Utilizing MAR for Remedial Teaching of Compound-Cube-Surface Area at Elementary School in Taiwan

In this paper, the development of the MAR (mobile augmented reality) remedial teaching program is described. It allowed students to manipulate augmented objects through AURASMA app via internet and find leads to solve geometry problems regarding compound-cube-surface area. In order to foster students' spatial abilities, the program provided specific functions included partition, complementation, recombination, and multi-perspective to promote their “mental image” as well as “visualization.” The proposed program was evaluated with the quasi-experimental pre-test/post-test control group design to probe into students' learning performance. Moreover, students' error types of problem-solving were analyzed using their solving track recorded in the sheets. The results showed that the MAR remedial teaching program truly benefit students on solving geometry problems regarding compound-cube-surface area, and there are still some questions needed to investigate in the future, such as how students were affected by visual-obscuration to inexactly carry out their counts.

The Seamless Coupling of Bits and Atoms

Hiroshi Ishii conducts research in the MIT Media Lab in two principal areas: the field of Human-Computer Interactions, and the field of interface design linking human beings, digital information and the environment. In this dialogue, Hiroshi describes two of the basic concepts of the Media Lab: the first is to achieve ‘tangible bits’ in human-computer interaction, and the second concerns ‘affordance’, which refers to the possibility of an action on an object or environment, in particular, those of which we are aware. He also explains how they create ‘digitally augmented objects’ to improve our understanding and knowledge of objects and their immediate environment. Hiroshi later reflects on the difficulties of developing natural language interfaces, and whether ‘things can think’—he is co-director of Things That Think. He also discusses breakthroughs with his ‘radical atoms’ vision of developing materials that have a shape and appearance which can be digitally transformed to make them as reconfigurable as pixels on a screen. Finally, he outlines some of his projects, such as eg. one related to the use of kinetic memory, the ability to ‘record and playback physical motion’.