Collective Wiki Reflection

Creating a collective Wiki turned out to be a fun exercise. Although, the need to keep it in a professional and academic form slowed down its development a little, but overall I would say it was a success. One of the downsides though, was a limit in time to complete the research. Having used scholarly approved sources prompted a careful choice of words and sentence structures, so that not much of an editing was required. Writing a research is always somewhat biased. Having to do this research on my own, I would choose different form and writing style. Breadth and depth would most likely depend on my own experience with the subject, or without such, the knowledge I would get from academic sources compared to not so academic sources. I would structure it differently, basing the research on examples, going from the greatest, like the Internet, to the smallest ones and discussing their differences and social aspects. The example that I would particularly pay more attention to would be the use of forums and collective blogs as a successful mean of crowd sourcing, based on personal experience. Having to work in a group and again, with the time limit, forced us to stick with the point format, which was pretty much simply answering the questions, without any additional or side information on the topic. Luckily we did not have any arguments and disagreements on the topic, otherwise, being in the same room and expressing different opinions could cause some troubles. Similar to the video example we saw in the lecture about Wiki on British Bombings, when the page was completely emptied by someone who disagreed or simply did not like it, we too, had a moment when a page was deleted while being edited.

Graphic Tablet in Contemporary Society

Graphics Tablet or a Digitized Tablet, as the Wikipedia suggests, is a computer input device used to control the graphics user interface in a similar way as the computer mouse does. Most types of graphics tablets consist of a flat surface that is able to capture and transmit signals provided by the stylus (a controller, in most cases a pen) when in contact with the surface of the tablet. Early versions of tablets were mainly used for the handwriting recognition, as the reflection of Marshall McLuhan’s predictions of a Paperless Society, allowing the transfer of a written text into the word processing program for editing it. (McLuhan, M., 1964)  The modern versions offer a much higher precision, pressure, tilt recognition, and can be used for a variety of purposes that include, but not limited to the creation of computer graphics (2D and 3D).

A study of digital ink in lecture presentation conducted at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems reviews the usage of a tablet, allowing the presenter to write down annotations on the projected slides. (Anderson, R. J.,   Hoyer, C., Wolfman S. A., Anderson R., 2004) This study discussed the analogy between the Digitized Ink and physical gestures, and its use to increase the attention to particular parts of the slides. The survey proved that 55% of audience reported their attention increased to the lecture, when only 10% reported their attention decreased. Further use of the Digital Inking systems has its social effect and proves itself useful in terms of education. Raising attention to the important parts of the lecture and at the same time making examples with ease, rather than letting out huge amounts of information, allows easier understanding of this information.

This definitely has a positive effect on the means of presentation. The ability to visually communicate with the audience, makes about any lecture more interesting, thus allowing a better perception of the information being presented. Being a university student myself, I find this to be a very interesting way to make examples on the lecture material, because there is no better way to learn as from examples.

As a plausible interchange for Digital Ink and graphics tablets in general, I can only think of the Microsoft Surface. It is a new interactive device, which allows users directly operate with digital objects on the tabletop. Although it carries a slightly different idea, it resembles a big touch screen tablet, which turns out to be the same thing. As for the implausible interchange, I have thought of the Visual Scrubbing Technology from a science fiction movie called The Minority Report. The main character, wearing special gloves, controls a 3D projected interface (a hologram) and scrolls through the video records looking for clues. Visually projected holograms still stay in the science fiction world, but the potential of operating a 3D object that does not yet exist, simply but touching it, without having to use any input devices is quite fascinating.

References.

Anderson, R. J.,   Hoyer, C., Wolfman S. A., Anderson R. (2004.). Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. A study of digital ink in lecture presentation, 567 – 574. Retieved on February 10, 2009, from http://doi.acm.org.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/10.1145/985692.985764

Graphics Tablet, Wikipedia. (2009, January 31, 20:00.). Retrieved on February 08, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_tablet

McLuhan, M. (1964) Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man.
Taylor & Francis, 1987