VR Can be a Powerful Tool for Environmental Education
mediaX Thought Leaders Roy Pea, Jeremy Bailenson and Fiorenza Micheli have gone into a variety of educational settings, including high school classrooms, to test the impact on awareness and understanding of ocean acidification.
Designing Technologies that Mediate Human Social Interaction: Strategies for Effective Cooperation and Collaboration
From The Theme KNOWLEDGE WORKER PRODUCTIVITY WHAT IF What if we could develop a theory of “social affordances” (properties of technologies that shape online social interaction, personal judgment, and social decision-making) to better understand and even predict the effects of media design choices on behavior? WHAT WE SET OUT TO DO We set out to […]
Finding Behavioral and Neural Signatures for Collective Creativity in Groups
From The Theme KNOWLEDGE WORKER PRODUCTIVITY WHAT IF What if we could identify and measure the brain basis of creativity, and use those insights to foster creativity and productivity in teams, groups and organizations? WHAT WE SET OUT TO DO We set out to assess the behavioral and neural signatures of creativity. We aimed to […]
EteRNA: Accelerating Knowledge Creation for RNA Bioengineering through Internet-Scale Gaming
From The Theme KNOWLEDGE WORKER PRODUCTIVITY WHAT IF What if technical contributions from citizen scientists could be crowd sourced to accelerate scientific research? WHAT WE SET OUT TO DO With the EteRNA project, we aimed to rapidly advance RNA (ribonucleic acid) bioengineering, and overcome the limits of the traditional “trial and error” design cycle within […]
High Dynamic Range Image Capture and Display
From The Theme SENSING AND COMPUTING WHAT IF What if we could develop methods to transform a full range of captured image data into a high-value display for human processing? WHAT WE SET OUT TO DO We set out to develop devices to capture, store and display a high dynamic range of image data, with […]
High Speed 3D Shape Digitization Using Projected Light Patterns
From The Theme SENSING AND COMPUTING WHAT IF What if we could quickly determine and track the 3D shape of a moving or deforming object? WHAT WE SET OUT TO DO We set out to address one of the central problems in computer vision – the ability digitize an object at high speed. Rapid digitization […]
Force Input Device for Graphical Environment Tweaking (FIDGET)
From The Theme SENSING AND COMPUTING WHAT IF What if we could provide natural interactions with 3D environments? WHAT WE SET OUT TO DO We set out to develop a handheld physical input device that would allow designers to use their dexterity—the whole hand, both hands, perhaps even the whole body— in interacting with graphical […]
Making SENS: Science Education Networks of Sensors
From The Theme SENSING AND COMPUTING WHAT IF What if we could better understand how environmental sensor networks could be used for learning and education? WHAT WE SET OUT TO DO We set out to convene a workshop on how environmental sensor networks could be used for learning and educational purposes at the pre-college and […]
Persuasion Through Mobile Devices and Operant Conditioning via Interactive Technology
From The Theme SOCIAL AND COMPUTING SCIENCES WHAT IF? What if we could better understand how computers (including handheld computers and mobile phones) might use principles of behaviorism to influence people and change their behavior? WHAT WE SET OUT TO DO We set out to enhance investigations in two areas: (1) persuasion through mobile devices […]