Cognitive Theory and Recommendations

Multimedia principle--
our learning object includes pictures and texts. No audio. so the alert voice will be added later.

Split-attention principle --
Few words are in our object. They are used to show the items of calories relating to the pictures.

Redundancy principle--
The comparison of calories are shown in two ways. That may be duplicated. We will remove one of them and keep the best suitable format.

Segmenting principle--
The operation of our object is friend. But some control operation hasn't been designed.

Pre-training principle--
The object is not intuitive now. Direction information will added later.

Flash (prototype)

(1)Choose and drag the pictures of food and sports to compare calories.
(2)If the calories contained by food are larger than that burned through sports, the result will be shown in the screen
(3)Meanwhile, the people standing on the board will go down. That is to say, it becomes heavier.
(4)All the pictures of food and sports are from the public clip art websites:
http://www.freeclipartnow.com/recreation/sports/
http://www.wpclipart.com/food/index.html


Note: so far, only the first pictures in the column of food and sports can be dragged.

Illustrating panoramas with Microsoft Photosynth

I have travelled to Stanley and Tai O and taken some pictures with my newly brought DSLR, Nikon D90. Unlike some traditional digital cameras, the DSLR does not have the fuction of creating panoramic photos.

In order to illustrate a scene in a panoramic way, some may suggest using photo editing software to merge several images together to form a panorama. However, Microsoft Labs have produced a convenient tool which enables users to create panoramas with a 3D-viewing environment without pain.

There are two products created by me:

1. Tai O, Lantau Island
http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=5fb7261e-f767-4187-98f2-f2c5ece5b663

2. St. Stephen's Bay, Stanley, Hong Kong Island
http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=b2331d99-2c47-4ba1-a3b7-c65ce8c803f3

The geotagging feature included in Microsoft PhotoSynth makes keeping the records of panoramas much easier. Moreover, curious users can browse around the world map in the Photosynth website to look for Photosynths of different scenes around the world created by other users.

The 3D-viewing environment of the panoramas introduced by Microsoft Photosynth makes the photo-browsing experience more realistic and closer to the real-life situation. This kind of illustration could not be created by traditional photo-editing software.

Data of "Calories Burned with Sports"

Calories Burned with Sports

After our discussion, we decide to continue the project of calories burned with sports. There are some reasons:

1. Undergone amounts of discussion and a brain storm, we came up with some new ideas of the project. There will be some innovations in the finished work which distinguish our work from others.
2. Project of calories burned with sports has practical applications, offers more information and could be widely used that our work seems to be more meaningful.
3. The project has higher technical requirements, such as buttons, slides, functions etc., so that we can study further of flash.

As we have so many good ideas, it is really difficult for us to make the decision. Contrast to the other ideas, Project of calories burned with sports is more innovative, meaningful and technical.

Photosynthesis (whiteboard)

There are several differences between our object and above flash object:
(1) Water is absorbed from roots.
(2) We add the status of Glucose(C6H12O6) production which was converted to sugar as food of the plant and water flow through the body of plant
(3) Color changes(formula, leaves and "bar-chart")make user more sensitive to the quantity of all the parts in the photosynthesis
(4) The sliders were changed to "bar-chart" make them more directly show the quantity change.
(5) There is a non-traditional test in the last whiteboard. It allows learner practice by themselves through dragging the items.


Please feel free to give comment and edit it.

References:
http://ilo.ecb.org/SourceFiles/photosynthesis.swf
http://science.howstuffworks.com/earth3.htm
http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0775714.html
http://www.osovo.com/diagram/photosynthesisflowdiagram.htm
http://www.cam.k12.il.us/hs/teachers/caplingerd/index.htm

Topic change suggestion

As some members have seen a good design of Calorie Burns Sports interactive leaning objects in another class, we discussed maybe there is a need to change our topic. I think two topics maybe very interesting for referencing:

(1) How lens work (image formation)

The focal length of a lens (from wikipedia):

where

f is the focal length of the lens,

n is the refractive index of the lens material,

R₁ is the radius of curvature of the lens surface closest to the light source,

R₂ is the radius of curvature of the lens surface farthest from the light source, and

d is the thickness of the lens (the distance along the lens axis between the two surface vertices).

Other References:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brTzn9VoGks
http://webphysics.davidson.edu/physlet_resources/dav_optics/examples/eye_example.htmlRelations between growth of plant with water, light, carbon dioxide.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2EmowDS0U4&feature=related


(2) Photosynthesis

The formula for photosynthesis is:
6CO₂ + 6H₂O + energy from light ----> 6O₂ + C₆H₁₂O₆
carbon dioxide + water + energy from light --> oxygen gas + glucose



Other References about Photosynthesis:
a whiteboard from Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ekysVrxIUI
http://www.biologycorner.com/resources/photosynthesis-overview.gif
http://ellerbruch.nmu.edu/classes/cs255w03/cs255students/teabbott/p4/page1.html
http://ilo.ecb.org/SourceFiles/photosynthesis.swf
http://phet.colorado.edu/simulations/index.php