concepts.

WHAT WE FOUND
The ShowMeTellMe prototype supports the “create and capture” process through a real-time, interactive, analog to digital multimedia conversion. The prototype provides an innovative multimodal communication experience by combining paper, digital multimedia, advanced connectivity and emerging technologies such as: “TalkingPaper” technology developed in the PBL Lab, Anoto™ paper technology, digital pens (eg. Nokia), and bluetooth cell phones (Nokia).

PEOPLE BEHIND THE PROJECT
Kincho Law is a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University. Law’s research interest is in the application of advanced computing principles and techniques for structural engineering analysis and design. His research interests include computational mechanics, numerical methods, and analysis and simulation of large-scale systems using distributed workstations and high performance parallel computers.

Renate Fruchter is the Director of the PBL Lab in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Stanford University. She leads a research effort to develop collaboration technologies for multidisciplinary, geographically distributed teamwork, and e-Learning. Her interests focus on R&D and larger scale deployment of collaboration technologies that include Web-based team building, synchronous and asynchronous knowledge capture, sharing and re-use, project memory, corporate memory, and mobile solutions for global teamwork and e-Learning.