Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
the teacher's attention was disturbing the teaching
process going on in that classroom. Therefore, we
returned to the development phase (design phase
III) to create the opportunity for the teacher to turn
off the sound, only allowing the child to remotely
control a flashing light to draw the teacher's atten-
tion. This was evaluated more positively (again
design phase IV).
Another example was the complaint of all
participating children that the opportunity of tak-
ing a snapshot of the blackboard was not enough
to assure continuous attention for the ongoing
instruction (design phase IV). During the time
between the click on the button and the incom-
ing picture (on average 20 seconds), the children
hardly paid attention to the teacher's or classmate's
talk and were mainly “waiting for the picture”.
Afterwards, the child paid attention to the picture
and by doing so it focused on content that had been
discussed a few minutes before in the classroom.
Therefore, a revision of the technologies in use
was needed. The researchers returned to phase
II by asking the participating children how they
would improve the prototype with regard to this
problem. In general the children answered:
“The
best solution would be to work with a webcam
that can zoom three times: the first time to see
classmates in more detail, the second time to see
the whole blackboard. This zoom position would
allow reading writings in a big font size. The third
zoom position should provide a very clear view on
the blackboard, even when the font size is smaller”
.
Based on these findings, possibilities to provide
a webcam with zoom function were tested again
in phase III, but the broadband capacities of most
schools and families did not allow us to perform
actual field trials with the new prototype yet.
Furthermore, the teachers and children also
pointed out the significance of audio quality, for
example to follow a group discussion.
Despite the illustrative strength of this case
description, some suggestions for future research
should be explained. First, due to time constraints-
due to their sickness and the involved treatment
the children seldom are able to participate on a
regularly basis-no data was gathered and com-
pared across different educational settings in the
first design phase. The data resulting from this
study did not allow us to conclude on the relative
quality of instruction and social contacts between
respectively the classroom and the home or hos-
pital as educational setting. Further comparative
research might refine the needs found in the
first design phase and might necessitate another
iteration through the different design phases to
develop a tool that fulfils these refined needs
more adequately. In line with this suggestion,
it might be interesting to compare the school
experiences of participating children as studied
in the evaluation phase across different settings,
e.g., the child being home-instructed, the child
being instructed in its regular classroom and the
child following classroom instruction by using
the developed tool. Such a research design would
lead to a more founded evaluation of the tool.
Finally, longitudinal follow-up research is needed
to illustrate the long-term effects of long-term or
chronic childhood illness and the possibilities of
ICT to affect these effects in a positive way.
CONCLUSION
In this chapter, we described the IBBT ASCIT
project in which several elements of Multi
user
Virtual Environments were combined into an
integrated demonstrator that enabled long term
sick children to communicate efficiently with their
regular school and classroom learning environ-
ment. By presenting them with an attractive and a
game
‐
the-
art audio and video communication means, the
children were encouraged to spend time using
the system and to keep up with the day
like interface, combined with state
of
‐
‐
‐
to
day
‐
‐
activities in the classroom environment.
The overall concept of the system is based on
an attractive 3D world, in which the individual
children are represented by an avatar. The school
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