Bernardo Tabuenca

An audience response system based on location: CELSTEC Clicker

2012-05-07T15:50:47Z

I recently uploaded the outcome of my hands-on Titanium Appcelerator (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appcelerator_Titanium) in DSpace at Open Universiteit.

CELSTEC Clicker is an audience response system, also called “clicker” or “personal response system”. This system is composed by two modules, the first one is an app used for gathering questions to individuals based on their location (See figure 1 and 2), and second one, a platform for monitoring back the results of the poll to the group in the form of a chart or graph (See figure 3).


Figure 1	Figure 2

The client app is based on Model View Controller design pattern and build entirely with Javascript under Titanium for Eclipse IDE. Available questions to individuals, their answers and locations are stored in opened Google Fusion tables. The results of the poll are monitored in Java servlets hosted by Google App Engine. Charts and graphs are built using Google Charts.

Figure 3

Available questions can be configured with password so that the access can be restricted to a group of users.

You can download the software and its documentation under DSpace in the following link http://bit.ly/JOY6Lc

Enjoy the clicker and do not hesitate to contact for any doubt regarding the app.

Bernardo Tabuenca

About the invasion of smart objects and the temptation to destroy robots

2012-04-14T09:47:24Z

In these days of reading and writing until very late about smart objects, augmented tangibles, robots embedded in daily life and other human made creatures, I am feeling that some kind of hostility against electric appliances and robots, could be waking up from my inside.

Nass and Reeves [5] demonstrated that humans tend to treat computer as social actors and therefore like other human beings. During these time I have read about the “Impatient toaster” [2], designed to motivate its owners to eat more often and in regular intervals. After not using it for a while, it signalizes hunger through nervous and vibrating movements. I also found that new fridges provide different kind of facilities from counting the number of calories you take by reading the barcode of the consumed products, until warning system alerting the owner when any product is going out of date. On more of them is the “PillowTalk” [3], an augmented pillow that gives feedback on the correct position to sleep with a serious game. “The thrifty faucet” [4] is a pervasive home appliance that takes a different position depending on the water consumption during the last period of time, so whenever you use more water, it adopts a curled position and it is more difficult to get water from it.

When I was a child, I learned in the “Inventing The Future Show” from The Muppets that human ancestors already had a temptation to destroy robots (See http://bit.ly/Iro8pe).

I recently read an article about the experiment from Julia Ringler & Holger Reckter [1] proving that “Humans are tempted to destroy robots”. They even could claim that people who had alleviated this appetite for destruction with their DESU (DEstruction and SUicide) robot, declared that they felt some kind of satisfaction after watching the effects of an appliance that cannot be repaired.

Nowadays, we are all waiting for the “Internet of Things” and the smart objects invasion that will bring us many facilities as the “Impatient toaster”, “The thrifty faucet” and “The pillow talk”. Now, we can assure that smart objects will bring us satisfaction, not sure when we make use of them but we will always have the option to fulfill one’s wishes destroying them.

References

1. Ringler, J. (2012). DESU 100 – About the Temptation to Destroy a Robot. TEI, 151-152. Retrieved from http://dl.acm.org/ft_gateway.cfm?id=2148164&ftid=1147696&dwn=1

2. Burneleit, E., & Hemmert, F. (2009). Living interfaces: the impatient toaster. Proceedings of the 3rd. TEI. Retrieved from http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1517673

3. Schiphorst, T., Nack, F., & KauwATjoe, M. PillowTalk: Can we afford intimacy?. TEI,

(2007)

4. Togler, J., & Hemmert, F. Living Interfaces  : The Thrifty Faucet. Communications of the

ACM, 43-44. (2009)

5. B. Reeves and C. Nass. The media equation: how people treat computers, television, and new media like real people and places. Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, USA, 1996.

Appinventor has been re-launched

2012-03-06T19:45:00Z

One more online development environment is back:

The MIT Center for Mobile Learning has recently announced that they are making MIT App Inventor available as a public service.

It is possible to test it in the following URL:

http://appinventor.mit.edu/

Google Labs started this project and now the MIT has decide to go on with this online development environment for Android. The following short video (1 min) you will be able to develop an Android mobile app. It is not necessary to have development skills.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ADwPLSFeY8

Samples for different functionalities are enumerated in the following link

http://beta.appinventor.mit.edu/learn/tutorials/index.html

Supporting lifelong learners in daily activities

2012-02-27T19:47:34Z

Would you like to make the most of your time using your mobile devices to learn?

The primary aim of this questionnaire is to analyse daily learning practices in adults, in order to recognize patterns in lifelong learning and support them with technologies.

Collaborate on this research filling in these 20 short items in the following link:

https://response.questback.com/bernardotabuenca/lifelonglearning/

Of course all the answers you provide will be treated completely anonymous and confidential. If you have any questions regarding the questionnaire, do not hesitate to contact me.

Sincerely,

Bernardo Tabuenca Archilla
Centre for Learning Sciences and Technologies (CELSTEC)
Mobile Media Lab
Valkenburgerweg 177, 6419 AT Heerlen (The Netherlands)
Skype: celstec-bernardo.tabuenca
eMail: bernardo.tabuenca@ou.nl
www: http://celstec.org/

Appfurnace: A WYSIWYG mobile apps development online environment

2012-02-21T13:58:34Z

Appcelerator Titanium seem to have hard competitors. APPFURNACE is a graphical easy to use online environments that lets you create mobile apps avoiding design overworking.

In comparison to Titanium Appcelerator, Appfurnace offers a really quick What You See Is What You Get Interface to create your Graphical User Interfaces.

Moreover this environment provides testing online tools, that is, the mobile emulator is integrated in their site.

As you sign-up, you get 1 GB free space and you pay only when you´re ready to publish. When you log-in for the first time, you get a Wizard on how to create you first app.

They also provide a Library (QR code reader, DB, ...) and an API for further developments. Javascript knowledge is required in order to make use of it.

It supports iPhone/iPod and Android mobile apps.

This environment worths to invest some time on it to know what it is capable to do when in need to develop a first mobile app.