The Ambient Wood JournalsReplaying the Experience
Mark J. Weal, Danius T. Michaelides, Mark K. Thompson,
David C. De Roure
Mark Weal ([email protected])
IAM Group, University of Southampton
Overview
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The Equator IRC
The Ambient Wood Project
First trials
The Ambient Wood Journals
Second trials
Equator IRC
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Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration
EPSRC funded
Eight UK Universities
Six years funding (half-way through)
Integrating the Physical and the Digital
Partners
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Bristol
Glasgow
Lancaster
Nottingham
RCA
Southampton
Sussex
UCL
The Ambient Wood Project
Where and Who?
• Just outside Brighton
• Four Partners
– Southampton, Sussex,
Nottingham, Bristol
Project Goals
• Technology to assist in playful learning
– Helping children to take part and learn more
about scientific enquiry, through discovering,
reflecting and experimenting in an ambient
wood
– Hypothesis testing from Key stage 2 Science
– ‘Disappearing’ technology that will:
• “Make the invisible visible”
• “Bring the far to the near”
• “Bring the past and the future to the present”
Location sensing
• Static location
beacons
• Global Positioning
System interfaces
The Experience
• Children find information by
moving around the wood
• The information they
discover includes
– Probe readings
– Ambient sounds in the wood
– Descriptive voiceovers
through the PDA
– Information cards on the PDA
Information Representations
Automated orchestration
• Links triggered based on location and
sensed activity
– Voice-over played on hand-held
– Information card received by hand-held
– Sound played in the Wood
• Information builds on the previously
presented material
• World model maintained in a MUD
Infrastructure
Recording the Experience
• All events logged
– Probe readings
– Location notifications (GPS & Pinger)
– Information transmission
– Sonifications
--- 26 Sep 2002 14:12:36 --Device-Id: "clearing"
Play: "clearing/1/s-grass"
WOOD: 1033045956418L
• Facilitates debugging, analysis, and replay
The Journals
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Reflection tool providing an overview of
the experience
Based on the recorded event logs
Generated by processes that perform:
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Consolidation
Identification of meta-structure
Location fusion
Rendering into a web page
Journal architecture
The journal pages
Issues with the first trials
• Location was an arbitrary construct in the
model
• Information push left the children confused
• The information model did not mesh well
with what they were observing
• Better integration of the probe readings
was needed
The Second Trials
• A move to manual orchestration
• Tools for the remote facilitator
• The children supply the information, the
PDA becomes the journal
• Scientific enquiry is added to hypothesis
testing in the goals of the experience
The New Experience
• The children make observations and
report them to the remote facilitator
• The remote facilitator sends additional
information based on the observations
• The children can take probe readings
• The information is logged on the PDA and
reviewed both in the den and in the
classroom
The Information Cards
Manual orchestration
Conclusions
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Mixed reality experience
Hypermedia as an orchestration tool
Hypermedia as a reflection tool
Providing transference from the
educational experience in the wood back
to the classroom
• Merging physical and digital
representations
Further information
www.equator.ac.uk
MUD Slinging: Virtual Orchestration of Physical Interactions
Mark K. Thompson, Mark J. Weal, Danius T. Michaelides, Don G. Cruickshank, and
David C. De Roure. Technical Report Equator-02-053, Equator, October 2002.
From Snark to Park: An overview of the design, practical and technological
issues when developing novel learning and playing experiences for indoors and
outdoors
Eric Harris, Ted Phelps, Yvonne Rogers, and Sara Price. Technical Report Equator02-050, Equator, October 2002.
Learning through digitally-augmented physical experiences: Reflections on the
Ambient Wood project
Yvonne Rogers, Sara Price, Eric Harris, Ted Phelps, Mia Underwood, Danielle Wilde,
Hilary Smith, Henk Muller, Cliff Randell, Danae Stanton, Helen Neale, Mark
Thompson, Mark J. Weal, and Danius T. Michaelides.. Technical Report Equator-02054, Equator, October 2002.