Research Notes Three, the Magic Book.

The second technology that I came across was the magic book, this particular one was one of my favorites to research into and it gave me many ideas.

The Magic Book is technology that uses a mixed reality interface, using real books between reality and virtuality. This technology also supports multi-scale collaboration, basically it means it allows multiple people to experience the same virtual environment at the same time.

When I saw this and looked through its manual I immediately had a few ideas swirly through my head that diverted off of my original idea, the one that I find to be the most intriguing would be this one;

Using a tablet with the application on, the device would run the AR, then you take a countries literature. In my idea I would have something like a comic or Manga (Japanese... there is others like manwha for korea etc.) then using the tablet with the AR you would scan over the page and it would translate the page as you read, though it would deviate from my idea too much, changing it from learning a language to just translating it.

The second idea I had from it was to have AR animate pages of a specifically made comic for learning language, though this would cost extra money to implement, kids would find this fun and interesting though it they could interact with what they are reading.

Research Notes Two, The Emotiv headset.

Over the next few blogs I will be talking about the hardware and software I have found, going through them I will slowly decide on what I will be using towards the idea and what not to use.

The first piece of technology is "The Emotiv Headset," this is an Brain Computer Interface designed for practical contextualized research applications, using electroencephalography(ECG) data through Emotivs testbench software and SDK.

As I looked through this site, it was very exciting and looked to be one of the things you would see out of sci-fi, so of course I immediately had a few ideas when it came to this technology. Sadly when I checked the price ($399), I thought it to be too high a price, even so I carried on through the site and looked at more of the things.

After going through the tabs I came across game applications, looking through the list I came across one that I thought would appear, "Spirit Mountain," in this game you traverse through the mountain top and learn to use your mind to move objects such as boulders.

At first I thought it wasn't exciting because it was what I expected first when I read about the Emotiv headset, that was until I came across one video on Youtube.

The video; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HucKhwmenJY&list=PLGYKSaO04ozGZCA-Qt2ZT3_a1qoO-4Udf&index=1

The video was just a little over ten minutes, at first I watched it because I was researching the technology but after the video I researched specifically into the video. The video is of a woman called Cora, Cora had been in a car accident in the year 2000, it left her body paralyzed. So after finding out this information it changed my perspective of this game completely, watching this womans face change from frustration to pure delight was one of the most amazing things I have seen from technology to date.

The fact that a person who struggles just to lift her head was momentarily forgetting her pain and worry because of the technology she was using, I thought it was just amazing.

I also read the manual just to be thorough, if I were to implement this technology it would cost more than just the price of buying it. It would have to be in one specific place like a school and then on top of that there is specific needs the headset has to have, maintaining its various parts with things like saline solution etc.

Of course, maybe in the future it would be cheaper and there would be a more public model for the average household.

Research Notes One

My initial Idea in relation to Futures

I want to be able to find an easy and efficient way to learn another language whilst having fun doing so, using technology like VR(Virtual Reality) and AR(Augmented Reality).

Using this technology I think it would be a cool idea to make learning a language a game, where you can go out into the word and search for more things to translate, just by using a device such as your phone to scan an object and have it translate into the language of your choice.

Whilst it scans the object though, the word will appear, a button will also appear so that if you press it, it will speak the word. Not only that but to make the application more fun, I would implement an avatar space where you collect objects, much like "Sims," you can place what you have learned and collect there to come back to if you are struggling to remember the word.

The reason I want the above points to be part of the application is another point, when you can an object you get a model to appear along with a word, this is visual learning.
If you press the button to listen to the word spoken, then it becomes auditory learning.
Finally, when using the avatar space, you interact with the models and place them where you want, by interacting with the object you are kinesthetic  learning.

This idea came to me with the fact that technology is bringing the world closer together, however language barriers are still an issue, keeping multiple cultures apart. With this technology in classes it will form an early step to destroy these barriers for future generations to come and create more opportunities in this technology based world we are creating.

As a side point to this, it would be cool to be able to use your avatar in mini games. Playing small made games with people across the world.