The Envisionment and Discovery Collaboratory (EDC) is a long-term research platform exploring immersive socio-technical environments in which stakeholders can collaboratively frame and solve problems and discuss and make decisions in a variety of application domains and different disciplines. The knowledge to understand, frame, and solve these problems does not already exist, but is constructed and evolves in ongoing interactions and collaborations among stakeholders coming from different disciplines providing a unique and challenging environment to study, foster, and support human-centered informatics, design, creativity, and learning. At the social level, the EDC is focused on the collaborative construction of artifacts rather than the sharing of individually constructed items. It brings individuals together in face-to-face meetings, encouraging and supporting them to engage, individually and collectively, in action and reflection. At the technological level, the EDC integrates tabletop computing environments, tangible objects, sketching support, geographic information systems, visualization software, and an envisioned virtual implementation. This book is based on 20 years of research and development activities that brought together interdisciplinary teams of researchers, educators, designers, and practitioners from different backgrounds. The EDC originated with the merging of two research paradigms from disparate disciplines to build on the strengths, approaches, and perspectives of each. This book describes the artifacts and scenarios that were developed, with the goal of providing inspiration for human-centered informatics not focused on technologies in search of a purpose but on the development of systems supporting stakeholders to explore personally meaningful problems. These developments have inspired numerous research and teaching activities. The challenges, prototypical systems, and lessons learned represent important milestones in the development and evolution of the EDC that are relevant for future research activities and practices in human-centered informatics.
Documents a theatre project involving an Aboriginal theatre group performing a post-Brechtian German play by Heiner Mxller, set within a play by the Aboriginal playwright, poet and novelist, Mudrooroo. Recounts the genesis and development of the project, and gives separate texts for both plays. Mxller has also written an autobiography, TWar without Battle: Living in two dictatorships'.
This is the story of a journey to Southern California, home of the American Dream, in search of fame and fortune. An Australian couple of mixed German-Chinese origin with their six-year old son Maximilian leave their settled life in Sydney to move to California. The boy's Mandarin name is Xiaolong, meaning Little Dragon, and the dream of his mother is that he will one day become the number one golf player in the world. She has contacted Tiger Woods' first professional coach who is supposed to take the boy under his wings, and she is determined to make her dream come true. The book follows Maximilian's exposure to playing junior gold, the highlights and pitfalls along with the emotional ups and downs of children involved in competitive sport, and their parents' sometimes conflicting and contradictory expectations, culminating in an account of Maximilian competing at the Junior World Championship in San Diego. But 'The Dragon Mother's Dream' is more than a book about golf. Part travelogue and part parenting memoir, it is a journal about living in one of the most privileged places in California. It documents the everyday realities and idiosyncracies of the contemporary American way of life, recorded with great precision and attention to detail by an Australian writer of European roots and - sometimes satirical, often ironic - sensibilities. At the end of the book, the mother's dream takes an unexpected twist.
Thirty-two years after the publication of the legendary 'Rasch book' (Rasch, 1960), the rich literature on the Rasch model and its extensions was scattered in journals and many less accessible sources, including 'grey' literature. When asked by students or junior researchers for references to the Rasch model, it was a typical reaction on the part of the editors to state that it was difficult to name one, or just a few; actually, only a whole list of references differing in notation and level of formal abstraction seemed to meet the request in most cases. Therefore, in 1992 the editors decided to invite a number of outstanding authors in the field of Rasch modeling to contribute to a book presenting the current state of knowledge about Rasch models. The aim was not just to collect a number of papers on the subject, rather to produce a well-organized monograph. To this end, a workshop was held in Vienna from 25 to 27 February 1993 in which, after a process of mutual reviewing, drafts of all chapters were read and discussed by all authors, leading to a more systematic organization of the topics treated in unified notation and terminology. (The workshop was sponsored by the University of Vienna; here, the editors would like to express their thanks, in the name of all contributors, both for the financial support and for the hospitality granted.
Paleoceanographic proxies provide infonnation for reconstructions of the past, including climate changes, global and regional oceanography, and the cycles of biochemical components in the ocean. These prox ies are measurable descriptors for desired but unobservable environmental variables such as tempera ture, salinity, primary productivity, nutrient content, or surface-water carbon dioxide concentrations. The proxies are employed in a manner analogous to oceanographic methods. The water masses are first characterized according to their specific physical and chemical properties, and then related to particular assemblages of certain organisms or to particular element or isotope distributions. We have a long-standing series of proven proxies available. Marine microfossil assemblages, for instance, are employed to reconstruct surface-water temperatures. The calcareous shells of planktonic and benthic microorgan isms contain a wealth of paleoceanographic information in their isotopic and elemental compositions. Stable oxygen isotope measurements are used to detennine ice volume, and MglCa ratios are related to water temperatures, to cite a few examples. Organic material may also provide valuable infonnation, e. g. , about past productivity conditions. Studying the stable carbon isotope composition of bulk organic matter or individual marine organic components may provide a measure of past surface-water CO 2 conditions within the bounds of certain assumptions. Within the scope of paleoceanographic investigations, the existing proxies are continuously evolving and improving, while new proxies are being studied and developed. The methodology is improved by analysis of samples from the water column and surface sediments, and through laboratory experiments.
This book is unique in that its stress is not on the mastery of a programming language, but on the importance and value of interactive problem solving. The authors focus on several specific interest worlds: mathematics, computer science, artificial intelligence, linguistics, and games; however, their approach can serve as a model that may be applied easily to other fields as well. Those who are interested in symbolic computing will find that Interactive Problem Solving Using LOGO provides a gentle introduction from which one may move on to other, more advanced computational frameworks or more formal analysis. What is of primary importance, however, is the text's ability -- through its presentation of rich, open-ended problems -- to effectively cultivate crucial cognitive skills.
Contributions to Mathematical Psychology, Psycho§ metrics and Methodology presents the most esteemed research findings of the 22nd European Mathematical Psychology Group meeting in Vienna, Austria, September 1991. The selection of work appearing in this volume contains not only contributions to mathematical psychology in the narrow sense, but also work in psychometrics and methodology, with the common element of all contributions being their attempt to deal with scientific problems in psychology with rigorous mathematics reasoning. The book contains 28 chapters divided into five parts: Perception, Learning, and Cognition; Choice and Reaction Time; Social Systems; Measurement and Psychometrics; and Methodology. It is of interest to all mathematical psychologists, educational psychologists, and graduate students in these areas.
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