March
2009 Mobile Pod Launched for Operation Montserrat e-Missions
e-Science Usability project has been
collaborating
with local science teachers to bring a new e-mission to secondary
school pupils. The response teams are being trained on-site
in
the HCT mobile pod in readiness for their live mission using a
simulation based on real disaster data from 1996. At that
time
the Caribbean island of Montserrat was being battered by a hurricane
whilst also encountering volcanic erruptions, and life and death
decision had to be made on whether and how to evacuate the residents.
School students will be working their e-missions in the
InQbate
space, whilst communicating live with mission control at National Space
Centre, Leicester to reach and report their solutions. See here for more
information.
03.08.07 CASE Studentship - Usability analysis of
video games
We invite applications for a PhD (DPhil)
CASE
Studentship, starting from October 2007. The successful candidate will
join the Interact Lab in HCT and work closely with an international
games development company, Black Rock Studio located in Brighton. The
studentship on offer concerns issues of usability analysis of video
games. For full details here.
Applications due Aug 24 2007.
22.10.06
Fire up the young Einsteins - e-Science Projects in the News
Interact
& IDEAs
educational e-Science projects feature in Times Higher ICT
supplement (20/10/2006). Olga Wojtas reports on how
successful uses of e-Science can benefit both pupils and researchers
and bring the "wow" factor back to school science.
Our public
understanding project involved school children in live chat
with scientists in the Antarctic and the SENSE
project had young learners collecting and reflecting on local
pollution data using sophisticated handheld sensors and advanced
software tools.
Work is now needed to make GRID technology more
usable and e-Science more accessible to schools (see e-Science
in and Beyond the Classroom: Usability, Practicability and Sensability
at e-Science
'06). Keep an eye on our 2007 "Towards making GRID-enabled
schools' eScience usable and useful" project here.
30.10.04
blip @ Newlyn
Newlyn
art gallery
hosted a forum open to anyone interested in new forms of art that
explore generative and procedural processes, interaction, emergence and
artificial life. Included in this exhibition was an interactive
installation set up by the Interact Lab which made use of the Equip
Component Toolkit (ECT).
The interactive skipping/jumping
installation
gave children - and the young at heart - an opportunity to program and
interact with computers without having to touch a keyboard. It
demonstrated a vision of the future where technology will be embedded
in our everyday lives and where we can interact with computers as
easily as moving around pieces of wooden blocks or skipping with a
rope.
Equator project
which facilitates the rapid prototyping of ubiquitous environments. It
is designed to be used by experience builders who wish to manipulate
emerging technologies into novel arrangements, these being created by
artists and technologist alike.
16.06.04
InTouch Seminars, London
InTouch
is a collaborative project between the Interact Lab at the University
of Sussex, BT/chimera and Victoria Real, and is funded by the UK's
ESRC, EPSRC and DTI PACCIT initiative. The project has been looking at
online services that make use of broadband technology in the home to
support social networks.
There will be two seminars: (i) Supporting social networks: design and
evaluation of social software and (ii) Impact of Voiceover IP on the
online gaming experience. The cost for the day will be
£125.00
per seminar. For further information please contact: Linda Kennedy,
CASA, University of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9QH. Telephone 01273 678 367.
Email l.e.kennedy@sussex.ac.uk.
A copy of the seminar flyer can be downloaded at intouch.pdf
07.05.04
HCT Open Day
The Human-Centred Technology (HCT) Research Group
at
Sussex is one of the UK's leading, internationally renowned research
centres in Human Computer Interaction, interaction design, interactive
learning environments and socio-cognitive analysis. The HCT Research
Group comprises both The Interactive Digital Educational Applications
Lab (IDEAs) and the INTERACT lab. This years HCT Open Day will take
place on 7 may at 2.00pm. Hands-on sessions, demonstrations, posters
and presentations of the innovative applications and systems we have
built will be provided. The open day will provide opportunities for our
colleagues in commerce, industry, academia, government and the media to
meet the researchers and faculty who work in the research centre and to
discuss further collaborative enterprises.
For a copy of the current newsletter please download hct-news.pdf.
03.07.03
Go Digital Radio Listeners Hear About Ambient Wood
The BBC World Service radio programme Go
Digital featured the Interact Lab's Ambient Wood project on
1st July ( click
to hear the programme from archives ). Ambient Wood, part of
the Equator project,
produced a second successful experience for local school children last
week. Pupils from Varndean
School
in Brighton came to the wood in small groups to explore a number of
different habitats. Their experiences were digitally enhanced with
probing and listening devices, walkie talkie radios and handheld
computers. The pupils reported back what they had found to a "den"
area, and received messages back via the handheld. In this way an
individualised electronic journal was kept that was later used to
discuss a variety of aspects about the wood.
Harry, an ethusiastic pupil who is familiar with
technology like this, told the presenters, "It could help get people
interested in nature because nowadays people are just sitting on the
couch watching TV a lot". The benefits of children using such novel
technologies were confirmed by BBC News Online's technology analyst
Bill Thompson, who said, "It gets away from the idea that using
technology in education is about sitting students in front of a
computer and getting them typing on keyboards". Click
here to see the BBC Online article.
Ambient Wood's Sussex researchers collaborate
with
Equator partners at Bristol, Southampton and Nottingham Universities.
